53 ideas
13966 | Analytic philosophy loved the necessary a priori analytic, linguistic modality, and rigour [Soames] |
13974 | If philosophy is analysis of meaning, available to all competent speakers, what's left for philosophers? [Soames] |
18486 | We might define truth as arising from the truth-maker relation [MacBride] |
18484 | Phenomenalists, behaviourists and presentists can't supply credible truth-makers [MacBride] |
18466 | If truthmaking is classical entailment, then anything whatsoever makes a necessary truth [MacBride] |
18473 | 'Maximalism' says every truth has an actual truthmaker [MacBride] |
18481 | Maximalism follows Russell, and optimalism (no negative or universal truthmakers) follows Wittgenstein [MacBride] |
18483 | The main idea of truth-making is that what a proposition is about is what matters [MacBride] |
18479 | There are different types of truthmakers for different types of negative truth [MacBride] |
18477 | There aren't enough positive states out there to support all the negative truths [MacBride] |
18482 | Optimalists say that negative and universal are true 'by default' from the positive truths [MacBride] |
18474 | Does 'this sentence has no truth-maker' have a truth-maker? Reductio suggests it can't have [MacBride] |
18485 | Even idealists could accept truthmakers, as mind-dependent [MacBride] |
18490 | Maybe 'makes true' is not an active verb, but just a formal connective like 'because'? [MacBride] |
18493 | Truthmaker talk of 'something' making sentences true, which presupposes objectual quantification [MacBride] |
15163 | The interest of quantified modal logic is its metaphysical necessity and essentialism [Soames] |
18489 | Connectives link sentences without linking their meanings [MacBride] |
18476 | 'A is F' may not be positive ('is dead'), and 'A is not-F' may not be negative ('is not blind') [MacBride] |
15158 | Indefinite descriptions are quantificational in subject position, but not in predicate position [Soames] |
15157 | Recognising the definite description 'the man' as a quantifier phrase, not a singular term, is a real insight [Soames] |
15156 | The universal and existential quantifiers were chosen to suit mathematics [Soames] |
8923 | Numbers are identified by their main properties and relations, involving the successor function [MacBride] |
8926 | For mathematical objects to be positions, positions themselves must exist first [MacBride] |
18480 | Maybe it only exists if it is a truthmaker (rather than the value of a variable)? [MacBride] |
18471 | Different types of 'grounding' seem to have no more than a family resemblance relation [MacBride] |
18472 | Which has priority - 'grounding' or 'truth-making'? [MacBride] |
18475 | Russell allows some complex facts, but Wittgenstein only allows atomic facts [MacBride] |
21354 | It may be that internal relations like proportion exist, because we directly perceive it [MacBride] |
21353 | Internal relations are fixed by existences, or characters, or supervenience on characters [MacBride] |
21352 | 'Multigrade' relations are those lacking a fixed number of relata [MacBride] |
13969 | Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames] |
15162 | We understand metaphysical necessity intuitively, from ordinary life [Soames] |
15161 | There are more metaphysically than logically necessary truths [Soames] |
18478 | Wittgenstein's plan to show there is only logical necessity failed, because of colours [MacBride] |
13973 | A key achievement of Kripke is showing that important modalities are not linguistic in source [Soames] |
13968 | Kripkean possible worlds are abstract maximal states in which the real world could have been [Soames] |
15152 | To study meaning, study truth conditions, on the basis of syntax, and representation by the parts [Soames] |
15153 | Tarski's account of truth-conditions is too weak to determine meanings [Soames] |
13965 | Semantics as theory of meaning and semantics as truth-based logical consequence are very different [Soames] |
13964 | Semantic content is a proposition made of sentence constituents (not some set of circumstances) [Soames] |
13972 | Two-dimensionalism reinstates descriptivism, and reconnects necessity and apriority to analyticity [Soames] |
15154 | We should use cognitive states to explain representational propositions, not vice versa [Soames] |
8388 | Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism [Tooley] |
8389 | Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable [Tooley] |
8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
8393 | We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter [Tooley] |
8390 | Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action [Tooley] |
8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |
8392 | Probabilist laws are compatible with effects always or never happening [Tooley] |
8399 | The actual cause may not be the most efficacious one [Tooley] |
8391 | In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality [Tooley] |
8394 | Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation [Tooley] |
8398 | Causation is a concept of a relation the same in all worlds, so it can't be a physical process [Tooley] |