41 ideas
| 7454 | Gassendi is the first great empiricist philosopher [Hacking] |
| 22138 | Science rests on scholastic metaphysics, not on Hume, Kant or Carnap [Boulter] |
| 13838 | A decent modern definition should always imply a semantics [Hacking] |
| 9376 | A sentence may simultaneously define a term, and also assert a fact [Boghossian] |
| 6345 | Minimalism is incoherent, as it implies that truth both is and is not a property [Boghossian, by Horwich] |
| 13833 | 'Thinning' ('dilution') is the key difference between deduction (which allows it) and induction [Hacking] |
| 13834 | Gentzen's Cut Rule (or transitivity of deduction) is 'If A |- B and B |- C, then A |- C' [Hacking] |
| 13835 | Only Cut reduces complexity, so logic is constructive without it, and it can be dispensed with [Hacking] |
| 13845 | The various logics are abstractions made from terms like 'if...then' in English [Hacking] |
| 13840 | First-order logic is the strongest complete compact theory with Löwenheim-Skolem [Hacking] |
| 13844 | A limitation of first-order logic is that it cannot handle branching quantifiers [Hacking] |
| 13842 | Second-order completeness seems to need intensional entities and possible worlds [Hacking] |
| 13837 | With a pure notion of truth and consequence, the meanings of connectives are fixed syntactically [Hacking] |
| 13839 | Perhaps variables could be dispensed with, by arrows joining places in the scope of quantifiers [Hacking] |
| 9375 | Conventionalism agrees with realists that logic has truth values, but not over the source [Boghossian] |
| 13843 | If it is a logic, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem holds for it [Hacking] |
| 22134 | Thoughts are general, but the world isn't, so how can we think accurately? [Boulter] |
| 22150 | Logical possibility needs the concepts of the proposition to be adequate [Boulter] |
| 7447 | Probability was fully explained between 1654 and 1812 [Hacking] |
| 7448 | Probability is statistical (behaviour of chance devices) or epistemological (belief based on evidence) [Hacking] |
| 7449 | Epistemological probability based either on logical implications or coherent judgments [Hacking] |
| 9369 | 'Snow is white or it isn't' is just true, not made true by stipulation [Boghossian] |
| 9367 | The a priori is explained as analytic to avoid a dubious faculty of intuition [Boghossian] |
| 9373 | That logic is a priori because it is analytic resulted from explaining the meaning of logical constants [Boghossian] |
| 9380 | We can't hold a sentence true without evidence if we can't agree which sentence is definitive of it [Boghossian] |
| 9384 | We may have strong a priori beliefs which we pragmatically drop from our best theory [Boghossian] |
| 9374 | If we learn geometry by intuition, how could this faculty have misled us for so long? [Boghossian] |
| 7450 | In the medieval view, only deduction counted as true evidence [Hacking] |
| 7451 | Formerly evidence came from people; the new idea was that things provided evidence [Hacking] |
| 7452 | An experiment is a test, or an adventure, or a diagnosis, or a dissection [Hacking, by PG] |
| 22139 | Experiments don't just observe; they look to see what interventions change the natural order [Boulter] |
| 22136 | Science begins with sufficient reason, de-animation, and the importance of nature [Boulter] |
| 7459 | Follow maths for necessary truths, and jurisprudence for contingent truths [Hacking] |
| 22135 | Our concepts can never fully capture reality, but simplification does not falsify [Boulter] |
| 9378 | If meaning depends on conceptual role, what properties are needed to do the job? [Boghossian] |
| 9377 | 'Conceptual role semantics' says terms have meaning from sentences and/or inferences [Boghossian] |
| 9372 | Could expressions have meaning, without two expressions possibly meaning the same? [Boghossian] |
| 17721 | There are no truths in virtue of meaning, but there is knowability in virtue of understanding [Boghossian, by Jenkins] |
| 9368 | Epistemological analyticity: grasp of meaning is justification; metaphysical: truth depends on meaning [Boghossian] |
| 22152 | Aristotelians accept the analytic-synthetic distinction [Boulter] |
| 22156 | The facts about human health are the measure of the values in our lives [Boulter] |