70 ideas
| 6602 | Philosophy is like a statue which is worshipped but never advances [Bacon] |
| 12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
| 12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
| 12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
| 12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
| 17713 | After 1903, Husserl avoids metaphysical commitments [Mares] |
| 18781 | Inconsistency doesn't prevent us reasoning about some system [Mares] |
| 9331 | How do we determine which of the sentences containing a term comprise its definition? [Horwich] |
| 6334 | The function of the truth predicate? Understanding 'true'? Meaning of 'true'? The concept of truth? A theory of truth? [Horwich] |
| 6342 | Some correspondence theories concern facts; others are built up through reference and satisfaction [Horwich] |
| 6332 | The common-sense theory of correspondence has never been worked out satisfactorily [Horwich] |
| 6335 | The redundancy theory cannot explain inferences from 'what x said is true' and 'x said p', to p [Horwich] |
| 6344 | Truth is a useful concept for unarticulated propositions and generalisations about them [Horwich] |
| 6336 | No deflationary conception of truth does justice to the fact that we aim for truth [Horwich] |
| 23299 | Horwich's deflationary view is novel, because it relies on propositions rather than sentences [Horwich, by Davidson] |
| 6337 | The deflationary picture says believing a theory true is a trivial step after believing the theory [Horwich] |
| 18789 | Intuitionist logic looks best as natural deduction [Mares] |
| 18790 | Intuitionism as natural deduction has no rule for negation [Mares] |
| 18787 | Three-valued logic is useful for a theory of presupposition [Mares] |
| 18793 | Material implication (and classical logic) considers nothing but truth values for implications [Mares] |
| 18784 | In classical logic the connectives can be related elegantly, as in De Morgan's laws [Mares] |
| 18786 | Excluded middle standardly implies bivalence; attacks use non-contradiction, De M 3, or double negation [Mares] |
| 18780 | Standard disjunction and negation force us to accept the principle of bivalence [Mares] |
| 6339 | Logical form is the aspects of meaning that determine logical entailments [Horwich] |
| 18782 | The connectives are studied either through model theory or through proof theory [Mares] |
| 18783 | Many-valued logics lack a natural deduction system [Mares] |
| 18792 | Situation semantics for logics: not possible worlds, but information in situations [Mares] |
| 18785 | Consistency is semantic, but non-contradiction is syntactic [Mares] |
| 17715 | The truth of the axioms doesn't matter for pure mathematics, but it does for applied [Mares] |
| 17716 | Mathematics is relations between properties we abstract from experience [Mares] |
| 18788 | For intuitionists there are not numbers and sets, but processes of counting and collecting [Mares] |
| 16639 | Only individual bodies exist [Bacon] |
| 16625 | In hylomorphism all the explanation of actions is in the form, and the matter doesn't do anything [Bacon] |
| 16033 | There are only individual bodies containing law-based powers, and the Forms are these laws [Bacon] |
| 8431 | Problems with Goodman's view of counterfactuals led to a radical approach from Stalnaker and Lewis [Horwich] |
| 17703 | Light in straight lines is contingent a priori; stipulated as straight, because they happen to be so [Mares] |
| 9333 | A priori belief is not necessarily a priori justification, or a priori knowledge [Horwich] |
| 17714 | Aristotelians dislike the idea of a priori judgements from pure reason [Mares] |
| 9342 | Understanding needs a priori commitment [Horwich] |
| 9332 | Meaning is generated by a priori commitment to truth, not the other way around [Horwich] |
| 9341 | Meanings and concepts cannot give a priori knowledge, because they may be unacceptable [Horwich] |
| 9334 | If we stipulate the meaning of 'number' to make Hume's Principle true, we first need Hume's Principle [Horwich] |
| 9339 | A priori knowledge (e.g. classical logic) may derive from the innate structure of our minds [Horwich] |
| 16724 | The senses deceive, but also show their own errors [Bacon] |
| 17705 | Empiricists say rationalists mistake imaginative powers for modal insights [Mares] |
| 12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
| 3648 | Empiricists are collecting ants; rationalists are spinning spiders; and bees do both [Bacon] |
| 17700 | The most popular view is that coherent beliefs explain one another [Mares] |
| 12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
| 6603 | Nature is revealed when we put it under pressure rather than observe it [Bacon] |
| 21950 | Science must clear away the idols of the mind if they are ever going to find the truth [Bacon] |
| 17704 | Operationalism defines concepts by our ways of measuring them [Mares] |
| 12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
| 2799 | Bayes' theorem explains why very surprising predictions have a higher value as evidence [Horwich] |
| 2798 | Probability of H, given evidence E, is prob(H) x prob(E given H) / prob(E) [Horwich] |
| 12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
| 17710 | Aristotelian justification uses concepts abstracted from experience [Mares] |
| 17706 | The essence of a concept is either its definition or its conceptual relations? [Mares] |
| 6338 | We could know the truth-conditions of a foreign sentence without knowing its meaning [Horwich] |
| 18791 | In 'situation semantics' our main concepts are abstracted from situations [Mares] |
| 17701 | Possible worlds semantics has a nice compositional account of modal statements [Mares] |
| 6340 | There are Fregean de dicto propositions, and Russellian de re propositions, or a mixture [Horwich] |
| 17702 | Unstructured propositions are sets of possible worlds; structured ones have components [Mares] |
| 6341 | Right translation is a mapping of languages which preserves basic patterns of usage [Horwich] |
| 12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
| 16624 | Stripped and passive matter is just a human invention [Bacon] |
| 8432 | Analyse counterfactuals using causation, not the other way around [Horwich] |
| 12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |
| 17708 | Maybe space has points, but processes always need regions with a size [Mares] |
| 7399 | Even without religion, there are many guides to morality [Bacon] |