57 ideas
| 6575 | Philosophy may never find foundations, and may undermine our lives in the process [Fogelin] |
| 14092 | Philosophers are often too fussy about words, dismissing perfectly useful ordinary terms [Rosen] |
| 6585 | Rationality is threatened by fear of inconsistency, illusions of absolutes or relativism, and doubt [Fogelin] |
| 6557 | Humans may never be able to attain a world view which is both rich and consistent [Fogelin] |
| 6568 | A game can be played, despite having inconsistent rules [Fogelin] |
| 6560 | The law of noncontradiction is traditionally the most basic principle of rationality [Fogelin] |
| 6565 | The law of noncontradiction makes the distinction between asserting something and denying it [Fogelin] |
| 14100 | Figuring in the definition of a thing doesn't make it a part of that thing [Rosen] |
| 6574 | Legal reasoning is analogical, not deductive [Fogelin] |
| 18851 | Pairing (with Extensionality) guarantees an infinity of sets, just from a single element [Rosen] |
| 14096 | Explanations fail to be monotonic [Rosen] |
| 14097 | Things could be true 'in virtue of' others as relations between truths, or between truths and items [Rosen] |
| 14095 | Facts are structures of worldly items, rather like sentences, individuated by their ingredients [Rosen] |
| 14093 | An 'intrinsic' property is one that depends on a thing and its parts, and not on its relations [Rosen] |
| 16668 | Modes of things exist in some way, without being full-blown substances [Gassendi] |
| 16730 | If matter is entirely atoms, anything else we notice in it can only be modes [Gassendi] |
| 8915 | How we refer to abstractions is much less clear than how we refer to other things [Rosen] |
| 18852 | A Meinongian principle might say that there is an object for any modest class of properties [Rosen] |
| 18849 | Metaphysical necessity is absolute and universal; metaphysical possibility is very tolerant [Rosen] |
| 18850 | 'Metaphysical' modality is the one that makes the necessity or contingency of laws of nature interesting [Rosen] |
| 18858 | Sets, universals and aggregates may be metaphysically necessary in one sense, but not another [Rosen] |
| 14094 | The excellent notion of metaphysical 'necessity' cannot be defined [Rosen] |
| 18857 | Standard Metaphysical Necessity: P holds wherever the actual form of the world holds [Rosen] |
| 18856 | Non-Standard Metaphysical Necessity: when ¬P is incompatible with the nature of things [Rosen] |
| 18848 | Something may be necessary because of logic, but is that therefore a special sort of necessity? [Rosen] |
| 18855 | Combinatorial theories of possibility assume the principles of combination don't change across worlds [Rosen] |
| 14101 | Are necessary truths rooted in essences, or also in basic grounding laws? [Rosen] |
| 6582 | Conventions can only work if they are based on something non-conventional [Fogelin] |
| 18853 | A proposition is 'correctly' conceivable if an ominiscient being could conceive it [Rosen] |
| 6576 | My view is 'circumspect rationalism' - that only our intellect can comprehend the world [Fogelin] |
| 6589 | Knowledge is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated [Fogelin] |
| 6596 | For coherentists, circularity is acceptable if the circle is large, rich and coherent [Fogelin] |
| 6597 | A rule of justification might be: don't raise the level of scrutiny without a good reason [Fogelin] |
| 6588 | Scepticism is cartesian (sceptical scenarios), or Humean (future), or Pyrrhonian (suspend belief) [Fogelin] |
| 6590 | Scepticism deals in remote possibilities that are ineliminable and set the standard very high [Fogelin] |
| 6583 | Radical perspectivism replaces Kant's necessary scheme with many different schemes [Fogelin] |
| 16619 | We observe qualities, and use 'induction' to refer to the substances lying under them [Gassendi] |
| 3400 | Things must have parts to intermingle [Gassendi] |
| 6555 | We are also irrational, with a unique ability to believe in bizarre self-created fictions [Fogelin] |
| 8917 | The Way of Abstraction used to say an abstraction is an idea that was formed by abstracting [Rosen] |
| 8912 | Nowadays abstractions are defined as non-spatial, causally inert things [Rosen] |
| 8913 | Chess may be abstract, but it has existed in specific space and time [Rosen] |
| 8914 | Sets are said to be abstract and non-spatial, but a set of books can be on a shelf [Rosen] |
| 8916 | Conflating abstractions with either sets or universals is a big claim, needing a big defence [Rosen] |
| 8918 | Functional terms can pick out abstractions by asserting an equivalence relation [Rosen] |
| 8919 | Abstraction by equivalence relationships might prove that a train is an abstract entity [Rosen] |
| 14099 | 'Bachelor' consists in or reduces to 'unmarried' male, but not the other way around [Rosen] |
| 6605 | Critics must be causally entangled with their subject matter [Fogelin] |
| 6607 | The word 'beautiful', when deprived of context, is nearly contentless [Fogelin] |
| 6604 | Saying 'It's all a matter to taste' ignores the properties of the object discussed [Fogelin] |
| 6586 | Cynics are committed to morality, but disappointed or disgusted by human failings [Fogelin] |
| 6572 | Deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation and retribution can come into conflict in punishments [Fogelin] |
| 6573 | Retributivists say a crime can be 'paid for'; deterrentists still worry about potential victims [Fogelin] |
| 16593 | Atoms are not points, but hard indivisible things, which no force in nature can divide [Gassendi] |
| 16729 | How do mere atoms produce qualities like colour, flavour and odour? [Gassendi] |
| 18854 | The MRL view says laws are the theorems of the simplest and strongest account of the world [Rosen] |
| 14098 | An acid is just a proton donor [Rosen] |