120 ideas
| 15801 | Many philosophers aim to understand metaphysics by studying ourselves [Chisholm] |
| 17713 | After 1903, Husserl avoids metaphysical commitments [Mares] |
| 15802 | I use variables to show that each item remains the same entity throughout [Chisholm] |
| 18781 | Inconsistency doesn't prevent us reasoning about some system [Mares] |
| 15186 | In the tenseless view, all times are equally real, so statements of the future have truth-values [Le Poidevin] |
| 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] |
| 18780 | Standard disjunction and negation force us to accept the principle of bivalence [Mares] |
| 18786 | Excluded middle standardly implies bivalence; attacks use non-contradiction, De M 3, or double negation [Mares] |
| 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] |
| 22919 | A thing which makes no difference seems unlikely to exist [Le Poidevin] |
| 15832 | Events are states of affairs that occur at certain places and times [Chisholm] |
| 15829 | The mark of a state of affairs is that it is capable of being accepted [Chisholm] |
| 15809 | A state of affairs pertains to a thing if it implies that it has some property [Chisholm] |
| 15828 | I propose that events and propositions are two types of states of affairs [Chisholm] |
| 13120 | Chisholm divides things into contingent and necessary, and then individuals, states and non-states [Chisholm, by Westerhoff] |
| 15827 | Some properties, such as 'being a widow', can be seen as 'rooted outside the time they are had' [Chisholm] |
| 15830 | Some properties can never be had, like being a round square [Chisholm] |
| 15804 | If some dogs are brown, that entails the properties of 'being brown' and 'being canine' [Chisholm] |
| 15810 | Maybe we can only individuate things by relating them to ourselves [Chisholm] |
| 15805 | Being the tallest man is an 'individual concept', but not a haecceity [Chisholm] |
| 15807 | A haecceity is a property had necessarily, and strictly confined to one entity [Chisholm] |
| 15814 | A peach is sweet and fuzzy, but it doesn't 'have' those qualities [Chisholm] |
| 12852 | If x is ever part of y, then y is necessarily such that x is part of y at any time that y exists [Chisholm, by Simons] |
| 15808 | A traditional individual essence includes all of a thing's necessary characteristics [Chisholm] |
| 11966 | If there are essential properties, how do you find out what they are? [Chisholm] |
| 12851 | Intermittence is seen in a toy fort, which is dismantled then rebuilt with the same bricks [Chisholm, by Simons] |
| 15806 | The property of being identical with me is an individual concept [Chisholm] |
| 15826 | There is 'loose' identity between things if their properties, or truths about them, might differ [Chisholm] |
| 17703 | Light in straight lines is contingent a priori; stipulated as straight, because they happen to be so [Mares] |
| 11965 | Could possible Adam gradually transform into Noah, and vice versa? [Chisholm] |
| 19569 | We have a basic epistemic duty to believe truth and avoid error [Chisholm, by Kvanvig] |
| 17714 | Aristotelians dislike the idea of a priori judgements from pure reason [Mares] |
| 15819 | Do sense-data have structure, location, weight, and constituting matter? [Chisholm] |
| 15816 | 'I feel depressed' is more like 'he runs slowly' than like 'he has a red book' [Chisholm] |
| 15817 | If we can say a man senses 'redly', why not also 'rectangularly'? [Chisholm] |
| 15818 | So called 'sense-data' are best seen as 'modifications' of the person experiencing them [Chisholm] |
| 17705 | Empiricists say rationalists mistake imaginative powers for modal insights [Mares] |
| 8790 | The 'doctrine of the given' is correct; some beliefs or statements are self-justifying [Chisholm] |
| 17700 | The most popular view is that coherent beliefs explain one another [Mares] |
| 15207 | We want illuminating theories, rather than coherent theories [Le Poidevin] |
| 17704 | Operationalism defines concepts by our ways of measuring them [Mares] |
| 15831 | Explanations have states of affairs as their objects [Chisholm] |
| 22926 | In addition to causal explanations, they can also be inferential, or definitional, or purposive [Le Poidevin] |
| 15811 | I am picked out uniquely by my individual essence, which is 'being identical with myself' [Chisholm] |
| 15815 | Sartre says the ego is 'opaque'; I prefer to say that it is 'transparent' [Chisholm] |
| 15813 | People use 'I' to refer to themselves, with the meaning of their own individual essence [Chisholm] |
| 15803 | Bad theories of the self see it as abstract, or as a bundle, or as a process [Chisholm] |
| 3444 | If actions are not caused by other events, and are not causeless, they must be caused by the person [Chisholm] |
| 3446 | For Hobbes (but not for Kant) a person's actions can be deduced from their desires and beliefs [Chisholm] |
| 15821 | Determinism claims that every event has a sufficient causal pre-condition [Chisholm] |
| 9268 | If free will miraculously interrupts causation, animals might do that; why would we want to do it? [Frankfurt on Chisholm] |
| 17710 | Aristotelian justification uses concepts abstracted from experience [Mares] |
| 17706 | The essence of a concept is either its definition or its conceptual relations? [Mares] |
| 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] |
| 22932 | We don't just describe a time as 'now' from a private viewpoint, but as a fact about the world [Le Poidevin] |
| 17702 | Unstructured propositions are sets of possible worlds; structured ones have components [Mares] |
| 20062 | If a desire leads to a satisfactory result by an odd route, the causal theory looks wrong [Chisholm] |
| 20054 | There has to be a brain event which is not caused by another event, but by the agent [Chisholm] |
| 3443 | Desires may rule us, but are we responsible for our desires? [Chisholm] |
| 3442 | Responsibility seems to conflict with events being either caused or not caused [Chisholm] |
| 15824 | There are mere omissions (through ignorance, perhaps), and people can 'commit an omission' [Chisholm] |
| 6866 | It is disturbing if we become unreal when we die, but if time is unreal, then we remain real after death [Le Poidevin] |
| 15190 | Evil can't be an illusion, because then the illusion that there is evil would be evil [Le Poidevin] |
| 6867 | Existentialism focuses on freedom and self-making, and insertion into the world [Le Poidevin] |
| 15822 | The concept of physical necessity is basic to both causation, and to the concept of nature [Chisholm] |
| 22927 | The logical properties of causation are asymmetry, transitivity and irreflexivity [Le Poidevin] |
| 15823 | Some propose a distinct 'agent causation', as well as 'event causation' [Chisholm] |
| 3445 | Causation among objects relates either events or states [Chisholm] |
| 15820 | A 'law of nature' is just something which is physically necessary [Chisholm] |
| 17708 | Maybe space has points, but processes always need regions with a size [Mares] |
| 22922 | We can identify unoccupied points in space, so they must exist [Le Poidevin] |
| 22924 | If spatial points exist, then they must be stationary, by definition [Le Poidevin] |
| 22923 | Absolute space explains actual and potential positions, and geometrical truths [Le Poidevin] |
| 22928 | For relationists moving an object beyond the edge of space creates new space [Le Poidevin] |
| 22931 | We distinguish time from space, because it passes, and it has a unique present moment [Le Poidevin] |
| 22921 | Temporal vacuums would be unexperienced, unmeasured, and unending [Le Poidevin] |
| 22917 | Since nothing occurs in a temporal vacuum, there is no way to measure its length [Le Poidevin] |
| 15195 | If the future is not real, we don't seem to have any obligation to future individuals [Le Poidevin] |
| 15188 | If things don't persist through time, then change makes no sense [Le Poidevin] |
| 22934 | Time can't speed up or slow down, so it doesn't seem to be a 'process' [Le Poidevin] |
| 15191 | At the very least, minds themselves seem to be tensed [Le Poidevin] |
| 15197 | Fiction seems to lack a tensed perspective, and offers an example of tenseless language [Le Poidevin] |
| 15206 | It is the view of the future that really decides between tensed and tenseless views of time [Le Poidevin] |
| 15198 | In the B-series, time-positions are unchanging; in the A-series they change (from future to present to past) [Le Poidevin] |
| 15189 | Things which have ceased change their A-series position; things that persist change their B-series position [Le Poidevin] |
| 6865 | A-theory says past, present, future and flow exist; B-theory says this just reports our perspective [Le Poidevin] |
| 15187 | It is claimed that the tense view entails the unreality of both future and past [Le Poidevin] |
| 15205 | Tensed theorists typically try to reduce the tenseless to the tensed [Le Poidevin] |
| 15192 | We share a common now, but not a common here [Le Poidevin] |
| 22939 | The B-series doesn't seem to allow change [Le Poidevin] |
| 22940 | If the B-universe is eternal, why am I trapped in a changing moment of it? [Le Poidevin] |
| 15193 | The new tenseless theory offers indexical truth-conditions, instead of a reductive analysis [Le Poidevin] |
| 22938 | To say that the past causes the present needs them both to be equally real [Le Poidevin] |
| 22947 | An ordered series can be undirected, but time favours moving from earlier to later [Le Poidevin] |
| 22952 | If time's arrow is causal, how can there be non-simultaneous events that are causally unconnected? [Le Poidevin] |
| 22953 | Time's arrow is not causal if there is no temporal gap between cause and effect [Le Poidevin] |
| 22951 | If time's arrow is psychological then different minds can impose different orders on events [Le Poidevin] |
| 22948 | There are Thermodynamic, Psychological and Causal arrows of time [Le Poidevin] |
| 22949 | Presumably if time's arrow is thermodynamic then time ends when entropy is complete [Le Poidevin] |
| 22950 | If time is thermodynamic then entropy is necessary - but the theory says it is probable [Le Poidevin] |
| 22943 | Instantaneous motion is an intrinsic disposition to be elsewhere [Le Poidevin] |
| 22945 | The dynamic view of motion says it is primitive, and not reducible to objects, properties and times [Le Poidevin] |
| 22937 | If the present could have diverse pasts, then past truths can't have present truthmakers [Le Poidevin] |
| 22925 | The present is the past/future boundary, so the first moment of time was not present [Le Poidevin] |
| 22944 | The primitive parts of time are intervals, not instants [Le Poidevin] |
| 22942 | If time is infinitely divisible, then the present must be infinitely short [Le Poidevin] |
| 22946 | The multiverse is distinct time-series, as well as spaces [Le Poidevin] |
| 15196 | God being inside or outside of time both raise a group of difficult problems [Le Poidevin] |
| 22941 | How could a timeless God know what time it is? So could God be both timeless and omniscient? [Le Poidevin] |