108 ideas
| 6123 | Empirical investigation can't discover if holes exist, or if two things share a colour [Merricks] |
| 19215 | Arguers often turn the opponent's modus ponens into their own modus tollens [Merricks] |
| 14415 | A ground must be about its truth, and not just necessitate it [Merricks] |
| 14408 | Truthmaker needs truths to be 'about' something, and that is often unclear [Merricks] |
| 14395 | If a ball changes from red to white, Truthmaker says some thing must make the change true [Merricks] |
| 14398 | Truthmaker says if an entity is removed, some nonexistence truthmaker must replace it [Merricks] |
| 14403 | If Truthmaker says each truth is made by the existence of something, the theory had de re modality at is core [Merricks] |
| 14397 | Truthmaker demands not just a predication, but an existing state of affairs with essential ingredients [Merricks] |
| 14396 | If 'truth supervenes on being', worlds with the same entities, properties and relations have the same truths [Merricks] |
| 14400 | If truth supervenes on being, that won't explain why truth depends on being [Merricks] |
| 14394 | It is implausible that claims about non-existence are about existing things [Merricks] |
| 14390 | Truthmaker isn't the correspondence theory, because it offers no analysis of truth [Merricks] |
| 14412 | Speculations about non-existent things are not about existent things, so Truthmaker is false [Merricks] |
| 14414 | I am a truthmaker for 'that a human exists', but is it about me? [Merricks] |
| 12442 | 'Mickey Mouse is a fictional mouse' is true without a truthmaker [Azzouni] |
| 14418 | Being true is not a relation, it is a primitive monadic property [Merricks] |
| 14391 | If the correspondence theory is right, then necessary truths must correspond to something [Merricks] |
| 19205 | 'Snow is white' only contingently expresses the proposition that snow is white [Merricks] |
| 12439 | Truth is dispensable, by replacing truth claims with the sentence itself [Azzouni] |
| 14419 | Deflationism just says there is no property of being truth [Merricks] |
| 12437 | Truth lets us assent to sentences we can't explicitly exhibit [Azzouni] |
| 19209 | Simple Quantified Modal Logc doesn't work, because the Converse Barcan is a theorem [Merricks] |
| 19208 | The Converse Barcan implies 'everything exists necessarily' is a consequence of 'necessarily, everything exists' [Merricks] |
| 9038 | We must distinguish what the speaker denotes by a name, from what the name denotes [Evans] |
| 5824 | How can an expression be a name, if names can change their denotation? [Evans] |
| 9042 | A private intention won't give a name a denotation; the practice needs it to be made public [Evans] |
| 9041 | The Causal Theory of Names is wrong, since the name 'Madagascar' actually changed denotation [Evans] |
| 12446 | Names function the same way, even if there is no object [Azzouni] |
| 19207 | Sentence logic maps truth values; predicate logic maps objects and sets [Merricks] |
| 14393 | The totality state is the most plausible truthmaker for negative existential truths [Merricks] |
| 12447 | That all existents have causal powers is unknowable; the claim is simply an epistemic one [Azzouni] |
| 6143 | Prolonged events don't seem to endure or exist at any particular time [Merricks] |
| 12445 | If fictional objects really don't exist, then they aren't abstract objects [Azzouni] |
| 16129 | Evans argues (falsely!) that a contradiction follows from treating objects as vague [Evans, by Lowe] |
| 16459 | Is it coherent that reality is vague, identities can be vague, and objects can have fuzzy boundaries? [Evans] |
| 16460 | Evans assumes there can be vague identity statements, and that his proof cannot be right [Evans, by Lewis] |
| 16457 | There clearly are vague identity statements, and Evans's argument has a false conclusion [Evans, by Lewis] |
| 6135 | A crumbling statue can't become vague, because vagueness is incoherent [Merricks] |
| 12449 | Modern metaphysics often derives ontology from the logical forms of sentences [Azzouni] |
| 12440 | If objectual quantifiers ontologically commit, so does the metalanguage for its semantics [Azzouni] |
| 12438 | In the vernacular there is no unequivocal ontological commitment [Azzouni] |
| 12441 | We only get ontology from semantics if we have already smuggled it in [Azzouni] |
| 14413 | Some properties seem to be primitive, but others can be analysed [Merricks] |
| 6145 | Intrinsic properties are those an object still has even if only that object exists [Merricks] |
| 14416 | An object can have a disposition when the revelant conditional is false [Merricks] |
| 6124 | I say that most of the objects of folk ontology do not exist [Merricks] |
| 6134 | Is swimming pool water an object, composed of its mass or parts? [Merricks] |
| 14392 | Fregeans say 'hobbits do not exist' is just 'being a hobbit' is not exemplified [Merricks] |
| 12448 | Things that don't exist don't have any properties [Azzouni] |
| 6125 | We can eliminate objects without a commitment to simples [Merricks] |
| 14229 | Merricks agrees that there are no composite objects, but offers a different semantics [Merricks, by Liggins] |
| 6142 | The 'folk' way of carving up the world is not intrinsically better than quite arbitrary ways [Merricks] |
| 14472 | If atoms 'arranged baseballwise' break a window, that analytically entails that a baseball did it [Merricks, by Thomasson] |
| 14469 | Overdetermination: the atoms do all the causing, so the baseball causes no breakage [Merricks] |
| 6137 | Clay does not 'constitute' a statue, as they have different persistence conditions (flaking, squashing) [Merricks] |
| 14484 | If a=b is indeterminate, then a=/=b, and so there cannot be indeterminate identity [Evans, by Thomasson] |
| 6127 | 'Unrestricted composition' says any two things can make up a third thing [Merricks] |
| 6131 | Composition as identity is false, as identity is never between a single thing and many things [Merricks] |
| 6132 | Composition as identity is false, as it implies that things never change their parts [Merricks] |
| 6141 | There is no visible difference between statues, and atoms arranged statuewise [Merricks] |
| 6130 | 'Composition' says things are their parts; 'constitution' says a whole substance is an object [Merricks] |
| 6138 | It seems wrong that constitution entails that two objects are wholly co-located [Merricks] |
| 6128 | Objects decompose (it seems) into non-overlapping parts that fill its whole region [Merricks] |
| 14410 | You believe you existed last year, but your segment doesn't, so they have different beliefs [Merricks] |
| 19214 | In twinning, one person has the same origin as another person [Merricks] |
| 6136 | Eliminativism about objects gives the best understanding of the Sorites paradox [Merricks] |
| 16224 | There can't be vague identity; a and b must differ, since a, unlike b, is only vaguely the same as b [Evans, by PG] |
| 14895 | 'Superficial' contingency: false in some world; 'Deep' contingency: no obvious verification [Evans, by Macià/Garcia-Carpentiro] |
| 14417 | Counterfactuals aren't about actuality, so they lack truthmakers or a supervenience base [Merricks] |
| 11881 | Rigid designators can be meaningful even if empty [Evans, by Mackie,P] |
| 6133 | If my counterpart is happy, that is irrelevant to whether I 'could' have been happy [Merricks] |
| 14402 | If 'Fido is possibly black' depends on Fido's counterparts, then it has no actual truthmaker [Merricks] |
| 7639 | The Homunculus Fallacy explains a subject perceiving objects by repeating the problem internally [Evans] |
| 12580 | Experiences have no conceptual content [Evans, by Greco] |
| 7643 | We have far fewer colour concepts than we have discriminations of colour [Evans] |
| 6150 | The 'warrant' for a belief is what turns a true belief into knowledge [Merricks] |
| 6144 | You hold a child in your arms, so it is not mental substance, or mental state, or software [Merricks] |
| 6140 | Maybe the word 'I' can only refer to persons [Merricks] |
| 6149 | Free will and determinism are incompatible, since determinism destroys human choice [Merricks] |
| 6148 | Human organisms can exercise downward causation [Merricks] |
| 23794 | Some representational states, like perception, may be nonconceptual [Evans, by Schulte] |
| 6146 | Before Creation it is assumed that God still had many many mental properties [Merricks] |
| 6147 | The hypothesis of solipsism doesn't seem to be made incoherent by the nature of mental properties [Merricks] |
| 16366 | The Generality Constraint says if you can think a predicate you can apply it to anything [Evans] |
| 12575 | Concepts have a 'Generality Constraint', that we must know how predicates apply to them [Evans, by Peacocke] |
| 19217 | I don't accept that if a proposition is directly about an entity, it has a relation to the entity [Merricks] |
| 19203 | A sentence's truth conditions depend on context [Merricks] |
| 5825 | Speakers intend to refer to items that are the source of their information [Evans] |
| 5823 | The intended referent of a name needs to be the cause of the speaker's information about it [Evans] |
| 9039 | If descriptions are sufficient for reference, then I must accept a false reference if the descriptions fit [Evans] |
| 19200 | Propositions are standardly treated as possible worlds, or as structured [Merricks] |
| 19206 | 'Cicero is an orator' represents the same situation as 'Tully is an orator', so they are one proposition [Merricks] |
| 19202 | Propositions are necessary existents which essentially (but inexplicably) represent things [Merricks] |
| 19204 | True propositions existed prior to their being thought, and might never be thought [Merricks] |
| 19210 | The standard view of propositions says they never change their truth-value [Merricks] |
| 19201 | Propositions can be 'about' an entity, but that doesn't make the entity a constituent of it [Merricks] |
| 19211 | Early Russell says a proposition is identical with its truthmaking state of affairs [Merricks] |
| 19212 | Unity of the proposition questions: what unites them? can the same constituents make different ones? [Merricks] |
| 19213 | We want to explain not just what unites the constituents, but what unites them into a proposition [Merricks] |
| 9043 | We use expressions 'deferentially', to conform to the use of other people [Evans] |
| 9040 | Charity should minimize inexplicable error, rather than maximising true beliefs [Evans] |
| 17960 | Eternalism says all times are equally real, and future and past objects and properties are real [Merricks] |
| 17961 | Growing block has a subjective present and a growing edge - but these could come apart [Merricks, by PG] |
| 14411 | Maybe only presentism allows change, by now having a property, and then lacking it [Merricks] |
| 14406 | Presentists say that things have existed and will exist, not that they are instantaneous [Merricks] |
| 14407 | Presentist should deny there is a present time, and just say that things 'exist' [Merricks] |
| 14405 | How can a presentist explain an object's having existed? [Merricks] |
| 12450 | The periodic table not only defines the elements, but also excludes other possible elements [Azzouni] |