136 ideas
17651 | Without words or other symbols, we have no world [Goodman] |
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] |
17652 | Truth is irrelevant if no statements are involved [Goodman] |
18996 | A statement S is 'partly true' if it has some wholly true parts [Yablo] |
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] |
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] |
14419 | Deflationism just says there is no property of being truth [Merricks] |
19006 | An 'enthymeme' is an argument with an indispensable unstated assumption [Yablo] |
19209 | Simple Quantified Modal Logc doesn't work, because the Converse Barcan is a theorem [Merricks] |
8859 | The main modal logics disagree over three key formulae [Yablo] |
19208 | The Converse Barcan implies 'everything exists necessarily' is a consequence of 'necessarily, everything exists' [Merricks] |
15510 | Classes are a host of ethereal, platonic, pseudo entities [Goodman] |
9920 | Two objects can apparently make up quite distinct arrangements in sets [Goodman, by Burgess/Rosen] |
10657 | The counties of Utah, and the state, and its acres, are in no way different [Goodman] |
18999 | y is only a proper part of x if there is a z which 'makes up the difference' between them [Yablo] |
12394 | If the result is bad, we change the rule; if we like the rule, we reject the result [Goodman] |
19001 | 'Pegasus doesn't exist' is false without Pegasus, yet the absence of Pegasus is its truthmaker [Yablo] |
19207 | Sentence logic maps truth values; predicate logic maps objects and sets [Merricks] |
9138 | An infinite series of sentences asserting falsehood produces the paradox without self-reference [Yablo, by Sorensen] |
8865 | If 'the number of Democrats is on the rise', does that mean that 50 million is on the rise? [Yablo] |
19002 | A nominalist can assert statements about mathematical objects, as being partly true [Yablo] |
8863 | We must treat numbers as existing in order to express ourselves about the arrangement of planets [Yablo] |
10580 | Mathematics is both necessary and a priori because it really consists of logical truths [Yablo] |
8862 | Platonic objects are really created as existential metaphors [Yablo] |
10579 | Putting numbers in quantifiable position (rather than many quantifiers) makes expression easier [Yablo] |
14393 | The totality state is the most plausible truthmaker for negative existential truths [Merricks] |
6143 | Prolonged events don't seem to endure or exist at any particular time [Merricks] |
17656 | Being primitive or prior always depends on a constructional system [Goodman] |
17661 | We don't recognise patterns - we invent them [Goodman] |
10577 | Concrete objects have few essential properties, but properties of abstractions are mostly essential [Yablo] |
10578 | We are thought to know concreta a posteriori, and many abstracta a priori [Yablo] |
17659 | Reality is largely a matter of habit [Goodman] |
17657 | We build our world, and ignore anything that won't fit [Goodman] |
19489 | For me, fictions are internally true, without a significant internal or external truth-value [Yablo] |
19490 | Make-believe can help us to reason about facts and scientific procedures [Yablo] |
19491 | 'The clouds are angry' can only mean '...if one were attributing emotions to clouds' [Yablo] |
8864 | We quantify over events, worlds, etc. in order to make logical possibilities clearer [Yablo] |
19494 | Fictionalism allows that simulated beliefs may be tracking real facts [Yablo] |
6135 | A crumbling statue can't become vague, because vagueness is incoherent [Merricks] |
17654 | A world can be full of variety or not, depending on how we sort it [Goodman] |
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] |
14292 | Dispositions seem more ethereal than behaviour; a non-occult account of them would be nice [Goodman] |
14416 | An object can have a disposition when the revelant conditional is false [Merricks] |
8858 | Philosophers keep finding unexpected objects, like models, worlds, functions, numbers, events, sets, properties [Yablo] |
7956 | If all and only red things were round things, we would need to specify the 'respect' of the resemblance [Goodman, by Macdonald,C] |
7957 | Without respects of resemblance, we would collect blue book, blue pen, red pen, red clock together [Goodman, by Macdonald,C] |
7952 | If we apply the same word to different things, it is only because we are willing to do so [Goodman, by Macdonald,C] |
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] |
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] |
14381 | A statue is essentially the statue, but its lump is not essentially a statue, so statue isn't lump [Yablo, by Rocca] |
6137 | Clay does not 'constitute' a statue, as they have different persistence conditions (flaking, squashing) [Merricks] |
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] |
18998 | Parthood lacks the restriction of kind which most relations have [Yablo] |
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] |
17653 | Things can only be judged the 'same' by citing some respect of sameness [Goodman] |
12191 | Counterfactuals are true if logical or natural laws imply the consequence [Goodman, by McFetridge] |
14417 | Counterfactuals aren't about actuality, so they lack truthmakers or a supervenience base [Merricks] |
19493 | Governing possible worlds theory is the fiction that if something is possible, it happens in a world [Yablo] |
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] |
6150 | The 'warrant' for a belief is what turns a true belief into knowledge [Merricks] |
19004 | Gettier says you don't know if you are confused about how it is true [Yablo] |
17660 | Discovery is often just finding a fit, like a jigsaw puzzle [Goodman] |
19007 | A theory need not be true to be good; it should just be true about its physical aspects [Yablo] |
17658 | Users of digital thermometers recognise no temperatures in the gaps [Goodman] |
17650 | We lack frames of reference to transform physics, biology and psychology into one another [Goodman] |
18749 | Goodman argued that the confirmation relation can never be formalised [Goodman, by Horsten/Pettigrew] |
17646 | Goodman showed that every sound inductive argument has an unsound one of the same form [Goodman, by Putnam] |
17655 | Grue and green won't be in the same world, as that would block induction entirely [Goodman] |
18993 | If sentences point to different evidence, they must have different subject-matter [Yablo] |
19003 | Most people say nonblack nonravens do confirm 'all ravens are black', but only a tiny bit [Yablo] |
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] |
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] |
10805 | A sentence should be recarved to reveal its content or implication relations [Yablo] |
19217 | I don't accept that if a proposition is directly about an entity, it has a relation to the entity [Merricks] |
18992 | Sentence-meaning is the truth-conditions - plus factors responsible for them [Yablo] |
19203 | A sentence's truth conditions depend on context [Merricks] |
18994 | The content of an assertion can be quite different from compositional content [Yablo] |
18997 | Truth-conditions as subject-matter has problems of relevance, short cut, and reversal [Yablo] |
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] |
19005 | Not-A is too strong to just erase an improper assertion, because it actually reverses A [Yablo] |
8861 | Hardly a word in the language is devoid of metaphorical potential [Yablo] |
20440 | Art is a referential activity, hence indefinable, but it has a set of symptoms [Goodman] |
20439 | Artistic symbols are judged by the fruitfulness of their classifications [Goodman, by Giovannelli] |
8113 | Art is like understanding a natural language, and needs a grasp of a symbol system [Goodman, by Gardner] |
20438 | A performance is only an instance of a work if there is not a single error [Goodman] |
20437 | A copy only becomes an 'instance' of an artwork if there is a system of notation [Goodman] |
17649 | If the world is one it has many aspects, and if there are many worlds they will collect into one [Goodman] |
4794 | We don't use laws to make predictions, we call things laws if we make predictions with them [Goodman] |
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] |
14407 | Presentist should deny there is a present time, and just say that things 'exist' [Merricks] |
14406 | Presentists say that things have existed and will exist, not that they are instantaneous [Merricks] |
14405 | How can a presentist explain an object's having existed? [Merricks] |