116 ideas
6887 | Linguistic philosophy approaches problems by attending to actual linguistic usage [Mautner] |
6881 | Analytic philosophy studies the unimportant, and sharpens tools instead of using them [Mautner] |
6123 | Empirical investigation can't discover if holes exist, or if two things share a colour [Merricks] |
5439 | The 'hermeneutic circle' says parts and wholes are interdependent, and so cannot be interpreted [Mautner] |
9959 | 'Real' definitions give the essential properties of things under a concept [Mautner] |
15957 | Essential definitions show the differences that discriminate things, and make them what they are [Boyle] |
9961 | 'Contextual definitions' replace whole statements, not just expressions [Mautner] |
9958 | Recursive definition defines each instance from a previous instance [Mautner] |
9960 | A stipulative definition lays down that an expression is to have a certain meaning [Mautner] |
9957 | Ostensive definitions point to an object which an expression denotes [Mautner] |
19215 | Arguers often turn the opponent's modus ponens into their own modus tollens [Merricks] |
6219 | The fallacy of composition is the assumption that what is true of the parts is true of the whole [Mautner] |
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] |
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] |
6888 | Fuzzy logic is based on the notion that there can be membership of a set to some degree [Mautner] |
6877 | Entailment is logical requirement; it may be not(p and not-q), but that has problems [Mautner] |
6880 | Strict implication says false propositions imply everything, and everything implies true propositions [Mautner] |
6879 | 'Material implication' is defined as 'not(p and not-q)', but seems to imply a connection between p and q [Mautner] |
6878 | A person who 'infers' draws the conclusion, but a person who 'implies' leaves it to the audience [Mautner] |
6889 | Vagueness seems to be inconsistent with the view that every proposition is true or false [Mautner] |
6890 | Quantifiers turn an open sentence into one to which a truth-value can be assigned [Mautner] |
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] |
6143 | Prolonged events don't seem to endure or exist at any particular time [Merricks] |
6135 | A crumbling statue can't become vague, because vagueness is incoherent [Merricks] |
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] |
15965 | Boyle attacked a contemporary belief that powers were occult things [Boyle, by Alexander,P] |
16735 | In the 17th century, 'disposition' usually just means the spatial arrangement of parts [Boyle, by Pasnau] |
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] |
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] |
16034 | Form is not a separate substance, but just the manner, modification or 'stamp' of matter [Boyle] |
15953 | To cite a substantial form tells us what produced the effect, but not how it did it [Boyle] |
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] |
6882 | Counterfactuals presuppose a belief (or a fact) that the condition is false [Mautner] |
6886 | Counterfactuals are not true, they are merely valid [Mautner] |
6885 | Counterfactuals are true if in every world close to actual where p is the case, q is also the case [Mautner] |
6884 | Counterfactuals say 'If it had been, or were, p, then it would be q' [Mautner] |
6883 | Maybe counterfactuals are only true if they contain valid inference from premisses [Mautner] |
14417 | Counterfactuals aren't about actuality, so they lack truthmakers or a supervenience base [Merricks] |
5449 | Essentialism is often identified with belief in 'de re' necessary truths [Mautner] |
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] |
6898 | Fallibilism is the view that all knowledge-claims are provisional [Mautner] |
15962 | Boyle's term 'texture' is not something you feel, but is unobservable structures of particles [Boyle, by Alexander,P] |
15964 | Boyle's secondary qualities are not illusory, or 'in the mind' [Boyle, by Alexander,P] |
6452 | 'Sense-data' arrived in 1910, but it denotes ideas in Locke, Berkeley and Hume [Mautner] |
6150 | The 'warrant' for a belief is what turns a true belief into knowledge [Merricks] |
4783 | Observing lots of green x can confirm 'all x are green' or 'all x are grue', where 'grue' is arbitrary [Mautner, by PG] |
4782 | 'All x are y' is equivalent to 'all non-y are non-x', so observing paper is white confirms 'ravens are black' [Mautner, by PG] |
16736 | Explanation is generally to deduce it from something better known, which comes in degrees [Boyle] |
15960 | Explanation is deducing a phenomenon from some nature better known to us [Boyle] |
16737 | The best explanations get down to primary basics, but others go less deep [Boyle] |
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] |
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] |
6899 | The references of indexicals ('there', 'now', 'I') depend on the circumstances of utterance [Mautner] |
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] |
6896 | Double effect is the distinction between what is foreseen and what is intended [Mautner] |
6897 | Double effect acts need goodness, unintended evil, good not caused by evil, and outweighing [Mautner] |
5452 | 'Essentialism' is opposed to existentialism, and claims there is a human nature [Mautner] |
15952 | The corpuscles just have shape, size and motion, which explains things without 'sympathies' or 'forces' [Boyle, by Alexander,P] |
15972 | The corpuscular theory allows motion, but does not include forces between the particles [Boyle, by Alexander,P] |
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] |
15961 | I don't see how mere moving matter can lead to the bodies of men and animals, and especially their seeds [Boyle] |