96 ideas
| 6979 | Serious metaphysics cares about entailment between sentences [Jackson] |
| 6980 | Conceptual analysis studies whether one story is made true by another story [Jackson] |
| 6983 | Intuitions about possibilities are basic to conceptual analysis [Jackson] |
| 14707 | Conceptual analysis is needed to establish that metaphysical reductions respect original meanings [Jackson, by Schroeter] |
| 23123 | Basic to human culture are binary oppositions, such as eating raw or cooked [Levi-Strauss, by Green,TH] |
| 15787 | Maybe Ockham's Razor is a purely aesthetic principle [Lycan] |
| 15784 | The Razor seems irrelevant for Meinongians, who allow absolutely everything to exist [Lycan] |
| 7005 | Something can only have a place in a preferred account of things if it is entailed by the account [Jackson] |
| 6994 | Truth supervenes on being [Jackson] |
| 6548 | Physicalism requires the naturalisation or rejection of set theory [Lycan] |
| 14352 | '¬', '&', and 'v' are truth functions: the truth of the compound is fixed by the truth of the components [Jackson] |
| 7755 | Singular terms refer, using proper names, definite descriptions, singular personal pronouns, demonstratives, etc. [Lycan] |
| 6984 | Smooth reductions preserve high-level laws in the lower level [Jackson] |
| 6531 | Institutions are not reducible as types, but they are as tokens [Lycan] |
| 6532 | Types cannot be reduced, but levels of reduction are varied groupings of the same tokens [Lycan] |
| 6534 | One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan] |
| 5500 | Biologists see many organic levels, 'abstract' if seen from below, 'structural' if seen from above [Lycan] |
| 6978 | Baldness is just hair distribution, but the former is indeterminate, unlike the latter [Jackson] |
| 6529 | I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics [Lycan] |
| 6993 | Redness is a property, but only as a presentation to normal humans [Jackson] |
| 8499 | Nominalists cannot translate 'red resembles pink more than blue' into particulars [Jackson] |
| 8500 | Colour resemblance isn't just resemblance between things; 'colour' must be mentioned [Jackson] |
| 15792 | Maybe non-existent objects are sets of properties [Lycan] |
| 14633 | How do we tell a table's being contingently plastic from its being essentially plastic? [Jackson] |
| 14635 | An x is essentially F if it is F in every possible world in which it appears [Jackson] |
| 14632 | Quine may have conflated de re and de dicto essentialism, but there is a real epistemological problem [Jackson] |
| 5494 | 'Lightning is electric discharge' and 'Phosphorus is Venus' are synthetic a posteriori identities [Lycan] |
| 6987 | We should not multiply senses of necessity beyond necessity [Jackson] |
| 14360 | Possible worlds for subjunctives (and dispositions), and no-truth for indicatives? [Jackson] |
| 14288 | 'If A,B' affirms that A⊃B, and also that this wouldn't change if A were certain [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| 13769 | Conditionals are truth-functional, but should only be asserted when they are confident [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| 13858 | The truth-functional account of conditionals is right, if the antecedent is really acceptable [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| 14289 | There are some assertable conditionals one would reject if one learned the antecedent [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| 14353 | Modus ponens requires that A→B is F when A is T and B is F [Jackson] |
| 14354 | When A and B have the same truth value, A→B is true, because A→A is a logical truth [Jackson] |
| 14355 | (A&B)→A is a logical truth, even if antecedent false and consequent true, so it is T if A is F and B is T [Jackson] |
| 14358 | In the possible worlds account of conditionals, modus ponens and modus tollens are validated [Jackson] |
| 14359 | Only assertions have truth-values, and conditionals are not proper assertions [Jackson] |
| 14357 | Possible worlds account, unlike A⊃B, says nothing about when A is false [Jackson] |
| 14356 | We can't insist that A is relevant to B, as conditionals can express lack of relevance [Jackson] |
| 14631 | How can you show the necessity of an a posteriori necessity, if it might turn out to be false? [Jackson] |
| 6988 | Mathematical sentences are a problem in a possible-worlds framework [Jackson] |
| 15795 | Treating possible worlds as mental needs more actual mental events [Lycan] |
| 15796 | Possible worlds must be made of intensional objects like propositions or properties [Lycan] |
| 6975 | Possible worlds could be concrete, abstract, universals, sentences, or properties [Jackson] |
| 15794 | If 'worlds' are sentences, and possibility their consistency, consistency may rely on possibility [Lycan] |
| 6549 | I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects [Lycan] |
| 6982 | Long arithmetic calculations show the a priori can be fallible [Jackson] |
| 6991 | We examine objects to determine colour; we do not introspect [Jackson] |
| 6543 | Intentionality comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| 6537 | Teleological views allow for false intentional content, unlike causal and nomological theories [Lycan] |
| 4894 | I say Mary does not have new knowledge, but knows an old fact in a new way [Perry on Jackson] |
| 4895 | Is it unfair that physicalist knowledge can be written down, but dualist knowledge can't be [Perry on Jackson] |
| 4886 | Mary knows all the physical facts of seeing red, but experiencing it is new knowledge [Jackson] |
| 6546 | Pain is composed of urges, desires, impulses etc, at different levels of abstraction [Lycan] |
| 6547 | The right 'level' for qualia is uncertain, though top (behaviourism) and bottom (particles) are false [Lycan] |
| 6527 | If energy in the brain disappears into thin air, this breaches physical conservation laws [Lycan] |
| 6528 | In lower animals, psychology is continuous with chemistry, and humans are continuous with animals [Lycan] |
| 6554 | Two behaviourists meet. The first says,"You're fine; how am I?" [Lycan] |
| 6545 | If functionalism focuses on folk psychology, it ignores lower levels of function [Lycan] |
| 6541 | Functionalism must not be too abstract to allow inverted spectrum, or so structural that it becomes chauvinistic [Lycan] |
| 5496 | Functionalism has three linked levels: physical, functional, and mental [Lycan] |
| 6539 | The distinction between software and hardware is not clear in computing [Lycan] |
| 6533 | Mental types are a subclass of teleological types at a high level of functional abstraction [Lycan] |
| 6535 | Teleological characterisations shade off smoothly into brutely physical ones [Lycan] |
| 5499 | A mental state is a functional realisation of a brain state when it serves the purpose of the organism [Lycan] |
| 6976 | In physicalism, the psychological depends on the physical, not the other way around [Jackson] |
| 6544 | Identity theory is functionalism, but located at the lowest level of abstraction [Lycan] |
| 6986 | Is the dependence of the psychological on the physical a priori or a posteriori? [Jackson] |
| 6530 | We reduce the mind through homuncular groups, described abstractly by purpose [Lycan] |
| 6536 | Teleological functionalism helps us to understand psycho-biological laws [Lycan] |
| 6992 | If different states can fulfil the same role, the converse must also be possible [Jackson] |
| 6542 | A Martian may exhibit human-like behaviour while having very different sensations [Lycan] |
| 7880 | If a blind persons suddenly sees a kestrel, that doesn't make visual and theoretical kestrels different [Papineau on Jackson] |
| 7378 | No one bothers to imagine what it would really be like to have ALL the physical information [Dennett on Jackson] |
| 7377 | Mary learns when she sees colour, so her complete physical information had missed something [Jackson] |
| 6996 | Folk psychology covers input, internal role, and output [Jackson] |
| 6977 | Egocentric or de se content seems to be irreducibly so [Jackson] |
| 6990 | Keep distinct the essential properties of water, and application conditions for the word 'water' [Jackson] |
| 6985 | Analysis is finding necessary and sufficient conditions by studying possible cases [Jackson] |
| 7768 | The truth conditions theory sees meaning as representation [Lycan] |
| 7766 | Meaning must be known before we can consider verification [Lycan] |
| 7764 | Could I successfully use an expression, without actually understanding it? [Lycan] |
| 7763 | It is hard to state a rule of use for a proper name [Lycan] |
| 6995 | Successful predication supervenes on nature [Jackson] |
| 6989 | I can understand "He has a beard", without identifying 'he', and hence the truth conditions [Jackson] |
| 7770 | Truth conditions will come out the same for sentences with 'renate' or 'cordate' [Lycan] |
| 7773 | A sentence's truth conditions is the set of possible worlds in which the sentence is true [Lycan] |
| 7774 | Possible worlds explain aspects of meaning neatly - entailment, for example, is the subset relation [Lycan] |
| 6998 | Folk morality does not clearly distinguish between doing and allowing [Jackson] |
| 6997 | Moral functionalism says moral terms get their meaning from their role in folk morality [Jackson] |
| 7000 | Which are prior - thin concepts like right, good, ought; or thick concepts like kindness, equity etc.? [Jackson] |
| 6999 | It is hard to justify the huge difference in our judgements of abortion and infanticide [Jackson] |
| 6538 | We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| 5501 | People are trying to explain biological teleology in naturalistic causal terms [Lycan] |
| 6551 | 'Physical' means either figuring in physics descriptions, or just located in space-time [Lycan] |