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Ideas of José A. Benardete, by Text

[American, fl. 1992, Taught at Syracuse University.]

1989 Metaphysics: the logical approach
After p.202 Metaphysics focuses on Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism
Ch. 2 p.15 Why should packed-together particles be a thing (Mt Everest), but not scattered ones?
Ch. 4 p.20 The clearest a priori knowledge is proving non-existence through contradiction
Ch. 4 p.21 In the ontological argument a full understanding of the concept of God implies a contradiction in 'There is no God'
Ch. 6 p.34 If a soldier continues to exist after serving as a soldier, does the wind cease to exist after it ceases to blow?
Ch. 6 p.36 If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist
Ch. 6 p.36 Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns
Ch. 7 p.44 There are the 'is' of predication (a function), the 'is' of identity (equals), and the 'is' of existence (quantifier)
Ch. 8 p.50 Absolutists might accept that to exist is relative, but relative to what? How about relative to itself?
Ch.11 p.70 Maybe self-identity isn't existence, if Pegasus can be self-identical but non-existent
Ch.13 p.89 Set theory attempts to reduce the 'is' of predication to mathematics
Ch.13 p.90 The set of Greeks is included in the set of men, but isn't a member of it
Ch.13 p.94 Presumably the statements of science are true, but should they be taken literally or not?
Ch.14 p.99 Negatives, rationals, irrationals and imaginaries are all postulated to solve baffling equations
Ch.15 p.109 Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic
Ch.16 p.119 Rationalists see points as fundamental, but empiricists prefer regions
Ch.17 p.124 The standard Z-F Intuition version of set theory has about ten agreed axioms [PG]
Ch.17 p.130 Natural numbers are seen in terms of either their ordinality (Peano), or cardinality (set theory)
Ch.18 p.131 Logical positivism amounts to no more than 'there is no synthetic a priori'
Ch.18 p.135 Assertions about existence beyond experience can only be a priori synthetic
Ch.18 p.136 Appeals to intuition seem to imply synthetic a priori knowledge
Ch.18 p.139 If we know truths about prime numbers, we seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge of Platonic objects
Ch.20 p.146 Could a horse lose the essential property of being a horse, and yet continue to exist?
Ch.21 p.156 One can step into the same river twice, but not into the same water
Ch.22 p.172 Analytical philosophy analyses separate concepts successfully, but lacks a synoptic vision of the results
Ch.22 p.174 If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them?