5 ideas
| 19494 | Fictionalism allows that simulated beliefs may be tracking real facts [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: The fictionalist offers the option that your simulated beliefs and assertions may be tracking a realm of genuine facts, or a realm of what you take to be facts. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Go Figure: a Path through Fictionalism [2001], 13) | |
| A reaction: This means that fictionalism does not have to be an error theory. That is, we aren't mistakenly believing something that we actually made up. Instead we are sensibly believing something we know to be not literally true. Love it. |
| 19493 | Governing possible worlds theory is the fiction that if something is possible, it happens in a world [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: The governing fiction of possible worlds theory says that whenever something is possible, there is a world where it happens. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Go Figure: a Path through Fictionalism [2001], 05) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the only sensible attitude to possible worlds I can think of. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |
| 7482 | Resurrection developed in Judaism as a response to martyrdoms, in about 160 BCE [Anon (Dan), by Watson] |
| Full Idea: The idea of resurrection in Judaism seems to have first developed around 160 BCE, during the time of religious martyrdom, and as a response to it (the martyrs were surely not dying forever?). It is first mentioned in the book of Daniel. | |
| From: report of Anon (Dan) (27: Book of Daniel [c.165 BCE], Ch.7) by Peter Watson - Ideas | |
| A reaction: Idea 7473 suggests that Zoroaster beat them to it by 800 years. |