47 ideas
| 14721 | Metaphysical enquiry can survive if its conclusions are tentative [Sider] |
| 10653 | Maybe set theory need not be well-founded [Varzi] |
| 10648 | Mereology need not be nominalist, though it is often taken to be so [Varzi] |
| 10655 | Are there mereological atoms, and are all objects made of them? [Varzi] |
| 10659 | There is something of which everything is part, but no null-thing which is part of everything [Varzi] |
| 14187 | If logic is topic-neutral that means it delves into all subjects, rather than having a pure subject matter [Read] |
| 14188 | Not all arguments are valid because of form; validity is just true premises and false conclusion being impossible [Read] |
| 14182 | If the logic of 'taller of' rests just on meaning, then logic may be the study of merely formal consequence [Read] |
| 14183 | Maybe arguments are only valid when suppressed premises are all stated - but why? [Read] |
| 14184 | In modus ponens the 'if-then' premise contributes nothing if the conclusion follows anyway [Read] |
| 14186 | Logical connectives contain no information, but just record combination relations between facts [Read] |
| 14760 | Four-dimensionalism sees things and processes as belonging in the same category [Sider] |
| 14194 | Proper ontology should only use categorical (actual) properties, not hypothetical ones [Sider] |
| 14745 | If sortal terms fix the kind and the persistence conditions, we need to know what kinds there are [Sider] |
| 14740 | If Tib is all of Tibbles bar her tail, when Tibbles loses her tail, two different things become one [Sider] |
| 14752 | Artists 'create' statues because they are essentially statues, and so lack identity with the lump of clay [Sider] |
| 14743 | The stage view of objects is best for dealing with coincident entities [Sider] |
| 10661 | 'Composition is identity' says multitudes are the reality, loosely composing single things [Varzi] |
| 14747 | 'Composition as identity' says that an object just is the objects which compose it [Sider] |
| 10647 | Parts may or may not be attached, demarcated, arbitrary, material, extended, spatial or temporal [Varzi] |
| 10651 | If 'part' is reflexive, then identity is a limit case of parthood [Varzi] |
| 10649 | 'Part' stands for a reflexive, antisymmetric and transitive relation [Varzi] |
| 10654 | The parthood relation will help to define at least seven basic predicates [Varzi] |
| 10658 | Sameness of parts won't guarantee identity if their arrangement matters [Varzi] |
| 14757 | Mereological essentialism says an object's parts are necessary for its existence [Sider] |
| 14727 | Three-dimensionalists assert 'enduring', being wholly present at each moment, and deny 'temporal parts' [Sider] |
| 14738 | Some might say that its inconsistency with time travel is a reason to favour three-dimensionalism [Sider] |
| 14726 | Four-dimensionalists assert 'temporal parts', 'perduring', and being spread out over time [Sider] |
| 14728 | 4D says intrinsic change is difference between successive parts [Sider] |
| 14729 | 4D says each spatiotemporal object must have a temporal part at every moment at which it exists [Sider] |
| 14730 | Temporal parts exist, but are not prior building blocks for objects [Sider] |
| 14731 | Temporal parts are instantaneous [Sider] |
| 14758 | How can an instantaneous stage believe anything, if beliefs take time? [Sider] |
| 14762 | Four-dimensionalism says temporal parts are caused (through laws of motion) by previous temporal parts [Sider] |
| 14741 | The ship undergoes 'asymmetric' fission, where one candidate is seen as stronger [Sider] |
| 14754 | If you say Leibniz's Law doesn't apply to 'timebound' properties, you are no longer discussing identity [Sider] |
| 14185 | Conditionals are just a shorthand for some proof, leaving out the details [Read] |
| 10652 | Conceivability may indicate possibility, but literary fantasy does not [Varzi] |
| 14763 | Counterparts rest on similarity, so there are many such relations in different contexts [Sider] |
| 14725 | Maybe motion is a dynamical quantity intrinsic to a thing at a particular time [Sider] |
| 14735 | Space is 3D and lacks a direction; time seems connected to causation [Sider] |
| 14722 | Between presentism and eternalism is the 'growing block' view - the past is real, the future is not [Sider] |
| 14724 | Presentists must deny truths about multiple times [Sider] |
| 14756 | For Presentists there must always be a temporal vantage point for any description [Sider] |
| 14723 | Talk using tenses can be eliminated, by reducing it to indexical connections for an utterance [Sider] |
| 14736 | The B-theory is adequate, except that it omits to say which time is present [Sider] |
| 14734 | The B-series involves eternalism, and the reduction of tense [Sider] |