Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'On Minerals', 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' and 'Existence and Quantification'

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22 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 2. Possibility of Metaphysics
13939 No possible evidence could decide the reality of numbers, so it is a pseudo-question [Carnap]
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 1. Modal Logic
5745 Quine says quantified modal logic creates nonsense, bad ontology, and false essentialism [Melia on Quine]
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 7. Second-Order Logic
8789 Various strategies try to deal with the ontological commitments of second-order logic [Hale/Wright on Quine]
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 6. Logicism / a. Early logicism
13936 Questions about numbers are answered by analysis, and are analytic, and hence logically true [Carnap]
8748 Logical positivists incorporated geometry into logicism, saying axioms are just definitions [Carnap, by Shapiro]
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / b. Being and existence
16966 Philosophers tend to distinguish broad 'being' from narrower 'existence' - but I reject that [Quine]
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 4. Abstract Existence
8960 Internal questions about abstractions are trivial, and external ones deeply problematic [Carnap, by Szabó]
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 6. Criterion for Existence
16965 All we have of general existence is what existential quantifiers express [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 1. Ontologies
13933 Existence questions are 'internal' (within a framework) or 'external' (concerning the whole framework) [Carnap]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 3. Reality
13934 To be 'real' is to be an element of a system, so we cannot ask reality questions about the system itself [Carnap]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / a. Ontological commitment
13938 A linguistic framework involves commitment to entities, so only commitment to the framework is in question [Carnap]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / b. Commitment of quantifiers
16963 Existence is implied by the quantifiers, not by the constants [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / c. Commitment of predicates
16964 Theories are committed to objects of which some of its predicates must be true [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / d. Commitment of theories
4216 Express a theory in first-order predicate logic; its ontology is the types of bound variable needed for truth [Quine, by Lowe]
18966 Ontological commitment of theories only arise if they are classically quantified [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / e. Ontological commitment problems
14490 You can be implicitly committed to something without quantifying over it [Thomasson on Quine]
7. Existence / E. Categories / 1. Categories
16961 In formal terms, a category is the range of some style of variables [Quine]
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 6. Nihilism about Objects
13935 We only accept 'things' within a language with formation, testing and acceptance rules [Carnap]
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 2. Hylomorphism / a. Hylomorphism
16756 Substantial forms must exist, to explain the stability of metals like silver and tin [Albertus Magnus]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism
13932 Empiricists tend to reject abstract entities, and to feel sympathy with nominalism [Carnap]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 3. Pragmatism
13937 New linguistic claims about entities are not true or false, but just expedient, fruitful or successful [Carnap]
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 3. Instrumentalism
13940 All linguistic forms in science are merely judged by their efficiency as instruments [Carnap]