82 ideas
| 22270 | Frege changed philosophy by extending logic's ability to check the grounds of thinking [Potter on Frege] |
| 6779 | Instrumentalists say distinctions between observation and theory vanish with ostensive definition [Bird] |
| 8939 | We should not describe human laws of thought, but how to correctly track truth [Frege, by Fisher] |
| 4971 | I don't use 'subject' and 'predicate' in my way of representing a judgement [Frege] |
| 17745 | For Frege, 'All A's are B's' means that the concept A implies the concept B [Frege, by Walicki] |
| 7728 | Frege has a judgement stroke (vertical, asserting or judging) and a content stroke (horizontal, expressing) [Frege, by Weiner] |
| 16881 | The laws of logic are boundless, so we want the few whose power contains the others [Frege] |
| 7622 | In 1879 Frege developed second order logic [Frege, by Putnam] |
| 7729 | Frege replaced Aristotle's subject/predicate form with function/argument form [Frege, by Weiner] |
| 9950 | A quantifier is a second-level predicate (which explains how it contributes to truth-conditions) [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| 9991 | For Frege the variable ranges over all objects [Frege, by Tait] |
| 10536 | Frege's domain for variables is all objects, but modern interpretations first fix the domain [Dummett on Frege] |
| 7730 | Frege introduced quantifiers for generality [Frege, by Weiner] |
| 7742 | Frege reduced most quantifiers to 'everything' combined with 'not' [Frege, by McCullogh] |
| 13824 | Proof theory began with Frege's definition of derivability [Frege, by Prawitz] |
| 13609 | Frege produced axioms for logic, though that does not now seem the natural basis for logic [Frege, by Kaplan] |
| 17855 | It may be possible to define induction in terms of the ancestral relation [Frege, by Wright,C] |
| 10607 | Frege's logic has a hierarchy of object, property, property-of-property etc. [Frege, by Smith,P] |
| 11008 | Existence is not a first-order property, but the instantiation of a property [Frege, by Read] |
| 6780 | Anti-realism is more plausible about laws than about entities and theories [Bird] |
| 6796 | Subjective probability measures personal beliefs; objective probability measures the chance of an event happening [Bird] |
| 6797 | Objective probability of tails measures the bias of the coin, not our beliefs about it [Bird] |
| 6800 | Many philosophers rate justification as a more important concept than knowledge [Bird] |
| 6786 | As science investigates more phenomena, the theories it needs decreases [Bird] |
| 6792 | If theories need observation, and observations need theories, how do we start? [Bird] |
| 6757 | Explanation predicts after the event; prediction explains before the event [Bird] |
| 6805 | Relativity ousted Newtonian mechanics despite a loss of simplicity [Bird] |
| 6777 | Realists say their theories involve truth and the existence of their phenomena [Bird] |
| 6804 | There is no agreement on scientific method - because there is no such thing [Bird] |
| 6778 | Instrumentalists regard theories as tools for prediction, with truth being irrelevant [Bird] |
| 6775 | Induction is inference to the best explanation, where the explanation is a law [Bird] |
| 6791 | If Hume is right about induction, there is no scientific knowledge [Bird] |
| 6790 | Anything justifying inferences from observed to unobserved must itself do that [Bird] |
| 6738 | Any conclusion can be drawn from an induction, if we use grue-like predicates [Bird] |
| 6739 | Several months of observing beech trees supports the deciduous and evergreen hypotheses [Bird] |
| 6799 | We normally learn natural kinds from laws, but Goodman shows laws require prior natural kinds [Bird] |
| 6798 | Bayesianism claims to find rationality and truth in induction, and show how science works [Bird] |
| 6752 | The objective component of explanations is the things that must exist for the explanation [Bird] |
| 6754 | We talk both of 'people' explaining things, and of 'facts' explaining things [Bird] |
| 6750 | Explanations are causal, nomic, psychological, psychoanalytic, Darwinian or functional [Bird] |
| 6761 | Contrastive explanations say why one thing happened but not another [Bird] |
| 6758 | 'Covering law' explanations only work if no other explanations are to be found [Bird] |
| 6759 | Livers always accompany hearts, but they don't explain hearts [Bird] |
| 6756 | Probabilistic-statistical explanations don't entail the explanandum, but makes it more likely [Bird] |
| 6760 | An operation might reduce the probability of death, yet explain a death [Bird] |
| 6785 | Inference to the Best Explanation is done with facts, so it has to be realist [Bird] |
| 6788 | Maybe bad explanations are the true ones, in this messy world [Bird] |
| 6787 | Which explanation is 'best' is bound to be subjective, and no guide to truth [Bird] |
| 6751 | Maybe explanation is so subjective that it cannot be a part of science [Bird] |
| 22280 | Frege's account was top-down and decompositional, not bottom-up and compositional [Frege, by Potter] |
| 21137 | Rawls rejected cosmopolitanism because it doesn't respect the autonomy of 'peoples' [Rawls, by Shorten] |
| 6776 | Natural kinds are those that we use in induction [Bird] |
| 6767 | Rubies and sapphires are both corundum, with traces of metals varying their colours [Bird] |
| 6768 | Tin is not one natural kind, but appears to be 21, depending on isotope [Bird] |
| 6770 | Membership of a purely random collection cannot be used as an explanation [Bird] |
| 6771 | Natural kinds may overlap, or be sub-kinds of one another [Bird] |
| 6773 | If F is a universal appearing in a natural law, then Fs form a natural kind [Bird] |
| 6769 | In the Kripke-Putnam view only nuclear physicists can know natural kinds [Bird] |
| 6774 | Darwinism suggests that we should have a native ability to detect natural kinds [Bird] |
| 6764 | Nominal essence of a natural kind is the features that make it fit its name [Bird] |
| 6766 | Jadeite and nephrite are superficially identical, but have different composition [Bird] |
| 6808 | Reference to scientific terms is by explanatory role, not by descriptions [Bird] |
| 6753 | Laws are more fundamental in science than causes, and laws will explain causes [Bird] |
| 6762 | Newton's laws cannot be confirmed individually, but only in combinations [Bird] |
| 6763 | Parapsychology is mere speculation, because it offers no mechanisms for its working [Bird] |
| 6772 | Existence requires laws, as inertia or gravity are needed for mass or matter [Bird] |
| 6740 | 'All uranium lumps are small' is a law, but 'all gold lumps are small' is not [Bird] |
| 6741 | There can be remarkable uniformities in nature that are purely coincidental [Bird] |
| 6742 | A law might have no instances, if it was about things that only exist momentarily [Bird] |
| 6743 | If laws are just instances, the law should either have gaps, or join the instances arbitrarily [Bird] |
| 6744 | Where is the regularity in a law predicting nuclear decay? [Bird] |
| 6747 | Laws cannot explain instances if they are regularities, as something can't explain itself [Bird] |
| 6748 | Similar appearance of siblings is a regularity, but shared parents is what links them [Bird] |
| 6749 | We can only infer a true regularity if something binds the instances together [Bird] |
| 6803 | If we only infer laws from regularities among observations, we can't infer unobservable entities. [Bird] |
| 6801 | Accidental regularities are not laws, and an apparent regularity may not be actual [Bird] |
| 6746 | There may be many laws, each with only a few instances [Bird] |
| 6745 | A regularity is only a law if it is part of a complete system which is simple and strong [Bird] |
| 6802 | With strange enough predicates, anything could be made out to be a regularity [Bird] |
| 6789 | If flame colour is characteristic of a metal, that is an empirical claim needing justification [Bird] |
| 6807 | In Newton mass is conserved, but in Einstein it can convert into energy [Bird] |
| 7741 | The predicate 'exists' is actually a natural language expression for a quantifier [Frege, by Weiner] |