42 ideas
3798 | An overexamined life is as bad as an unexamined one [Dennett] |
16512 | Semantic facts are preferable to transcendental philosophical fiction [Wiggins] |
3801 | Rationality requires the assumption that things are either for better or worse [Dennett] |
17529 | Maybe the concept needed under which things coincide must also yield a principle of counting [Wiggins] |
17530 | The sortal needed for identities may not always be sufficient to support counting [Wiggins] |
16523 | Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts [Wiggins] |
16524 | Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality [Wiggins] |
16526 | Animal classifications: the Emperor's, fabulous, innumerable, like flies, stray dogs, embalmed…. [Wiggins] |
17945 | Forms are not a theory of universals, but an attempt to explain how predication is possible [Nehamas] |
17946 | Only Tallness really is tall, and other inferior tall things merely participate in the tallness [Nehamas] |
16492 | Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out [Wiggins] |
16493 | Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers [Wiggins] |
16496 | Singling out extends back and forward in time [Wiggins] |
16495 | The only singling out is singling out 'as' something [Wiggins] |
16501 | In Aristotle's sense, saying x falls under f is to say what x is [Wiggins] |
16506 | Every determinate thing falls under a sortal, which fixes its persistence [Wiggins] |
16509 | Natural kinds are well suited to be the sortals which fix substances [Wiggins] |
16514 | Artefacts are individuated by some matter having a certain function [Wiggins] |
16510 | Nominal essences don't fix membership, ignore evolution, and aren't contextual [Wiggins] |
16503 | 'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing [Wiggins] |
16499 | A restored church is the same 'church', but not the same 'building' or 'brickwork' [Wiggins] |
16515 | A thing begins only once; for a clock, it is when its making is first completed [Wiggins] |
16517 | Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction [Wiggins] |
16502 | Identity is primitive [Wiggins] |
16498 | Identity cannot be defined, because definitions are identities [Wiggins] |
16497 | Leibniz's Law (not transitivity, symmetry, reflexivity) marks what is peculiar to identity [Wiggins] |
16521 | A is necessarily A, so if B is A, then B is also necessarily A [Wiggins] |
16505 | By the principle of Indiscernibility, a symmetrical object could only be half of itself! [Wiggins] |
16494 | We want to explain sameness as coincidence of substance, not as anything qualitative [Wiggins] |
16522 | It is hard or impossible to think of Caesar as not human [Wiggins] |
3802 | Why pronounce impossible what you cannot imagine? [Dennett] |
17944 | 'Episteme' is better translated as 'understanding' than as 'knowledge' [Nehamas] |
3795 | Causal theories require the "right" sort of link (usually unspecified) [Dennett] |
16525 | Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience [Wiggins] |
3797 | I am the sum total of what I directly control [Dennett] |
3803 | Can we conceive of a being with a will freer than our own? [Dennett] |
3800 | You can be free even though force would have prevented you doing otherwise [Dennett, by PG] |
3791 | Awareness of thought is a step beyond awareness of the world [Dennett] |
3794 | Foreknowledge permits control [Dennett] |
3796 | The active self is a fiction created because we are ignorant of our motivations [Dennett] |
16518 | We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us [Wiggins] |
16511 | A 'conception' of a horse is a full theory of what it is (and not just the 'concept') [Wiggins] |