40 ideas
| 15169 | Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle] |
| 15164 | We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle] |
| 16405 | To understand a name (unlike a description) picking the thing out is sufficient? [Stalnaker] |
| 15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
| 16407 | Possible worlds allow separating all the properties, without hitting a bare particular [Stalnaker] |
| 15184 | Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle] |
| 15172 | Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle] |
| 15181 | Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle] |
| 15173 | That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle] |
| 15185 | We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle] |
| 15175 | Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle] |
| 15032 | Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider] |
| 15179 | To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle] |
| 15171 | The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle] |
| 15167 | Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle] |
| 15177 | Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle] |
| 11984 | Asserting a possible property is to say it would have had the property if that world had been actual [Plantinga] |
| 16397 | If it might be true, it might be true in particular ways, and possible worlds describe such ways [Stalnaker] |
| 16399 | Possible worlds are ontologically neutral, but a commitment to possibilities remains [Stalnaker] |
| 16398 | Possible worlds allow discussion of modality without controversial modal auxiliaries [Stalnaker] |
| 16396 | Kripke's possible worlds are methodological, not metaphysical [Stalnaker] |
| 11980 | A possible world is a maximal possible state of affairs [Plantinga] |
| 11982 | If possible Socrates differs from actual Socrates, the Indiscernibility of Identicals says they are different [Plantinga] |
| 11983 | It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos [Plantinga] |
| 11985 | If individuals can only exist in one world, then they can never lack any of their properties [Plantinga] |
| 15176 | The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle] |
| 16408 | Rigid designation seems to presuppose that differing worlds contain the same individuals [Stalnaker] |
| 15174 | A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle] |
| 15183 | 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle] |
| 11986 | The counterparts of Socrates have self-identity, but only the actual Socrates has identity-with-Socrates [Plantinga] |
| 11987 | Counterpart Theory absurdly says I would be someone else if things went differently [Plantinga] |
| 15165 | A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle] |
| 15168 | That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle] |
| 16406 | If you don't know what you say you can't mean it; what people say usually fits what they mean [Stalnaker] |
| 16404 | In the use of a name, many individuals are causally involved, but they aren't all the referent [Stalnaker] |
| 15166 | Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle] |
| 15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
| 16403 | 'Descriptive' semantics gives a system for a language; 'foundational' semantics give underlying facts [Stalnaker] |
| 16401 | To understand an utterance, you must understand what the world would be like if it is true [Stalnaker] |
| 15178 | Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle] |