31 ideas
| 22138 | Science rests on scholastic metaphysics, not on Hume, Kant or Carnap [Boulter] |
| 9406 | A class is natural when everybody can spot further members of it [Quinton] |
| 15730 | Extreme nominalists say all classification is arbitrary convention [Quinton] |
| 15435 | If you think universals are immanent, you must believe them to be sparse, and not every related predicate [Lewis] |
| 15728 | The naturalness of a class depends as much on the observers as on the objects [Quinton] |
| 9407 | Properties imply natural classes which can be picked out by everybody [Quinton] |
| 15451 | I assume there could be natural properties that are not instantiated in our world [Lewis] |
| 15433 | Tropes are particular properties, which cannot recur, but can be exact duplicates [Lewis] |
| 15436 | Universals are meant to give an account of resemblance [Lewis] |
| 22134 | Thoughts are general, but the world isn't, so how can we think accurately? [Boulter] |
| 15729 | Uninstantiated properties must be defined using the instantiated ones [Quinton] |
| 15438 | We can add a primitive natural/unnatural distinction to class nominalism [Lewis] |
| 8520 | An individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position [Quinton, by Campbell,K] |
| 15448 | The 'magical' view of structural universals says they are atoms, even though they have parts [Lewis] |
| 15449 | If 'methane' is an atomic structural universal, it has nothing to connect it to its carbon universals [Lewis] |
| 15439 | The 'pictorial' view of structural universals says they are wholes made of universals as parts [Lewis] |
| 15441 | The structural universal 'methane' needs the universal 'hydrogen' four times over [Lewis] |
| 15445 | Butane and Isobutane have the same atoms, but different structures [Lewis] |
| 15434 | Structural universals have a necessary connection to the universals forming its parts [Lewis] |
| 15437 | We can't get rid of structural universals if there are no simple universals [Lewis] |
| 15446 | Composition is not just making new things from old; there are too many counterexamples [Lewis] |
| 15440 | A whole is distinct from its parts, but is not a further addition in ontology [Lewis] |
| 15444 | Different things (a toy house and toy car) can be made of the same parts at different times [Lewis] |
| 22150 | Logical possibility needs the concepts of the proposition to be adequate [Boulter] |
| 22139 | Experiments don't just observe; they look to see what interventions change the natural order [Boulter] |
| 22136 | Science begins with sufficient reason, de-animation, and the importance of nature [Boulter] |
| 22135 | Our concepts can never fully capture reality, but simplification does not falsify [Boulter] |
| 15450 | Maybe abstraction is just mereological subtraction [Lewis] |
| 15443 | Mathematicians abstract by equivalence classes, but that doesn't turn a many into one [Lewis] |
| 22152 | Aristotelians accept the analytic-synthetic distinction [Boulter] |
| 22156 | The facts about human health are the measure of the values in our lives [Boulter] |