45 ideas
| 2352 | The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions [Putnam] |
| 4036 | What matters is not how many entities we postulate, but how many kinds of entities [Armstrong, by Mellor/Oliver] |
| 2345 | Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation [Putnam] |
| 2347 | Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam] |
| 9406 | A class is natural when everybody can spot further members of it [Quinton] |
| 2349 | Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique [Putnam] |
| 15730 | Extreme nominalists say all classification is arbitrary convention [Quinton] |
| 15754 | Without properties we would be unable to express the laws of nature [Armstrong] |
| 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] |
| 4034 | Whether we apply 'cold' or 'hot' to an object is quite separate from its change of temperature [Armstrong] |
| 8535 | To the claim that every predicate has a property, start by eliminating failure of application of predicate [Armstrong] |
| 8537 | Tropes fall into classes, because exact similarity is symmetrical and transitive [Armstrong] |
| 8538 | Trope theory needs extra commitments, to symmetry and non-transitivity, unless resemblance is exact [Armstrong] |
| 8539 | Universals are required to give a satisfactory account of the laws of nature [Armstrong] |
| 15729 | Uninstantiated properties must be defined using the instantiated ones [Quinton] |
| 8529 | Deniers of properties and relations rely on either predicates or on classes [Armstrong] |
| 8532 | Resemblances must be in certain 'respects', and they seem awfully like properties [Armstrong] |
| 8530 | Change of temperature in objects is quite independent of the predicates 'hot' and 'cold' [Armstrong] |
| 8536 | We want to know what constituents of objects are grounds for the application of predicates [Armstrong] |
| 8531 | In most sets there is no property common to all the members [Armstrong] |
| 2351 | Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved [Putnam] |
| 8520 | An individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position [Quinton, by Campbell,K] |
| 15753 | Essences might support Resemblance Nominalism, but they are too coarse and ill-defined [Armstrong] |
| 2331 | Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam] |
| 2071 | If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology [Putnam] |
| 2332 | Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic [Putnam] |
| 2348 | Is there just one computational state for each specific belief? [Putnam] |
| 2344 | If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam] |
| 2074 | Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam] |
| 2343 | Reference may be different while mental representation is the same [Putnam] |
| 2346 | Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam] |
| 2354 | "Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam] |
| 2336 | Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam] |
| 2334 | Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam] |
| 2335 | Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam] |
| 2340 | We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam] |
| 2341 | Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam] |
| 2339 | Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam] |
| 2338 | Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam] |
| 8533 | Predicates need ontological correlates to ensure that they apply [Armstrong] |
| 4035 | There must be some explanation of why certain predicates are applicable to certain objects [Armstrong] |
| 2342 | "Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description [Putnam] |
| 8541 | Regularities theories are poor on causal connections, counterfactuals and probability [Armstrong] |
| 8540 | The introduction of sparse properties avoids the regularity theory's problem with 'grue' [Armstrong] |