17 ideas
| 22153 | Quine rejects Carnap's view that science and philosophy are distinct [Quine, by Boulter] |
| 19485 | Names have no ontological commitment, because we can deny that they name anything [Quine] |
| 19486 | We can use quantification for commitment to unnameable things like the real numbers [Quine] |
| 14193 | 'Substance theorists' take modal properties as primitive, without structure, just falling under a sortal [Paul,LA] |
| 14195 | If an object's sort determines its properties, we need to ask what determines its sort [Paul,LA] |
| 14196 | Substance essentialism says an object is multiple, as falling under various different sortals [Paul,LA] |
| 14198 | Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would allow things with incompatible properties [Paul,LA] |
| 14190 | Deep essentialist objects have intrinsic properties that fix their nature; the shallow version makes it contextual [Paul,LA] |
| 14191 | Deep essentialists say essences constrain how things could change; modal profiles fix natures [Paul,LA] |
| 15642 | If kinds depend only on what can be observed, many underlying essences might produce the same kind [Eagle] |
| 15645 | Nominal essence are the observable properties of things [Eagle] |
| 15643 | Nominal essence mistakenly gives equal weight to all underlying properties that produce appearances [Eagle] |
| 14192 | Essentialism must deal with charges of arbitrariness, and failure to reduce de re modality [Paul,LA] |
| 14197 | An object's modal properties don't determine its possibilities [Paul,LA] |
| 14189 | 'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds [Paul,LA] |
| 19487 | Without the analytic/synthetic distinction, Carnap's ontology/empirical distinction collapses [Quine] |
| 15641 | Kinds are fixed by the essential properties of things - the properties that make it that kind of thing [Eagle] |