57 ideas
21584 | A sense of timelessness is essential to wisdom [Russell] |
21572 | Philosophical disputes are mostly hopeless, because philosophers don't understand each other [Russell] |
21571 | Philosophical systems are interesting, but we now need a more objective scientific philosophy [Russell] |
21574 | Hegel's confusions over 'is' show how vast systems can be built on simple errors [Russell] |
21587 | Philosophers sometimes neglect truth and distort facts to attain a nice system [Russell] |
21582 | Physicists accept particles, points and instants, while pretending they don't do metaphysics [Russell] |
21573 | When problems are analysed properly, they are either logical, or not philosophical at all [Russell] |
19023 | Slippery slope arguments are challenges to show where a non-arbitrary boundary lies [Vetter] |
19033 | Deontic modalities are 'ought-to-be', for sentences, and 'ought-to-do' for predicates [Vetter] |
19032 | S5 is undesirable, as it prevents necessities from having contingent grounds [Vetter] |
19036 | The Barcan formula endorses either merely possible things, or makes the unactualised impossible [Vetter] |
21588 | Logic gives the method of research in philosophy [Russell] |
21586 | The logical connectives are not objects, but are formal, and need a context [Russell] |
21585 | The tortoise won't win, because infinite instants don't compose an infinitely long time [Russell] |
19034 | The world is either a whole made of its parts, or a container which contains its parts [Vetter] |
19015 | Grounding can be between objects ('relational'), or between sentences ('operational') [Vetter] |
19012 | The Humean supervenience base entirely excludes modality [Vetter] |
21684 | Atomic facts may be inferrable from others, but never from non-atomic facts [Russell] |
22316 | A positive and negative fact have the same constituents; their difference is primitive [Russell] |
21576 | With asymmetrical relations (before/after) the reduction to properties is impossible [Russell] |
19024 | A determinate property must be a unique instance of the determinable class [Vetter] |
21575 | When we attribute a common quality to a group, we can forget the quality and just talk of the group [Russell] |
19021 | I have an 'iterated ability' to learn the violin - that is, the ability to acquire that ability [Vetter] |
19016 | We should think of dispositions as 'to do' something, not as 'to do something, if ....' [Vetter] |
19017 | Nomological dispositions (unlike ordinary ones) have to be continually realised [Vetter] |
19014 | How can spatiotemporal relations be understood in dispositional terms? [Vetter] |
19030 | Why does origin matter more than development; why are some features of origin more important? [Vetter] |
19040 | We take origin to be necessary because we see possibilities as branches from actuality [Vetter] |
19008 | The modern revival of necessity and possibility treated them as special cases of quantification [Vetter] |
19029 | It is necessary that p means that nothing has the potentiality for not-p [Vetter] |
19028 | Possibilities are potentialities of actual things, but abstracted from their location [Vetter] |
19010 | All possibility is anchored in the potentiality of individual objects [Vetter] |
19013 | Possibility is a generalised abstraction from the potentiality of its bearer [Vetter] |
19019 | Potentiality is the common genus of dispositions, abilities, and similar properties [Vetter] |
19022 | Water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break (by freezing) [Vetter] |
23705 | A potentiality may not be a disposition, but dispositions are strong potentialities [Vetter, by Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
19009 | Potentiality does the explaining in metaphysics; we don't explain it away or reduce it [Vetter] |
19027 | Potentiality logic is modal system T. Stronger systems collapse iterations, and necessitate potentials [Vetter] |
19031 | There are potentialities 'to ...', but possibilities are 'that ....'. [Vetter] |
19025 | Potentialities may be too weak to count as 'dispositions' [Vetter] |
19011 | If worlds are sets of propositions, how do we know which propositions are genuinely possible? [Vetter] |
19037 | Are there possible objects which nothing has ever had the potentiality to produce? [Vetter] |
21580 | Science condemns sense-data and accepts matter, but a logical construction must link them [Russell] |
21583 | When sense-data change, there must be indistinguishable sense-data in the process [Russell] |
21577 | Empirical truths are particular, so general truths need an a priori input of generality [Russell] |
21579 | Objects are treated as real when they connect with other experiences in a normal way [Russell] |
21578 | Global scepticism is irrefutable, but can't replace our other beliefs, and just makes us hesitate [Russell] |
19018 | Explanations by disposition are more stable and reliable than those be external circumstances [Vetter] |
19020 | Grounding is a kind of explanation, suited to metaphysics [Vetter] |
6416 | Other minds seem to exist, because their testimony supports realism about the world [Russell, by Grayling] |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
19039 | The view that laws are grounded in substance plus external necessity doesn't suit dispositionalism [Vetter] |
19038 | Dispositional essentialism allows laws to be different, but only if the supporting properties differ [Vetter] |
19026 | If time is symmetrical between past and future, why do they look so different? [Vetter] |
19041 | Presentists explain cross-temporal relations using surrogate descriptions [Vetter] |
21581 | We never experience times, but only succession of events [Russell] |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |