82 ideas
| 1627 | Any statement can be held true if we make enough adjustment to the rest of the system [Quine] |
| 1623 | Definition rests on synonymy, rather than explaining it [Quine] |
| 18019 | People have dreams which involve category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 17998 | Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic [Magidor] |
| 18011 | Category mistakes seem to be universal across languages [Magidor] |
| 18012 | Category mistakes as syntactic needs a huge number of fine-grained rules [Magidor] |
| 18013 | Embedded (in 'he said that…') category mistakes show syntax isn't the problem [Magidor] |
| 18021 | Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 18015 | The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18017 | If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18031 | If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18016 | Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd [Magidor] |
| 18030 | A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18032 | Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18034 | Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18037 | Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply? [Magidor] |
| 18039 | If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value? [Magidor] |
| 18058 | Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things? [Magidor] |
| 18041 | Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality) [Magidor] |
| 18056 | Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false') [Magidor] |
| 18055 | In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured [Magidor] |
| 18057 | 'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable [Magidor] |
| 18059 | The presuppositions in category mistakes reveal nothing about ontology [Magidor] |
| 18040 | Intensional logic maps logical space, showing which predicates are compatible or incompatible [Magidor] |
| 9204 | Quine's arguments fail because he naively conflates names with descriptions [Fine,K on Quine] |
| 17997 | Some suggest that the Julius Caesar problem involves category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 17738 | Quine blurs the difference between knowledge of arithmetic and of physics [Jenkins on Quine] |
| 19492 | Quine is hopeless circular, deriving ontology from what is literal, and 'literal' from good ontology [Yablo on Quine] |
| 1628 | If physical objects are a myth, they are useful for making sense of experience [Quine] |
| 18060 | We can explain the statue/clay problem by a category mistake with a false premise [Magidor] |
| 10929 | Aristotelian essence of the object has become the modern essence of meaning [Quine] |
| 12188 | Contrary to some claims, Quine does not deny logical necessity [Quine, by McFetridge] |
| 15090 | Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction undermined necessary truths [Quine, by Shoemaker] |
| 9383 | Metaphysical analyticity (and linguistic necessity) are hopeless, but epistemic analyticity is a priori [Boghossian on Quine] |
| 12424 | Quine challenges the claim that analytic truths are knowable a priori [Quine, by Kitcher] |
| 9338 | Quine's objections to a priori knowledge only work in the domain of science [Horwich on Quine] |
| 9337 | Science is empirical, simple and conservative; any belief can hence be abandoned; so no a priori [Quine, by Horwich] |
| 9340 | Logic, arithmetic and geometry are revisable and a posteriori; quantum logic could be right [Horwich on Quine] |
| 1620 | Empiricism makes a basic distinction between truths based or not based on facts [Quine] |
| 1629 | Our outer beliefs must match experience, and our inner ones must be simple [Quine] |
| 19488 | The second dogma is linking every statement to some determinate observations [Quine, by Yablo] |
| 1625 | Statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience as a corporate body [Quine] |
| 18020 | Propositional attitudes relate agents to either propositions, or meanings, or sentence/utterances [Magidor] |
| 18035 | Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content [Magidor] |
| 18018 | To grasp 'two' and 'green', must you know that two is not green? [Magidor] |
| 1626 | It is troublesome nonsense to split statements into a linguistic and a factual component [Quine] |
| 7317 | 'Renate' and 'cordate' have identical extensions, but are not synonymous [Quine, by Miller,A] |
| 1621 | Once meaning and reference are separated, meaning ceases to seem important [Quine] |
| 18008 | Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules [Magidor] |
| 18010 | 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure [Magidor] |
| 18053 | The semantics of a sentence is its potential for changing a context [Magidor] |
| 18000 | Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts [Magidor] |
| 17999 | Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18014 | Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional [Magidor] |
| 18001 | Are there partial propositions, lacking truth value in some possible worlds? [Magidor] |
| 9371 | Analytic statements are either logical truths (all reinterpretations) or they depend on synonymy [Quine] |
| 1622 | Did someone ever actually define 'bachelor' as 'unmarried man'? [Quine] |
| 9366 | Quine's attack on analyticity undermined linguistic views of necessity, and analytic views of the a priori [Quine, by Boghossian] |
| 14473 | Quine attacks the Fregean idea that we can define analyticity through synonyous substitution [Quine, by Thomasson] |
| 7321 | The last two parts of 'Two Dogmas' are much the best [Miller,A on Quine] |
| 8803 | Erasing the analytic/synthetic distinction got rid of meanings, and saved philosophy of language [Davidson on Quine] |
| 17737 | The analytic needs excessively small units of meaning and empirical confirmation [Quine, by Jenkins] |
| 1624 | If we try to define analyticity by synonymy, that leads back to analyticity [Quine] |
| 18036 | A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value [Magidor] |
| 18051 | In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion [Magidor] |
| 18043 | The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set [Magidor] |
| 18042 | The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set [Magidor] |
| 18047 | A presupposition is what makes an utterance sound wrong if it is not assumed? [Magidor] |
| 18048 | A test for presupposition would be if it provoked 'hey wait a minute - I have no idea that....' [Magidor] |
| 18049 | The best tests for presupposition are projecting it to negation, conditional, conjunction, questions [Magidor] |
| 18050 | If both s and not-s entail a sentence p, then p is a presupposition [Magidor] |
| 18054 | Why do certain words trigger presuppositions? [Magidor] |
| 18024 | One theory says metaphors mean the same as the corresponding simile [Magidor] |
| 18023 | Theories of metaphor divide over whether they must have literal meanings [Magidor] |
| 18025 | The simile view of metaphors removes their magic, and won't explain why we use them [Magidor] |
| 18026 | Maybe a metaphor is just a substitute for what is intended literally, like 'icy' for 'unemotional' [Magidor] |
| 18028 | Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings [Magidor] |
| 18029 | Non-cognitivist views of metaphor says there are no metaphorical meanings, just effects of the literal [Magidor] |
| 18022 | Metaphors tend to involve category mistakes, by joining disjoint domains [Magidor] |
| 18027 | Metaphors as substitutes for the literal misses one predicate varying with context [Magidor] |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |