63 ideas
9023 | If you say that a contradiction is true, you change the meaning of 'not', and so change the subject [Quine] |
23000 | Vicious regresses force you to another level; non-vicious imply another level [Baron/Miller] |
9012 | Talk of 'truth' when sentences are mentioned; it reminds us that reality is the point of sentences [Quine] |
9011 | Truth is redundant for single sentences; we do better to simply speak the sentence [Quine] |
9013 | We can eliminate 'or' from our basic theory, by paraphrasing 'p or q' as 'not(not-p and not-q)' [Quine] |
9020 | My logical grammar has sentences by predication, then negation, conjunction, and existential quantification [Quine] |
9028 | Maybe logical truth reflects reality, but in different ways in different languages [Quine] |
10014 | Quine rejects second-order logic, saying that predicates refer to multiple objects [Quine, by Hodes] |
10828 | Quantifying over predicates is treating them as names of entities [Quine] |
9024 | Excluded middle has three different definitions [Quine] |
10012 | Quantification theory can still be proved complete if we add identity [Quine] |
9016 | Names are not essential, because naming can be turned into predication [Quine] |
9015 | Universal quantification is widespread, but it is definable in terms of existential quantification [Quine] |
9025 | You can't base quantification on substituting names for variables, if the irrationals cannot all be named [Quine] |
9026 | Some quantifications could be false substitutionally and true objectually, because of nameless objects [Quine] |
10705 | Putting a predicate letter in a quantifier is to make it the name of an entity [Quine] |
9027 | A sentence is logically true if all sentences with that grammatical structure are true [Quine] |
23024 | A traveller takes a copy of a picture into the past, gives it the artist, who then creates the original! [Baron/Miller] |
23008 | Grounding is intended as a relation that fits dependences between things [Baron/Miller] |
9017 | Predicates are not names; predicates are the other parties to predication [Quine] |
9018 | A physical object is the four-dimensional material content of a portion of space-time [Quine] |
23018 | How does a changing object retain identity or have incompatible properties over time? [Baron/Miller] |
9019 | Four-d objects helps predication of what no longer exists, and quantification over items from different times [Quine] |
9014 | Some conditionals can be explained just by negation and conjunction: not(p and not-q) [Quine] |
9009 | Single words are strongly synonymous if their interchange preserves truth [Quine] |
9007 | It makes no sense to say that two sentences express the same proposition [Quine] |
9008 | There is no rule for separating the information from other features of sentences [Quine] |
9010 | We can abandon propositions, and just talk of sentences and equivalence [Quine] |
9021 | A good way of explaining an expression is saying what conditions make its contexts true [Quine] |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
23011 | Modern accounts of causation involve either processes or counterfactuals [Baron/Miller] |
23013 | The main process theory of causation says it is transference of mass, energy, momentum or charge [Baron/Miller] |
23014 | If causes are processes, what is causation by omission? (Distinguish legal from scientific causes?) [Baron/Miller] |
23015 | The counterfactual theory of causation handles the problem no matter what causes actually are [Baron/Miller] |
23016 | Counterfactual theories struggle with pre-emption by a causal back-up system [Baron/Miller] |
23009 | There is no second 'law' of thermodynamics; it just reflects probabilities of certain microstates [Baron/Miller] |
23002 | In relativity space and time depend on one's motion, but spacetime gives an invariant metric [Baron/Miller] |
22988 | The block universe theory says entities of all times exist, and time is the B-series [Baron/Miller] |
22991 | How can we know this is the present moment, if other times are real? [Baron/Miller] |
22992 | If we are actually in the past then we shouldn't experience time passing [Baron/Miller] |
22994 | Erzatz Presentism allows the existence of other times, with only the present 'actualised' [Baron/Miller] |
22998 | How do presentists explain relations between things existing at different times? [Baron/Miller] |
23017 | Presentism needs endurantism, because other theories imply most of the object doesn't exist [Baron/Miller] |
23023 | How can presentists move to the next future moment, if that doesn't exist? [Baron/Miller] |
22995 | Most of the sciences depend on the concept of time [Baron/Miller] |
22993 | For abstractionists past times might still exist, althought their objects don't [Baron/Miller] |
23001 | The error theory of time's passage says it is either a misdescription or a false inference [Baron/Miller] |
22999 | It is meaningless to measure the rate of time using time itself, and without a rate there is no flow [Baron/Miller] |
22986 | The C-series rejects A and B, and just sees times as order by betweenness, without direction [Baron/Miller] |
22996 | The A-series has to treat being past, present or future as properties [Baron/Miller] |
23007 | The B-series can have a direction, as long as it does not arise from temporal flow [Baron/Miller] |
23003 | Static theories cannot account for time's obvious asymmetry, so time must be dynamic [Baron/Miller] |
23004 | The direction of time is either primitive, or reducible to something else [Baron/Miller] |
23005 | The kaon does not seem to be time-reversal invariant, unlike the rest of nature [Baron/Miller] |
23006 | Maybe the past is just the direction of decreasing entropy [Baron/Miller] |
23010 | We could explain time's direction by causation: past is the direction of causes, future of effects [Baron/Miller] |
22989 | Static time theory presents change as one property at t1, and a different property at t2 [Baron/Miller] |
23020 | If a time traveller kills his youthful grandfather, he both exists and fails to exist [Baron/Miller] |
23022 | Presentism means there no existing past for a time traveller to visit [Baron/Miller] |
22987 | The past (unlike the future) is fixed, along with truths about it, by the existence of past objects [Baron/Miller] |
22990 | The moving spotlight says entities can have properties of being present, past or future [Baron/Miller] |
22997 | The present moment is a matter of existence, not of acquiring a property [Baron/Miller] |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |