68 ideas
| 6095 | The business of metaphysics is to describe the world [Russell] |
| 6106 | Reducing entities and premisses makes error less likely [Russell] |
| 6090 | Facts make propositions true or false, and are expressed by whole sentences [Russell] |
| 18348 | Not only atomic truths, but also general and negative truths, have truth-makers [Russell, by Rami] |
| 14480 | Maybe analytic truths do not require truth-makers, as they place no demands on the world [Thomasson] |
| 9921 | 'True' is only occasionally useful, as in 'everything Fermat believed was true' [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9924 | Modal logic gives an account of metalogical possibility, not metaphysical possibility [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 6103 | Normally a class with only one member is a problem, because the class and the member are identical [Russell] |
| 9933 | The paradoxes are only a problem for Frege; Cantor didn't assume every condition determines a set [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9928 | Mereology implies that acceptance of entities entails acceptance of conglomerates [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 14471 | Analytical entailments arise from combinations of meanings and inference rules [Thomasson] |
| 6092 | In a logically perfect language, there will be just one word for every simple object [Russell] |
| 6101 | Romulus does not occur in the proposition 'Romulus did not exist' [Russell] |
| 9926 | A relation is either a set of sets of sets, or a set of sets [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 6102 | You can understand 'author of Waverley', but to understand 'Scott' you must know who it applies to [Russell] |
| 10423 | There are a set of criteria for pinning down a logically proper name [Russell, by Sainsbury] |
| 7744 | Treat description using quantifiers, and treat proper names as descriptions [Russell, by McCullogh] |
| 10426 | A name has got to name something or it is not a name [Russell] |
| 9932 | The paradoxes no longer seem crucial in critiques of set theory [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9923 | We should talk about possible existence, rather than actual existence, of numbers [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9925 | Structuralism and nominalism are normally rivals, but might work together [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9934 | Number words became nouns around the time of Plato [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 6104 | Numbers are classes of classes, and hence fictions of fictions [Russell] |
| 14493 | Existence might require playing a role in explanation, or in a causal story, or being composed in some way [Thomasson] |
| 21708 | Russell's new logical atomist was of particulars, universals and facts (not platonic propositions) [Russell, by Linsky,B] |
| 19051 | Russell's atomic facts are actually compounds, and his true logical atoms are sense data [Russell, by Quine] |
| 6089 | Logical atomism aims at logical atoms as the last residue of analysis [Russell] |
| 6100 | Once you have enumerated all the atomic facts, there is a further fact that those are all the facts [Russell] |
| 6105 | Logical atoms aims to get down to ultimate simples, with their own unique reality [Russell] |
| 9918 | Abstract/concrete is a distinction of kind, not degree [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9929 | Much of what science says about concrete entities is 'abstraction-laden' [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9927 | Mathematics has ascended to higher and higher levels of abstraction [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9930 | Abstraction is on a scale, of sets, to attributes, to type-formulas, to token-formulas [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 21709 | You can't name all the facts, so they are not real, but are what propositions assert [Russell] |
| 18376 | Russell asserts atomic, existential, negative and general facts [Russell, by Armstrong] |
| 5465 | Modern trope theory tries, like logical atomism, to reduce things to elementary states [Russell, by Ellis] |
| 14491 | Rival ontological claims can both be true, if there are analytic relationships between them [Thomasson] |
| 6060 | 'Existence' means that a propositional function is sometimes true [Russell] |
| 14489 | Theories do not avoid commitment to entities by avoiding certain terms or concepts [Thomasson] |
| 14485 | Ordinary objects may be not indispensable, but they are nearly unavoidable [Thomasson] |
| 14487 | The simple existence conditions for objects are established by our practices, and are met [Thomasson] |
| 21651 | It is analytic that if simples are arranged chair-wise, then there is a chair [Thomasson, by Hofweber] |
| 14486 | Eliminativists haven't found existence conditions for chairs, beyond those of the word 'chair' [Thomasson] |
| 14467 | Ordinary objects are rejected, to avoid contradictions, or for greater economy in thought [Thomasson] |
| 14479 | To individuate people we need conventions, but conventions are made up by people [Thomasson] |
| 14481 | Wherever an object exists, there are intrinsic properties instantiating every modal profile [Thomasson] |
| 14482 | If the statue and the lump are two objects, they require separate properties, so we could add their masses [Thomasson] |
| 14483 | Given the similarity of statue and lump, what could possibly ground their modal properties? [Thomasson] |
| 14476 | Identity claims between objects are only well-formed if the categories are specified [Thomasson] |
| 14477 | Identical entities must be of the same category, and meet the criteria for the category [Thomasson] |
| 6099 | Modal terms are properties of propositional functions, not of propositions [Russell] |
| 14478 | Modal Conventionalism says modality is analytic, not intrinsic to the world, and linguistic [Thomasson] |
| 6098 | Perception goes straight to the fact, and not through the proposition [Russell] |
| 14466 | A chief task of philosophy is making reflective sense of our common sense worldview [Thomasson] |
| 6097 | The theory of error seems to need the existence of the non-existent [Russell] |
| 9919 | The old debate classified representations as abstract, not entities [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 14475 | How can causal theories of reference handle nonexistence claims? [Thomasson] |
| 14474 | Pure causal theories of reference have the 'qua problem', of what sort of things is being referred to [Thomasson] |
| 9022 | Russell uses 'propositional function' to refer to both predicates and to attributes [Quine on Russell] |
| 6091 | Propositions don't name facts, because each fact corresponds to a proposition and its negation [Russell] |
| 21702 | In 1918 still believes in nonlinguistic analogues of sentences, but he now calls them 'facts' [Russell, by Quine] |
| 6094 | An inventory of the world does not need to include propositions [Russell] |
| 6096 | I no longer believe in propositions, especially concerning falsehoods [Russell] |
| 21712 | I know longer believe in shadowy things like 'that today is Wednesday' when it is actually Tuesday [Russell] |
| 14488 | Analyticity is revealed through redundancy, as in 'He bought a house and a building' [Thomasson] |
| 6093 | The names in a logically perfect language would be private, and could not be shared [Russell] |
| 9922 | If space is really just a force-field, then it is a physical entity [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 6119 | You can discuss 'God exists', so 'God' is a description, not a name [Russell] |