30 ideas
| 21699 | Russell offered a paraphrase of definite description, to avoid the commitment to objects [Quine] |
| 9572 | Realists about sets say there exists a null set in the real world, with no members [Chihara] |
| 9550 | We only know relational facts about the empty set, but nothing intrinsic [Chihara] |
| 9562 | In simple type theory there is a hierarchy of null sets [Chihara] |
| 9573 | The null set is a structural position which has no other position in membership relation [Chihara] |
| 9551 | What is special about Bill Clinton's unit set, in comparison with all the others? [Chihara] |
| 9549 | The set theorist cannot tell us what 'membership' is [Chihara] |
| 9571 | ZFU refers to the physical world, when it talks of 'urelements' [Chihara] |
| 9563 | A pack of wolves doesn't cease when one member dies [Chihara] |
| 9561 | The mathematics of relations is entirely covered by ordered pairs [Chihara] |
| 15091 | Restrict 'logical truth' to formal logic, rather than including analytic and metaphysical truths [Shoemaker] |
| 9552 | Sentences are consistent if they can all be true; for Frege it is that no contradiction can be deduced [Chihara] |
| 9553 | Analytic geometry gave space a mathematical structure, which could then have axioms [Chihara] |
| 10192 | We can replace existence of sets with possibility of constructing token sentences [Chihara, by MacBride] |
| 9559 | If a successful theory confirms mathematics, presumably a failed theory disconfirms it? [Chihara] |
| 9566 | No scientific explanation would collapse if mathematical objects were shown not to exist [Chihara] |
| 15095 | A property's causal features are essential, and only they fix its identity [Shoemaker] |
| 15097 | I claim that a property has its causal features in all possible worlds [Shoemaker] |
| 15094 | I now deny that properties are cluster of powers, and take causal properties as basic [Shoemaker] |
| 15099 | If something is possible, but not nomologically possible, we need metaphysical possibility [Shoemaker] |
| 15101 | Once you give up necessity as a priori, causal necessity becomes the main type of necessity [Shoemaker] |
| 15098 | Empirical evidence shows that imagining a phenomenon can show it is possible [Shoemaker] |
| 15100 | Imagination reveals conceptual possibility, where descriptions avoid contradiction or incoherence [Shoemaker] |
| 15096 | 'Grue' only has causal features because of its relation to green [Shoemaker] |
| 9568 | I prefer the open sentences of a Constructibility Theory, to Platonist ideas of 'equivalence classes' [Chihara] |
| 21700 | Taking sentences as the unit of meaning makes useful paraphrasing possible [Quine] |
| 21701 | Knowing a word is knowing the meanings of sentences which contain it [Quine] |
| 9547 | Mathematical entities are causally inert, so the causal theory of reference won't work for them [Chihara] |
| 15093 | We might say laws are necessary by combining causal properties with Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley laws [Shoemaker] |
| 9574 | 'Gunk' is an individual possessing no parts that are atoms [Chihara] |