62 ideas
18495 | The best philosophers I know are the best people I know [Heil] |
18494 | Using a technical vocabulary actually prevents discussion of the presuppositions [Heil] |
18506 | Questions of explanation should not be confused with metaphyics [Heil] |
18535 | Without abstraction we couldn't think systematically [Heil] |
14767 | The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine [Peirce] |
14764 | I am saturated with the spirit of physical science [Peirce] |
14018 | Is Sufficient Reason self-refuting (no reason to accept it!), or is it a legitimate explanatory tool? [Bourne] |
18534 | Truth relates truthbearers to truthmakers [Heil] |
18531 | Philosophers of the past took the truthmaking idea for granted [Heil] |
18509 | Not all truths need truthmakers - mathematics and logic seem to be just true [Heil] |
14008 | The redundancy theory conflates metalinguistic bivalence with object-language excluded middle [Bourne] |
18518 | Infinite numbers are qualitatively different - they are not just very large numbers [Heil] |
18500 | How could structures be mathematical truthmakers? Maths is just true, without truthmakers [Heil] |
18539 | Our categories lack the neat arrangement needed for reduction [Heil] |
18505 | Fundamental ontology aims at the preconditions for any true theory [Heil] |
18499 | Our quantifications only reveal the truths we accept; the ontology and truthmakers are another matter [Heil] |
18512 | Ontology aims to give the fundamental categories of being [Heil] |
14010 | All relations between spatio-temporal objects are either spatio-temporal, or causal [Bourne] |
18508 | Most philosophers now (absurdly) believe that relations fully exist [Heil] |
14009 | It is a necessary condition for the existence of relations that both of the relata exist [Bourne] |
18532 | If causal relations are power manifestations, that makes them internal relations [Heil] |
18510 | We need properties to explain how the world works [Heil] |
18522 | Categorical properties were introduced by philosophers as actual properties, not if-then properties [Heil] |
18513 | Emergent properties will need emergent substances to bear them [Heil] |
18540 | Predicates only match properties at the level of fundamentals [Heil] |
18533 | In Fa, F may not be a property of a, but a determinable, satisfied by some determinate [Heil] |
18511 | Properties have causal roles which sets can't possibly have [Heil] |
18523 | Are all properties powers, or are there also qualities, or do qualities have the powers? [Heil] |
18524 | Properties are both qualitative and dispositional - they are powerful qualities [Heil] |
18498 | Abstract objects wouldn't be very popular without the implicit idea of truthmakers [Heil] |
18507 | Substances bear properties, so must be simple, and not consist of further substances [Heil] |
18515 | Spatial parts are just regions, but objects depend on and are made up of substantial parts [Heil] |
18516 | A 'gunky' universe would literally have no parts at all [Heil] |
18514 | Many wholes can survive replacement of their parts [Heil] |
18517 | Dunes depend on sand grains, but line segments depend on the whole line [Heil] |
18502 | If basic physics has natures, then why not reality itself? That would then found the deepest necessities [Heil] |
18496 | If possible worlds are just fictions, they can't be truthmakers for modal judgements [Heil] |
14768 | Infallibility in science is just a joke [Peirce] |
14765 | Association of ideas is the best philosophical idea of the prescientific age [Peirce] |
14766 | Duns Scotus offers perhaps the best logic and metaphysics for modern physical science [Peirce] |
18525 | Mental abstraction does not make what is abstracted mind-dependent [Heil] |
18504 | Only particulars exist, and generality is our mode of presentation [Heil] |
18503 | You can think of tomatoes without grasping what they are [Heil] |
18538 | Non-conscious thought may be unlike conscious thought [Heil] |
18537 | Linguistic thought is just as imagistic as non-linguistic thought [Heil] |
18536 | The subject-predicate form reflects reality [Heil] |
18497 | Many reject 'moral realism' because they can't see any truthmakers for normative judgements [Heil] |
18519 | If there were infinite electrons, they could vanish without affecting total mass-energy [Heil] |
18526 | We should focus on actual causings, rather than on laws and causal sequences [Heil] |
18527 | Probabilistic causation is not a weak type of cause; it is just a probability of there being a cause [Heil] |
14016 | The idea of simultaneity in Special Relativity is full of verificationist assumptions [Bourne] |
14019 | Relativity denies simultaneity, so it needs past, present and future (unlike Presentism) [Bourne] |
18520 | Electrons are treated as particles, but they lose their individuality in relations [Heil] |
14013 | Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne] |
14015 | No-Futurists believe in past and present, but not future, and say the world grows as facts increase [Bourne] |
14007 | How can presentists talk of 'earlier than', and distinguish past from future? [Bourne] |
14011 | Presentism seems to deny causation, because the cause and the effect can never coexist [Bourne] |
14017 | Since presentists treat the presentness of events as basic, simultaneity should be define by that means [Bourne] |
14003 | Time is tensed or tenseless; the latter says all times and objects are real, and there is no passage of time [Bourne] |
14005 | B-series objects relate to each other; A-series objects relate to the present [Bourne] |
14006 | Time flows, past is fixed, future is open, future is feared but not past, we remember past, we plan future [Bourne] |
18501 | Maybe the universe is fine-tuned because it had to be, despite plans by God or Nature? [Heil] |