35 ideas
13939 | No possible evidence could decide the reality of numbers, so it is a pseudo-question [Carnap] |
12442 | 'Mickey Mouse is a fictional mouse' is true without a truthmaker [Azzouni] |
12439 | Truth is dispensable, by replacing truth claims with the sentence itself [Azzouni] |
12437 | Truth lets us assent to sentences we can't explicitly exhibit [Azzouni] |
12446 | Names function the same way, even if there is no object [Azzouni] |
13936 | Questions about numbers are answered by analysis, and are analytic, and hence logically true [Carnap] |
8748 | Logical positivists incorporated geometry into logicism, saying axioms are just definitions [Carnap, by Shapiro] |
8960 | Internal questions about abstractions are trivial, and external ones deeply problematic [Carnap, by Szabó] |
12447 | That all existents have causal powers is unknowable; the claim is simply an epistemic one [Azzouni] |
13933 | Existence questions are 'internal' (within a framework) or 'external' (concerning the whole framework) [Carnap] |
13934 | To be 'real' is to be an element of a system, so we cannot ask reality questions about the system itself [Carnap] |
12445 | If fictional objects really don't exist, then they aren't abstract objects [Azzouni] |
13938 | A linguistic framework involves commitment to entities, so only commitment to the framework is in question [Carnap] |
12449 | Modern metaphysics often derives ontology from the logical forms of sentences [Azzouni] |
12440 | If objectual quantifiers ontologically commit, so does the metalanguage for its semantics [Azzouni] |
12438 | In the vernacular there is no unequivocal ontological commitment [Azzouni] |
12441 | We only get ontology from semantics if we have already smuggled it in [Azzouni] |
13076 | Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
12448 | Things that don't exist don't have any properties [Azzouni] |
13102 | If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13103 | Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13104 | Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13935 | We only accept 'things' within a language with formation, testing and acceptance rules [Carnap] |
13100 | Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13068 | We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13069 | The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13072 | Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
17080 | Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13101 | Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13081 | Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13932 | Empiricists tend to reject abstract entities, and to feel sympathy with nominalism [Carnap] |
13937 | New linguistic claims about entities are not true or false, but just expedient, fruitful or successful [Carnap] |
13940 | All linguistic forms in science are merely judged by their efficiency as instruments [Carnap] |
13071 | We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
12450 | The periodic table not only defines the elements, but also excludes other possible elements [Azzouni] |