72 ideas
| 7950 | Philosophy tries to explain how the actual is possible, given that it seems impossible [Macdonald,C] |
| 7923 | 'Did it for the sake of x' doesn't involve a sake, so how can ontological commitments be inferred? [Macdonald,C] |
| 7933 | Don't assume that a thing has all the properties of its parts [Macdonald,C] |
| 7944 | Reduce by bridge laws (plus property identities?), by elimination, or by reducing talk [Macdonald,C] |
| 7938 | Relational properties are clearly not essential to substances [Macdonald,C] |
| 7967 | Being taller is an external relation, but properties and substances have internal relations [Macdonald,C] |
| 7965 | Does the knowledge of each property require an infinity of accompanying knowledge? [Macdonald,C] |
| 7934 | Tropes are abstract (two can occupy the same place), but not universals (they have locations) [Macdonald,C] |
| 7958 | Properties are sets of exactly resembling property-particulars [Macdonald,C] |
| 7972 | Tropes are abstract particulars, not concrete particulars, so the theory is not nominalist [Macdonald,C] |
| 7959 | How do a group of resembling tropes all resemble one another in the same way? [Macdonald,C] |
| 7960 | Trope Nominalism is the only nominalism to introduce new entities, inviting Ockham's Razor [Macdonald,C] |
| 7951 | Numerical sameness is explained by theories of identity, but what explains qualitative identity? [Macdonald,C] |
| 7964 | How can universals connect instances, if they are nothing like them? [Macdonald,C] |
| 7971 | Real Nominalism is only committed to concrete particulars, word-tokens, and (possibly) sets [Macdonald,C] |
| 7955 | Resemblance Nominalism cannot explain either new resemblances, or absence of resemblances [Macdonald,C] |
| 7961 | A 'thing' cannot be in two places at once, and two things cannot be in the same place at once [Macdonald,C] |
| 7926 | We 'individuate' kinds of object, and 'identify' particular specimens [Macdonald,C] |
| 7936 | Unlike bundles of properties, substances have an intrinsic unity [Macdonald,C] |
| 7930 | The bundle theory of substance implies the identity of indiscernibles [Macdonald,C] |
| 7932 | A phenomenalist cannot distinguish substance from attribute, so must accept the bundle view [Macdonald,C] |
| 7937 | When we ascribe a property to a substance, the bundle theory will make that a tautology [Macdonald,C] |
| 7939 | Substances persist through change, but the bundle theory says they can't [Macdonald,C] |
| 7940 | A substance might be a sequence of bundles, rather than a single bundle [Macdonald,C] |
| 7948 | A statue and its matter have different persistence conditions, so they are not identical [Macdonald,C] |
| 7929 | A substance is either a bundle of properties, or a bare substratum, or an essence [Macdonald,C] |
| 7941 | Each substance contains a non-property, which is its substratum or bare particular [Macdonald,C] |
| 7942 | The substratum theory explains the unity of substances, and their survival through change [Macdonald,C] |
| 7943 | A substratum has the quality of being bare, and they are useless because indiscernible [Macdonald,C] |
| 7927 | At different times Leibniz articulated three different versions of his so-called Law [Macdonald,C] |
| 7928 | The Identity of Indiscernibles is false, because it is not necessarily true [Macdonald,C] |
| 7871 | Perceptual concepts can't just refer to what causes classification [Papineau] |
| 7852 | The only serious mind-brain theories now are identity, token identity, realization and supervenience [Papineau] |
| 7864 | Maybe mind and body do overdetermine acts, but are linked (for some reason) [Papineau] |
| 7873 | Young children can see that other individuals sometimes have false beliefs [Papineau] |
| 7874 | Do we understand other minds by simulation-theory, or by theory-theory? [Papineau] |
| 7882 | Researching phenomenal consciousness is peculiar, because the concepts involved are peculiar [Papineau] |
| 7854 | Whether octopuses feel pain is unclear, because our phenomenal concepts are too vague [Papineau] |
| 7889 | Our concept of consciousness is crude, and lacks theoretical articulation [Papineau] |
| 7891 | We can’t decide what 'conscious' means, so it is undecidable whether cats are conscious [Papineau] |
| 7890 | Maybe a creature is conscious if its mental states represent things in a distinct way [Papineau] |
| 7885 | The 'actualist' HOT theory says consciousness comes from actual higher judgements of mental states [Papineau] |
| 7886 | Actualist HOT theories imply that a non-conscious mental event could become conscious when remembered [Papineau] |
| 7887 | States are conscious if they could be the subject of higher-order mental judgements [Papineau] |
| 7888 | Higher-order judgements may be possible where the subject denies having been conscious [Papineau] |
| 7947 | In continuity, what matters is not just the beginning and end states, but the process itself [Macdonald,C] |
| 7860 | The epiphenomenal relation of mind and brain is a 'causal dangler', unlike anything else [Papineau] |
| 7862 | Maybe minds do not cause actions, but do cause us to report our decisions [Papineau] |
| 7870 | Role concepts either name the realising property, or the higher property constituting the role [Papineau] |
| 7858 | If causes are basic particulars, this doesn't make conscious and physical properties identical [Papineau] |
| 7865 | Supervenience can be replaced by identifying mind with higher-order or disjunctional properties [Papineau] |
| 7892 | The completeness of physics is needed for mind-brain identity [Papineau] |
| 7879 | Mind-brain reduction is less explanatory, because phenomenal concepts lack causal roles [Papineau] |
| 20971 | Weak reduction of mind is to physical causes; strong reduction is also to physical laws [Papineau] |
| 7856 | It is absurd to think that physical effects are caused twice, so conscious causes must be physical [Papineau] |
| 7881 | Accept ontological monism, but conceptual dualism; we think in a different way about phenomenal thought [Papineau] |
| 7866 | Mary acquires new concepts; she previously thought about the same property using material concepts [Papineau] |
| 7850 | Thinking about a thing doesn't require activating it [Papineau] |
| 7851 | Consciousness affects bodily movement, so thoughts must be material states [Papineau] |
| 7884 | Most reductive accounts of representation imply broad content [Papineau] |
| 7863 | If content hinges on matters outside of you, how can it causally influence your actions? [Papineau] |
| 6649 | Chomsky now says concepts are basically innate, as well as syntax [Chomsky, by Lowe] |
| 7883 | Verificationists tend to infer indefinite answers from undecidable questions [Papineau] |
| 7872 | Teleosemantics equates meaning with the item the concept is intended to track [Papineau] |
| 7869 | Truth conditions in possible worlds can't handle statements about impossibilities [Papineau] |
| 7868 | Thought content is possible worlds that make the thought true; if that includes the actual world, it's true [Papineau] |
| 7853 | Causation is based on either events, or facts, or states of affairs [Papineau] |
| 7857 | Causes are instantiations of properties by particulars, or they are themselves basic particulars [Papineau] |
| 20976 | The completeness of physics cannot be proved [Papineau] |
| 20970 | Determinism is possible without a complete physics, if mental forces play a role [Papineau] |
| 20974 | Modern biological research, especially into the cell, has revealed no special new natural forces [Papineau] |
| 20975 | Quantum 'wave collapses' seem to violate conservation of energy [Papineau] |