15 ideas
| 21552 | Common speech is vague; its vocabulary and syntax must be modified, for precision [Russell] |
| 21551 | Empirical words need ostensive definition, which makes them egocentric [Russell] |
| 15842 | An ad hominem refutation is reasonable, if it uses the opponent's assumptions [Harte,V] |
| 15841 | Mereology began as a nominalist revolt against the commitments of set theory [Harte,V] |
| 15858 | Traditionally, the four elements are just what persists through change [Harte,V] |
| 8568 | A property is merely a constituent of laws of nature; temperature is just part of thermodynamics [Mellor] |
| 8564 | There is obviously a possible predicate for every property [Mellor] |
| 8566 | We need universals for causation and laws of nature; the latter give them their identity [Mellor] |
| 8565 | If properties were just the meanings of predicates, they couldn't give predicates their meaning [Mellor] |
| 15848 | Mereology treats constitution as a criterion of identity, as shown in the axiom of extensionality [Harte,V] |
| 15837 | What exactly is a 'sum', and what exactly is 'composition'? [Harte,V] |
| 15839 | If something is 'more than' the sum of its parts, is the extra thing another part, or not? [Harte,V] |
| 15838 | The problem with the term 'sum' is that it is singular [Harte,V] |
| 21550 | Science reduces indexicals to a minimum, but they can never be eliminated from empirical matters [Russell] |
| 8567 | Singular causation requires causes to raise the physical probability of their effects [Mellor] |