48 ideas
3798 | An overexamined life is as bad as an unexamined one [Dennett] |
16440 | I don't think Lewis's cost-benefit reflective equilibrium approach offers enough guidance [Stalnaker] |
3801 | Rationality requires the assumption that things are either for better or worse [Dennett] |
16468 | Non-S5 can talk of contingent or necessary necessities [Stalnaker] |
16449 | In modal set theory, sets only exist in a possible world if that world contains all of its members [Stalnaker] |
16464 | We regiment to get semantic structure, for evaluating arguments, and understanding complexities [Stalnaker] |
16465 | In 'S was F or some other than S was F', the disjuncts need S, but the whole disjunction doesn't [Stalnaker] |
16434 | Some say what exists must do so, and nothing else could possible exist [Stalnaker] |
16439 | A nominalist view says existence is having spatio-temporal location [Stalnaker] |
17486 | Supervenience is simply modally robust property co-variance [Hendry] |
16443 | Properties are modal, involving possible situations where they are exemplified [Stalnaker] |
16471 | I accept a hierarchy of properties of properties of properties [Stalnaker] |
16452 | Dispositions have modal properties, of which properties things would have counterfactually [Stalnaker] |
16467 | 'Socrates is essentially human' seems to say nothing could be Socrates if it was not human [Stalnaker] |
16453 | The bundle theory makes the identity of indiscernibles a necessity, since the thing is the properties [Stalnaker] |
16466 | Strong necessity is always true; weak necessity is cannot be false [Stalnaker] |
16438 | Necessity and possibility are fundamental, and there can be no reductive analysis of them [Stalnaker] |
16436 | Modal concepts are central to the actual world, and shouldn't need extravagant metaphysics [Stalnaker] |
3802 | Why pronounce impossible what you cannot imagine? [Dennett] |
16433 | Given actualism, how can there be possible individuals, other than the actual ones? [Stalnaker] |
16437 | Possible worlds are properties [Stalnaker] |
16444 | Possible worlds don't reduce modality, they regiment it to reveal its structure [Stalnaker] |
16445 | I think of worlds as cells (rather than points) in logical space [Stalnaker] |
16454 | Modal properties depend on the choice of a counterpart, which is unconstrained by metaphysics [Stalnaker] |
16450 | Anti-haecceitism says there is no more to an individual than meeting some qualitative conditions [Stalnaker] |
3795 | Causal theories require the "right" sort of link (usually unspecified) [Dennett] |
17481 | Nuclear charge (plus laws) explains electron structure and spectrum, but not vice versa [Hendry] |
3797 | I am the sum total of what I directly control [Dennett] |
3800 | You can be free even though force would have prevented you doing otherwise [Dennett, by PG] |
3803 | Can we conceive of a being with a will freer than our own? [Dennett] |
3791 | Awareness of thought is a step beyond awareness of the world [Dennett] |
3794 | Foreknowledge permits control [Dennett] |
3796 | The active self is a fiction created because we are ignorant of our motivations [Dennett] |
16474 | How can we know what we are thinking, if content depends on something we don't know? [Stalnaker] |
16461 | We still lack an agreed semantics for quantifiers in natural language [Stalnaker] |
16448 | Possible world semantics may not reduce modality, but it can explain it [Stalnaker] |
16442 | I take propositions to be truth conditions [Stalnaker] |
16447 | A theory of propositions at least needs primitive properties of consistency and of truth [Stalnaker] |
16446 | Propositions presumably don't exist if the things they refer to don't exist [Stalnaker] |
17478 | Maybe two kinds are the same if there is no change of entropy on isothermal mixing [Hendry] |
17484 | Maybe the nature of water is macroscopic, and not in the microstructure [Hendry] |
17479 | The nature of an element must survive chemical change, so it is the nucleus, not the electrons [Hendry] |
17485 | Maybe water is the smallest part of it that still counts as water (which is H2O molecules) [Hendry] |
17482 | Compounds can differ with the same collection of atoms, so structure matters too [Hendry] |
17483 | Water continuously changes, with new groupings of molecules [Hendry] |
17476 | Elements survive chemical change, and are tracked to explain direction and properties [Hendry] |
17477 | Defining elements by atomic number allowed atoms of an element to have different masses [Hendry] |
17480 | Generally it is nuclear charge (not nuclear mass) which determines behaviour [Hendry] |