51 ideas
| 14480 | Maybe analytic truths do not require truth-makers, as they place no demands on the world [Thomasson] |
| 14471 | Analytical entailments arise from combinations of meanings and inference rules [Thomasson] |
| 14493 | Existence might require playing a role in explanation, or in a causal story, or being composed in some way [Thomasson] |
| 14491 | Rival ontological claims can both be true, if there are analytic relationships between them [Thomasson] |
| 14489 | Theories do not avoid commitment to entities by avoiding certain terms or concepts [Thomasson] |
| 15435 | If you think universals are immanent, you must believe them to be sparse, and not every related predicate [Lewis] |
| 15451 | I assume there could be natural properties that are not instantiated in our world [Lewis] |
| 15433 | Tropes are particular properties, which cannot recur, but can be exact duplicates [Lewis] |
| 15436 | Universals are meant to give an account of resemblance [Lewis] |
| 15438 | We can add a primitive natural/unnatural distinction to class nominalism [Lewis] |
| 14485 | Ordinary objects may be not indispensable, but they are nearly unavoidable [Thomasson] |
| 14487 | The simple existence conditions for objects are established by our practices, and are met [Thomasson] |
| 21651 | It is analytic that if simples are arranged chair-wise, then there is a chair [Thomasson, by Hofweber] |
| 14486 | Eliminativists haven't found existence conditions for chairs, beyond those of the word 'chair' [Thomasson] |
| 14467 | Ordinary objects are rejected, to avoid contradictions, or for greater economy in thought [Thomasson] |
| 14479 | To individuate people we need conventions, but conventions are made up by people [Thomasson] |
| 14481 | Wherever an object exists, there are intrinsic properties instantiating every modal profile [Thomasson] |
| 14482 | If the statue and the lump are two objects, they require separate properties, so we could add their masses [Thomasson] |
| 14483 | Given the similarity of statue and lump, what could possibly ground their modal properties? [Thomasson] |
| 15448 | The 'magical' view of structural universals says they are atoms, even though they have parts [Lewis] |
| 15449 | If 'methane' is an atomic structural universal, it has nothing to connect it to its carbon universals [Lewis] |
| 15439 | The 'pictorial' view of structural universals says they are wholes made of universals as parts [Lewis] |
| 15441 | The structural universal 'methane' needs the universal 'hydrogen' four times over [Lewis] |
| 15445 | Butane and Isobutane have the same atoms, but different structures [Lewis] |
| 15434 | Structural universals have a necessary connection to the universals forming its parts [Lewis] |
| 15437 | We can't get rid of structural universals if there are no simple universals [Lewis] |
| 15446 | Composition is not just making new things from old; there are too many counterexamples [Lewis] |
| 15440 | A whole is distinct from its parts, but is not a further addition in ontology [Lewis] |
| 15444 | Different things (a toy house and toy car) can be made of the same parts at different times [Lewis] |
| 14476 | Identity claims between objects are only well-formed if the categories are specified [Thomasson] |
| 14477 | Identical entities must be of the same category, and meet the criteria for the category [Thomasson] |
| 14478 | Modal Conventionalism says modality is analytic, not intrinsic to the world, and linguistic [Thomasson] |
| 14466 | A chief task of philosophy is making reflective sense of our common sense worldview [Thomasson] |
| 15450 | Maybe abstraction is just mereological subtraction [Lewis] |
| 4983 | There are no rules linking thought and behaviour, because endless other thoughts intervene [Davidson] |
| 3529 | Reduction is impossible because mind is holistic and brain isn't [Davidson, by Maslin] |
| 2307 | Anomalous monism says nothing at all about the relationship between mental and physical [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 5497 | Mind is outside science, because it is humanistic and partly normative [Davidson, by Lycan] |
| 4081 | Anomalous monism says causes are events, so the mental and physical are identical, without identical properties [Davidson, by Crane] |
| 2321 | If rule-following and reason are 'anomalies', does that make reductionism impossible? [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 3404 | Davidson claims that mental must be physical, to make mental causation possible [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 3405 | If mental causation is lawless, it is only possible if mental events have physical properties [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 16041 | Supervenience of the mental means physical changes mental, and mental changes physical [Davidson] |
| 6620 | Davidson sees identity as between events, not states, since they are related in causation [Davidson, by Lowe] |
| 3429 | Multiple realisability was worse news for physicalism than anomalous monism was [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 15443 | Mathematicians abstract by equivalence classes, but that doesn't turn a many into one [Lewis] |
| 14475 | How can causal theories of reference handle nonexistence claims? [Thomasson] |
| 14474 | Pure causal theories of reference have the 'qua problem', of what sort of things is being referred to [Thomasson] |
| 14488 | Analyticity is revealed through redundancy, as in 'He bought a house and a building' [Thomasson] |
| 3524 | Causation is either between events, or between descriptions of events [Davidson, by Maslin] |
| 3526 | Whether an event is a causal explanation depends on how it is described [Davidson, by Maslin] |