71 ideas
23064 | So-called wisdom is just pondering things instead of acting [Cioran] |
16227 | Philosophers are good at denying the obvious [Hawley] |
23072 | Systems are the worst despotism, in philosophy and in life [Cioran] |
23075 | A text explained ceases to be a text [Cioran] |
23066 | Negation doesn't arise from reasoning, but from deep instincts [Cioran] |
16216 | Part of the sense of a proper name is a criterion of the thing's identity [Hawley] |
23077 | The word 'being' is very tempting, but in fact means nothing at all [Cioran] |
16211 | A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience [Hawley] |
23068 | People who really believe anti-realism don't bother to prove it [Cioran] |
16219 | Non-linguistic things cannot be indeterminate, because they don't have truth-values at all [Hawley] |
16223 | Maybe for the world to be vague, it must be vague in its foundations? [Hawley] |
16226 | Epistemic vagueness seems right in the case of persons [Hawley] |
16208 | Supervaluation refers to one vaguely specified thing, through satisfaction by everything in some range [Hawley] |
16221 | Supervaluationism takes what the truth-value would have been if indecision was resolved [Hawley] |
16230 | Maybe the only properties are basic ones like charge, mass and spin [Hawley] |
9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
16232 | An object is 'natural' if its stages are linked by certain non-supervenient relations [Hawley] |
16200 | Are sortals spatially maximal - so no cat part is allowed to be a cat? [Hawley] |
16237 | The modal features of statue and lump are disputed; when does it stop being that statue? [Hawley] |
16238 | Perdurantists can adopt counterpart theory, to explain modal differences of identical part-sums [Hawley] |
16220 | Vagueness is either in our knowledge, in our talk, or in reality [Hawley] |
16222 | Indeterminacy in objects and in properties are not distinct cases [Hawley] |
16228 | The constitution theory is endurantism plus more than one object in a place [Hawley] |
16229 | Constitution theory needs sortal properties like 'being a sweater' to distinguish it from its thread [Hawley] |
14492 | If the constitution view says thread and sweater are two things, why do we talk of one thing? [Hawley] |
16193 | 'Adverbialism' explains change by saying an object has-at-some-time a given property [Hawley] |
16195 | Presentism solves the change problem: the green banana ceases, so can't 'relate' to the yellow one [Hawley] |
16202 | The problem of change arises if there must be 'identity' of a thing over time [Hawley] |
16192 | Endurance theory can relate properties to times, or timed instantiations to properties [Hawley] |
16196 | Endurance is a sophisticated theory, covering properties, instantiation and time [Hawley] |
16197 | How does perdurance theory explain our concern for our own future selves? [Hawley] |
16191 | Perdurance needs an atemporal perspective, to say that the object 'has' different temporal parts [Hawley] |
16199 | If an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts, its mass is staggeringly large! [Hawley] |
16201 | Perdurance says things are sums of stages; Stage Theory says each stage is the thing [Hawley] |
16240 | If a life is essentially the sum of its temporal parts, it couldn't be shorter or longer than it was? [Hawley] |
16203 | Stage Theory seems to miss out the link between stages of the same object [Hawley] |
16204 | Stage Theory says every stage is a distinct object, which gives too many objects [Hawley] |
16212 | An isolated stage can't be a banana (which involves suitable relations to other stages) [Hawley] |
16213 | Stages of one thing are related by extrinsic counterfactual and causal relations [Hawley] |
16205 | The stages of Stage Theory seem too thin to populate the world, or to be referred to [Hawley] |
16206 | Stages must be as fine-grained in length as change itself, so any change is a new stage [Hawley] |
16225 | If two things might be identical, there can't be something true of one and false of the other [Hawley] |
8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
16239 | To decide whether something is a counterpart, we need to specify a relevant sortal concept [Hawley] |
23078 | Opinions are fine, but having convictions means something has gone wrong [Cioran] |
23073 | Convictions are failures to study anything thoroughly [Cioran] |
16218 | On any theory of self, it is hard to explain why we should care about our future selves [Hawley] |
23076 | If people always acted without words we would take them for robots [Cioran] |
8424 | Determinism says there can't be two identical worlds up to a time, with identical laws, which then differ [Lewis] |
23065 | If only we could write like a reptile, of endless sensations and no concepts! [Cioran] |
8420 | A proposition is a set of possible worlds where it is true [Lewis] |
23071 | We could only be responsible if we had consented before birth to who we are [Cioran] |
23070 | We morally dissolve if we spend time with excessive beauty [Cioran] |
23074 | In anxiety people cling to what reinforces it, because it is a deep need [Cioran] |
23069 | Fear cures boredom, because it is stronger [Cioran] |
23062 | It is better to watch the hours pass, than trying to fill them [Cioran] |
23067 | Suicide is pointless, because it always comes too late [Cioran] |
8405 | A theory of causation should explain why cause precedes effect, not take it for granted [Lewis, by Field,H] |
8427 | I reject making the direction of causation axiomatic, since that takes too much for granted [Lewis] |
10392 | It is just individious discrimination to pick out one cause and label it as 'the' cause [Lewis] |
8419 | The modern regularity view says a cause is a member of a minimal set of sufficient conditions [Lewis] |
8421 | Regularity analyses could make c an effect of e, or an epiphenomenon, or inefficacious, or pre-empted [Lewis] |
17525 | The counterfactual view says causes are necessary (rather than sufficient) for their effects [Lewis, by Bird] |
17524 | Lewis has basic causation, counterfactuals, and a general ancestral (thus handling pre-emption) [Lewis, by Bird] |
8397 | Counterfactual causation implies all laws are causal, which they aren't [Tooley on Lewis] |
8423 | My counterfactual analysis applies to particular cases, not generalisations [Lewis] |
8426 | One event causes another iff there is a causal chain from first to second [Lewis] |
16215 | Causation is nothing more than the counterfactuals it grounds? [Hawley] |
4795 | Lewis's account of counterfactuals is fine if we know what a law of nature is, but it won't explain the latter [Cohen,LJ on Lewis] |
16207 | Time could be discrete (like integers) or dense (rationals) or continuous (reals) [Hawley] |
23063 | The first man obviously found paradise unendurable [Cioran] |