46 ideas
| 12249 | 'Animal' is a genus and 'rational' is a specific difference [Oderberg] |
| 12242 | Definition distinguishes one kind from another, and individuation picks out members of the kind [Oderberg] |
| 12238 | The Aristotelian view is that numbers depend on (and are abstracted from) other things [Oderberg] |
| 12254 | Being is substantial/accidental, complete/incomplete, necessary/contingent, possible, relative, intrinsic.. [Oderberg] |
| 12253 | If tropes are in space and time, in what sense are they abstract? [Oderberg] |
| 9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
| 12256 | We need to distinguish the essential from the non-essential powers [Oderberg] |
| 12252 | Empiricists gave up 'substance', as unknowable substratum, or reducible to a bundle [Oderberg] |
| 12241 | Essences are real, about being, knowable, definable and classifiable [Oderberg, by PG] |
| 12244 | Nominalism is consistent with individual but not with universal essences [Oderberg] |
| 12240 | Essentialism is the main account of the unity of objects [Oderberg] |
| 12247 | Essence is not explanatory but constitutive [Oderberg] |
| 12258 | Properties are not part of an essence, but they flow from it [Oderberg] |
| 12257 | Could we replace essence with collections of powers? [Oderberg] |
| 12236 | Leibniz's Law is an essentialist truth [Oderberg] |
| 12250 | Bodies have act and potency, the latter explaining new kinds of existence [Oderberg] |
| 8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
| 12234 | Realism about possible worlds is circular, since it needs a criterion of 'possible' [Oderberg] |
| 12235 | Necessity of identity seems trivial, because it leaves out the real essence [Oderberg] |
| 12237 | Rigid designation has at least three essentialist presuppositions [Oderberg] |
| 8424 | Determinism says there can't be two identical worlds up to a time, with identical laws, which then differ [Lewis] |
| 23438 | Full rationality must include morality [Foot] |
| 8420 | A proposition is a set of possible worlds where it is true [Lewis] |
| 23437 | Practical reason is goodness in choosing actions [Foot] |
| 23436 | It is an odd Humean view to think a reason to act must always involve caring [Foot] |
| 23431 | Human defects are just like plant or animal defects [Foot] |
| 23432 | Concepts such as function, welfare, flourishing and interests only apply to living things [Foot] |
| 23433 | Humans need courage like a plant needs roots [Foot] |
| 23434 | There is no fact-value gap in 'owls should see in the dark' [Foot] |
| 23439 | Principles are not ultimate, but arise from the necessities of human life [Foot] |
| 23435 | If you demonstrate the reason to act, there is no further question of 'why should I?' [Foot] |
| 12245 | Essence is the source of a thing's characteristic behaviour [Oderberg] |
| 12246 | What makes Parmenidean reality a One rather than a Many? [Oderberg] |
| 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] |
| 12239 | The real essentialist is not merely a scientist [Oderberg] |
| 12243 | The reductionism found in scientific essentialism is mistaken [Oderberg] |
| 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] |