25 ideas
| 13338 | '"It is snowing" is true if and only if it is snowing' is a partial definition of the concept of truth [Tarski] |
| 13337 | A language: primitive terms, then definition rules, then sentences, then axioms, and finally inference rules [Tarski] |
| 13335 | Semantics is the concepts of connections of language to reality, such as denotation, definition and truth [Tarski] |
| 13336 | A language containing its own semantics is inconsistent - but we can use a second language [Tarski] |
| 13339 | A sentence is satisfied when we can assert the sentence when the variables are assigned [Tarski] |
| 13340 | Satisfaction is the easiest semantical concept to define, and the others will reduce to it [Tarski] |
| 13341 | Using the definition of truth, we can prove theories consistent within sound logics [Tarski] |
| 9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
| 8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
| 22593 | Our sensation of light may not be the same as what produces the sensation [Descartes] |
| 8424 | Determinism says there can't be two identical worlds up to a time, with identical laws, which then differ [Lewis] |
| 8420 | A proposition is a set of possible worlds where it is true [Lewis] |
| 16569 | The Hot, Cold, Wet and Dry of the philosophers need themselves to be explained [Descartes] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 20964 | Descartes said there was conservation of 'quantity of motion' [Descartes, by Papineau] |