Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance', 'The Philosophy of Philosophy' and 'A Defense of Abortion'

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22 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / e. Philosophy as reason
Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson]
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
The realist/anti-realist debate is notoriously obscure and fruitless [Williamson]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / b. Vagueness of reality
There cannot be vague objects, so there may be no such thing as a mountain [Williamson]
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects
Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson]
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 1. A Priori Necessary
Modal thinking isn't a special intuition; it is part of ordinary counterfactual thinking [Williamson]
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / a. Conceivable as possible
Williamson can't base metaphysical necessity on the psychology of causal counterfactuals [Lowe on Williamson]
We scorn imagination as a test of possibility, forgetting its role in counterfactuals [Williamson]
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 2. Self-Evidence
There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson]
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 2. Intuition
Intuition is neither powerful nor vacuous, but reveals linguistic or conceptual competence [Williamson]
When analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they present intuitions as their evidence [Williamson]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson]
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 5. Culture
If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson]
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 3. Abortion
The right to life is not a right not to be killed, but not to be killed unjustly [Thomson]
A newly fertilized ovum is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree [Thomson]
Maybe abortion can be justified despite the foetus having full human rights [Thomson, by Foot]
It can't be murder for a mother to perform an abortion on herself to save her own life [Thomson]
The foetus is safe in the womb, so abortion initiates its death, with the mother as the agent. [Foot on Thomson]
Is someone's right to life diminished if they were conceived by a rape? [Thomson]
The right to life does not bestow the right to use someone else's body to support that life [Thomson]
No one is morally required to make huge sacrifices to keep someone else alive for nine months [Thomson]
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 4. Regularities / b. Best system theory
Lewis later proposed the axioms at the intersection of the best theories (which may be few) [Mumford on Lewis]