26 ideas
| 1630 | We can only see an alien language in terms of our own thought structures (e.g. physical/abstract) [Quine] |
| 5747 | "No entity without identity" - our ontology must contain items with settled identity conditions [Quine, by Melia] |
| 7925 | There is no proper identity concept for properties, and it is hard to distinguish one from two [Quine] |
| 9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
| 13387 | Our conceptual scheme becomes more powerful when we posit abstract objects [Quine] |
| 8277 | I prefer 'no object without identity' to Quine's 'no entity without identity' [Lowe on Quine] |
| 8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
| 23111 | If we say that freedom depends on rationality, the irrational actions are not free [Sidgwick] |
| 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] |
| 1631 | You could know the complete behavioural conditions for a foreign language, and still not know their beliefs [Quine] |
| 1632 | Translation of our remote past or language could be as problematic as alien languages [Quine] |
| 23059 | Self-interest is not rational, if the self is just a succession of memories and behaviour [Sidgwick, by Gray] |
| 4129 | It is self-evident (from the point of view of the Universe) that no individual has more importance than another [Sidgwick] |
| 20588 | Sidwick argues for utilitarian institutions, rather than actions [Sidgwick, by Tuckness/Wolf] |
| 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] |