35 ideas
8207 | The quest for simplicity drove scientists to posit new entities, such as molecules in gases [Quine] |
8208 | In arithmetic, ratios, negatives, irrationals and imaginaries were created in order to generalise [Quine] |
8205 | Explaining events just by bodies can't explain two events identical in space-time [Quine] |
15435 | If you think universals are immanent, you must believe them to be sparse, and not every related predicate [Lewis] |
15451 | I assume there could be natural properties that are not instantiated in our world [Lewis] |
15433 | Tropes are particular properties, which cannot recur, but can be exact duplicates [Lewis] |
15436 | Universals are meant to give an account of resemblance [Lewis] |
15438 | We can add a primitive natural/unnatural distinction to class nominalism [Lewis] |
17000 | We might fix identities for small particulars, but it is utopian to hope for such things [Kripke] |
15448 | The 'magical' view of structural universals says they are atoms, even though they have parts [Lewis] |
15449 | If 'methane' is an atomic structural universal, it has nothing to connect it to its carbon universals [Lewis] |
15439 | The 'pictorial' view of structural universals says they are wholes made of universals as parts [Lewis] |
15441 | The structural universal 'methane' needs the universal 'hydrogen' four times over [Lewis] |
15445 | Butane and Isobutane have the same atoms, but different structures [Lewis] |
15434 | Structural universals have a necessary connection to the universals forming its parts [Lewis] |
15437 | We can't get rid of structural universals if there are no simple universals [Lewis] |
15446 | Composition is not just making new things from old; there are too many counterexamples [Lewis] |
11868 | A different piece of wood could have been used for that table; constitution isn't identity [Wiggins on Kripke] |
15440 | A whole is distinct from its parts, but is not a further addition in ontology [Lewis] |
15444 | Different things (a toy house and toy car) can be made of the same parts at different times [Lewis] |
17044 | A relation can clearly be reflexive, and identity is the smallest reflexive relation [Kripke] |
16999 | A vague identity may seem intransitive, and we might want to talk of 'counterparts' [Kripke] |
17058 | What many people consider merely physically necessary I consider completely necessary [Kripke] |
4970 | What is often held to be mere physical necessity is actually metaphysical necessity [Kripke] |
8206 | Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia [Quine] |
17059 | Unicorns are vague, so no actual or possible creature could count as a unicorn [Kripke] |
4950 | Possible worlds are useful in set theory, but can be very misleading elsewhere [Kripke] |
17003 | Kaplan's 'Dthat' is a useful operator for transforming a description into a rigid designation [Kripke] |
9221 | The best known objection to counterparts is Kripke's, that Humphrey doesn't care if his counterpart wins [Kripke, by Sider] |
17052 | The a priori analytic truths involving fixing of reference are contingent [Kripke] |
4969 | I regard the mind-body problem as wide open, and extremely confusing [Kripke] |
15450 | Maybe abstraction is just mereological subtraction [Lewis] |
15443 | Mathematicians abstract by equivalence classes, but that doesn't turn a many into one [Lewis] |
4956 | A description may fix a reference even when it is not true of its object [Kripke] |
17032 | Even if Gödel didn't produce his theorems, he's still called 'Gödel' [Kripke] |