55 ideas
| 17663 | If you know what it is, investigation is pointless. If you don't, investigation is impossible [Armstrong] |
| 22285 | Impredicative definitions are circular, but fine for picking out, rather than creating something [Potter] |
| 22301 | The Identity Theory says a proposition is true if it coincides with what makes it true [Potter] |
| 22324 | It has been unfortunate that externalism about truth is equated with correspondence [Potter] |
| 22279 | Frege's sign |--- meant judgements, but the modern |- turnstile means inference, with intecedents [Potter] |
| 22291 | Deductivism can't explain how the world supports unconditional conclusions [Potter] |
| 22295 | Modern logical truths are true under all interpretations of the non-logical words [Potter] |
| 22310 | The formalist defence against Gödel is to reject his metalinguistic concept of truth [Potter] |
| 22298 | Why is fictional arithmetic applicable to the real world? [Potter] |
| 22287 | If 'concrete' is the negative of 'abstract', that means desires and hallucinations are concrete [Potter] |
| 17688 | Negative facts are supervenient on positive facts, suggesting they are positive facts [Armstrong] |
| 17691 | Nothing is genuinely related to itself [Armstrong] |
| 22284 | 'Greater than', which is the ancestral of 'successor', strictly orders the natural numbers [Potter] |
| 17679 | All instances of some property are strictly identical [Armstrong] |
| 12677 | Armstrong holds that all basic properties are categorical [Armstrong, by Ellis] |
| 17666 | Actualism means that ontology cannot contain what is merely physically possible [Armstrong] |
| 17667 | Dispositions exist, but their truth-makers are actual or categorical properties [Armstrong] |
| 17687 | If everything is powers there is a vicious regress, as powers are defined by more powers [Armstrong] |
| 17678 | Universals are just the repeatable features of a world [Armstrong] |
| 17669 | Realist regularity theories of laws need universals, to pick out the same phenomena [Armstrong] |
| 17677 | Past, present and future must be equally real if universals are instantiated [Armstrong] |
| 17686 | Universals are abstractions from states of affairs [Armstrong] |
| 15442 | Universals are abstractions from their particular instances [Armstrong, by Lewis] |
| 10197 | An immanent universal is wholly present in more than one place [Zimmerman,DW] |
| 17668 | It is likely that particulars can be individuated by unique conjunctions of properties [Armstrong] |
| 17680 | The identity of a thing with itself can be ruled out as a pseudo-property [Armstrong] |
| 10198 | If only two indiscernible electrons exist, future differences must still be possible [Zimmerman,DW] |
| 10199 | Discernible differences at different times may just be in counterparts [Zimmerman,DW] |
| 17693 | The necessary/contingent distinction may need to recognise possibilities as real [Armstrong] |
| 22281 | A material conditional cannot capture counterfactual reasoning [Potter] |
| 22327 | Knowledge from a drunken schoolteacher is from a reliable and unreliable process [Potter] |
| 17685 | Induction aims at 'all Fs', but abduction aims at hidden or theoretical entities [Armstrong] |
| 17683 | Science suggests that the predicate 'grue' is not a genuine single universal [Armstrong] |
| 17675 | Unlike 'green', the 'grue' predicate involves a time and a change [Armstrong] |
| 17674 | The raven paradox has three disjuncts, confirmed by confirming any one of them [Armstrong] |
| 17672 | A good reason for something (the smoke) is not an explanation of it (the fire) [Armstrong] |
| 17684 | To explain observations by a regular law is to explain the observations by the observations [Armstrong] |
| 17676 | Best explanations explain the most by means of the least [Armstrong] |
| 22273 | Traditionally there are twelve categories of judgement, in groups of three [Potter] |
| 22290 | The phrase 'the concept "horse"' can't refer to a concept, because it is saturated [Potter] |
| 17664 | Each subject has an appropriate level of abstraction [Armstrong] |
| 22283 | Compositionality should rely on the parsing tree, which may contain more than sentence components [Potter] |
| 22282 | 'Direct compositonality' says the components wholly explain a sentence meaning [Potter] |
| 22296 | Compositionality is more welcome in logic than in linguistics (which is more contextual) [Potter] |
| 17692 | We can't deduce the phenomena from the One [Armstrong] |
| 17689 | Absences might be effects, but surely not causes? [Armstrong] |
| 17662 | Science depends on laws of nature to study unobserved times and spaces [Armstrong] |
| 17682 | A universe couldn't consist of mere laws [Armstrong] |
| 17690 | Oaken conditional laws, Iron universal laws, and Steel necessary laws [Armstrong, by PG] |
| 17670 | Newton's First Law refers to bodies not acted upon by a force, but there may be no such body [Armstrong] |
| 8582 | Regularities are lawful if a second-order universal unites two first-order universals [Armstrong, by Lewis] |
| 17671 | A naive regularity view says if it never occurs then it is impossible [Armstrong] |
| 17681 | The laws of nature link properties with properties [Armstrong] |
| 16246 | Rather than take necessitation between universals as primitive, just make laws primitive [Maudlin on Armstrong] |
| 9480 | Armstrong has an unclear notion of contingent necessitation, which can't necessitate anything [Bird on Armstrong] |