Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence', 'Many, but almost one' and 'Lewis: reduction of mind (on himself)'

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22 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems
13917 Metaphysics aims to identify categories of being, and show their interdependency [Lowe]
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 6. Metaphysics as Conceptual
13919 Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of things [Lowe]
2. Reason / E. Argument / 1. Argument
3993 Arguments are nearly always open to challenge, but they help to explain a position rather than force people to believe [Lewis]
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 2. Reduction
3990 The whole truth supervenes on the physical truth [Lewis]
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / b. Types of supervenience
3991 Where pixels make up a picture, supervenience is reduction [Lewis]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / d. Vagueness as linguistic
15538 Semantic indecision explains vagueness (if we have precisifications to be undecided about) [Lewis]
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / b. Cat and its tail
15537 If cats are vague, we deny that the many cats are one, or deny that the one cat is many [Lewis]
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / d. Coincident objects
13918 Holes, shadows and spots of light can coincide without being identical [Lowe]
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects
15536 We have one cloud, but many possible boundaries and aggregates for it [Lewis]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 8. Essence as Explanatory
13921 All things must have an essence (a 'what it is'), or we would be unable to think about them [Lowe]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences
13922 Knowing an essence is just knowing what the thing is, not knowing some further thing [Lowe]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 4. Type Identity
13920 Each thing has to be of a general kind, because it belongs to some category [Lowe]
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / b. Purpose of mind
3995 A mind is an organ of representation [Lewis]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 1. Physical Mind
3994 Human pain might be one thing; Martian pain might be something else [Lewis]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 2. Reduction of Mind
3989 I am a reductionist about mind because I am an a priori reductionist about everything [Lewis]
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 4. Folk Psychology
3992 Folk psychology makes good predictions, by associating mental states with causal roles [Lewis]
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 4. Language of Thought
3996 Folk psychology doesn't say that there is a language of thought [Lewis]
18. Thought / C. Content / 6. Broad Content
3998 If you don't share an external world with a brain-in-a-vat, then externalism says you don't share any beliefs [Lewis]
3997 Nothing shows that all content is 'wide', or that wide content has logical priority [Lewis]
3999 A spontaneous duplicate of you would have your brain states but no experience, so externalism would deny him any beliefs [Lewis]
4000 Wide content derives from narrow content and relationships with external things [Lewis]
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / c. Principle of charity
15539 Basic to pragmatics is taking a message in a way that makes sense of it [Lewis]