Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence', 'Semantics for Natural Languages' and 'Apriority and Existence'

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15 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems
Metaphysics aims to identify categories of being, and show their interdependency [Lowe]
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 6. Metaphysics as Conceptual
Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of things [Lowe]
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 4. Alethic Modal Logic
The main modal logics disagree over three key formulae [Yablo]
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / a. Numbers
If 'the number of Democrats is on the rise', does that mean that 50 million is on the rise? [Yablo]
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 4. Mathematical Empiricism / b. Indispensability of mathematics
We must treat numbers as existing in order to express ourselves about the arrangement of planets [Yablo]
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 9. Fictional Mathematics
Platonic objects are really created as existential metaphors [Yablo]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 7. Fictionalism
We quantify over events, worlds, etc. in order to make logical possibilities clearer [Yablo]
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 1. Nominalism / c. Nominalism about abstracta
Philosophers keep finding unexpected objects, like models, worlds, functions, numbers, events, sets, properties [Yablo]
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / d. Coincident objects
Holes, shadows and spots of light can coincide without being identical [Lowe]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 8. Essence as Explanatory
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
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
Each thing has to be of a general kind, because it belongs to some category [Lowe]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
Davidson rejected ordinary meaning, and just used truth and reference instead [Davidson, by Soames]
Davidson aimed to show that language is structured by first-order logic [Davidson, by Smart]
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / d. Metaphor
Hardly a word in the language is devoid of metaphorical potential [Yablo]