88 ideas
| 18730 | The history of philosophy only matters if the subject is a choice between rival theories [Wittgenstein] |
| 18704 | Philosophy tries to be rid of certain intellectual puzzles, irrelevant to daily life [Wittgenstein] |
| 18710 | Philosophers express puzzlement, but don't clearly state the puzzle [Wittgenstein] |
| 18732 | We don't need a theory of truth, because we use the word perfectly well [Wittgenstein] |
| 18714 | We already know what we want to know, and analysis gives us no new facts [Wittgenstein] |
| 18706 | Words of the same kind can be substituted in a proposition without producing nonsense [Wittgenstein] |
| 18719 | Grammar says that saying 'sound is red' is not false, but nonsense [Wittgenstein] |
| 18735 | Talking nonsense is not following the rules [Wittgenstein] |
| 18731 | There is no theory of truth, because it isn't a concept [Wittgenstein] |
| 18707 | All thought has the logical form of reality [Wittgenstein] |
| 18724 | In logic nothing is hidden [Wittgenstein] |
| 18709 | Laws of logic are like laws of chess - if you change them, it's just a different game [Wittgenstein] |
| 18736 | Contradiction is between two rules, not between rule and reality [Wittgenstein] |
| 18723 | We may correctly use 'not' without making the rule explicit [Wittgenstein] |
| 18718 | Saying 'and' has meaning is just saying it works in a sentence [Wittgenstein] |
| 18727 | A person's name doesn't mean their body; bodies don't sit down, and their existence can be denied [Wittgenstein] |
| 18738 | We don't get 'nearer' to something by adding decimals to 1.1412... (root-2) [Wittgenstein] |
| 18708 | Infinity is not a number, so doesn't say how many; it is the property of a law [Wittgenstein] |
| 14562 | A process is unified as an expression of a collection of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14541 | Events are essentially changes; property exemplifications are just states of affairs [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18737 | There are no positive or negative facts; these are just the forms of propositions [Wittgenstein] |
| 14553 | Weak emergence is just unexpected, and strong emergence is beyond all deduction [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14538 | Powers explain properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14555 | Powers offer no more explanation of nature than laws do [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14557 | Powers are not just basic forces, since they combine to make new powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14583 | Dispositionality is a natural selection function, picking outcomes from the range of possibilities [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14536 | We say 'power' and 'disposition' are equivalent, but some say dispositions are manifestable [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14584 | The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14582 | Might dispositions be reduced to normativity, or to intentionality? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18715 | Using 'green' is a commitment to future usage of 'green' [Wittgenstein] |
| 7720 | Two things can only resemble one another in some respect, and that may reintroduce a universal [Lowe] |
| 7712 | On substances, Leibniz emphasises unity, Spinoza independence, Locke relations to qualities [Lowe] |
| 14542 | If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14535 | Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14561 | Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14579 | Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14580 | Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14552 | Relations are naturally necessary when they are generated by the essential mechanisms of the world [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14578 | Possibility might be non-contradiction, or recombinations of the actual, or truth in possible worlds [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14549 | Maybe truths are necessitated by the facts which are their truthmakers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18726 | For each necessity in the world there is an arbitrary rule of language [Wittgenstein] |
| 18712 | Understanding is translation, into action or into other symbols [Wittgenstein] |
| 14585 | We have more than five senses; balance and proprioception, for example [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18280 | We live in sense-data, but talk about physical objects [Wittgenstein] |
| 18729 | Part of what we mean by stating the facts is the way we tend to experience them [Wittgenstein] |
| 7710 | Perception is a mode of belief-acquisition, and does not involve sensation [Lowe] |
| 7711 | Science requires a causal theory - perception of an object must be an experience caused by the object [Lowe] |
| 18734 | If you remember wrongly, then there must be some other criterion than your remembering [Wittgenstein] |
| 14576 | Smoking disposes towards cancer; smokers without cancer do not falsify this claim [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14551 | If causation were necessary, the past would fix the future, and induction would be simple [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14571 | The only full uniformities in nature occur from the essences of fundamental things [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14570 | Nature is not completely uniform, and some regular causes sometimes fail to produce their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18721 | Explanation and understanding are the same [Wittgenstein] |
| 18720 | Explanation gives understanding by revealing the full multiplicity of the thing [Wittgenstein] |
| 14569 | It is tempting to think that only entailment provides a full explanation [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18716 | A machine strikes us as being a rule of movement [Wittgenstein] |
| 14568 | A structure won't give a causal explanation unless we know the powers of the structure [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18713 | If an explanation is good, the symbol is used properly in the future [Wittgenstein] |
| 7714 | Personal identity is a problem across time (diachronic) and at an instant (synchronic) [Lowe] |
| 14556 | Strong emergence seems to imply top-down causation, originating in consciousness [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18717 | Thought is an activity which we perform by the expression of it [Wittgenstein] |
| 7715 | Mentalese isn't a language, because it isn't conventional, or a means of public communication [Lowe] |
| 7722 | If meaning is mental pictures, explain "the cat (or dog!) is NOT on the mat" [Lowe] |
| 18725 | A proposition draws a line around the facts which agree with it [Wittgenstein] |
| 18728 | The meaning of a proposition is the mode of its verification [Wittgenstein] |
| 18705 | Words function only in propositions, like levers in a machine [Wittgenstein] |
| 18711 | A proposition is any expression which can be significantly negated [Wittgenstein] |
| 14566 | Causation by absence is not real causation, but part of our explanatory practices [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14577 | Causation may not be transitive. Does a fire cause itself to be extinguished by the sprinklers? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14563 | Causation is the passing around of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14587 | We take causation to be primitive, as it is hard to see how it could be further reduced [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14533 | Causation doesn't have two distinct relata; it is a single unfolding process [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14558 | A collision is a process, which involves simultaneous happenings, but not instantaneous ones [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14559 | Does causation need a third tying ingredient, or just two that meet, or might there be a single process? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14565 | Sugar dissolving is a process taking time, not one event and then another [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14567 | Privileging one cause is just an epistemic or pragmatic matter, not an ontological one [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14537 | Coincidence is conjunction without causation; smoking causing cancer is the reverse [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14572 | Is a cause because of counterfactual dependence, or is the dependence because there is a cause? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14573 | Occasionally a cause makes no difference (pre-emption, perhaps) so the counterfactual is false [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14574 | Cases of preventing a prevention may give counterfactual dependence without causation [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14539 | Nature can be interfered with, so a cause never necessitates its effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14550 | We assert causes without asserting that they necessitate their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14546 | Necessary causation should survive antecedent strengthening, but no cause can always survive that [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14575 | A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14548 | There may be necessitation in the world, but causation does not supply it [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14554 | Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14564 | If laws are equations, cause and effect must be simultaneous (or the law would be falsified)! [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18733 | Laws of nature are an aspect of the phenomena, and are just our mode of description [Wittgenstein] |