Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence', 'Russell's Ontological Development' and 'On Mental Entities'

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11 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]
2. Reason / D. Definition / 12. Paraphrase
Russell offered a paraphrase of definite description, to avoid the commitment to objects [Quine]
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]
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / d. Sense-data problems
Sense-data are dubious abstractions, with none of the plausibility of tables [Quine]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 4. Pro-Empiricism
Empiricism says evidence rests on the senses, but that insight is derived from science [Quine]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / a. Sentence meaning
Taking sentences as the unit of meaning makes useful paraphrasing possible [Quine]
Knowing a word is knowing the meanings of sentences which contain it [Quine]