91 ideas
| 5196 | Philosophy is a department of logic [Ayer] |
| 5189 | Philosophers should abandon speculation, as philosophy is wholly critical [Ayer] |
| 15169 | Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle] |
| 7919 | Humeans rejected the a priori synthetic, and so rejected even Kantian metaphysics [Ayer, by Macdonald,C] |
| 5195 | Critics say analysis can only show the parts, and not their distinctive configuration [Ayer] |
| 5179 | Philosophy deals with the questions that scientists do not wish to handle [Ayer] |
| 15164 | We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle] |
| 4749 | We cannot analyse the concept of 'truth', because it is simply a mark that a sentence is asserted [Ayer] |
| 5202 | Maths and logic are true universally because they are analytic or tautological [Ayer] |
| 6523 | Positivists regard ontology as either meaningless or stipulated [Ayer, by Robinson,H] |
| 15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
| 15184 | Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle] |
| 15172 | Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle] |
| 15181 | Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle] |
| 15173 | That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle] |
| 15185 | We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle] |
| 15175 | Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle] |
| 15032 | Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider] |
| 15179 | To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle] |
| 15171 | The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle] |
| 15167 | Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle] |
| 15177 | Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle] |
| 15176 | The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle] |
| 15174 | A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle] |
| 15183 | 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle] |
| 5183 | Only tautologies can be certain; other propositions can only be probable [Ayer] |
| 6525 | Logical positivists could never give the sense-data equivalent of 'there is a table next door' [Robinson,H on Ayer] |
| 5170 | Material things are constructions from actual and possible occurrences of sense-contents [Ayer] |
| 5198 | We could verify 'a thing can't be in two places at once' by destroying one of the things [Ierubino on Ayer] |
| 2619 | Whether geometry can be applied to reality is an empirical question outside of geometry [Ayer] |
| 5197 | By changing definitions we could make 'a thing can't be in two places at once' a contradiction [Ayer] |
| 15165 | A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle] |
| 5204 | To say that a proposition is true a priori is to say that it is a tautology [Ayer] |
| 6524 | Positivists prefer sense-data to objects, because the vocabulary covers both illusions and perceptions [Ayer, by Robinson,H] |
| 5193 | Causal and representative theories of perception are wrong as they refer to unobservables [Ayer] |
| 5200 | The main claim of rationalism is that thought is an independent source of knowledge [Ayer] |
| 4729 | Empiricism lacked a decent account of the a priori, until Ayer said it was entirely analytic [O'Grady on Ayer] |
| 5180 | All propositions (especially 'metaphysics') must begin with the senses [Ayer] |
| 5169 | My empiricism logically distinguishes analytic and synthetic propositions, and metaphysical verbiage [Ayer] |
| 5185 | It is further sense-experience which informs us of the mistakes that arise out of sense-experience [Ayer] |
| 5199 | Empiricism, it is said, cannot account for our knowledge of necessary truths [Ayer] |
| 17405 | If a theory can be fudged, so can observations [Scerri] |
| 17397 | The periodic system is the big counterexample to Kuhn's theory of revolutionary science [Scerri] |
| 5190 | The induction problem is to prove generalisations about the future based on the past [Ayer] |
| 5191 | We can't use the uniformity of nature to prove induction, as that would be circular [Ayer] |
| 17393 | Scientists eventually seek underlying explanations for every pattern [Scerri] |
| 17403 | The periodic table suggests accommodation to facts rates above prediction [Scerri] |
| 5177 | Other minds are 'metaphysical' objects, because I can never observe their experiences [Ayer] |
| 5178 | A conscious object is by definition one that behaves in a certain way, so behaviour proves consciousness [Ayer] |
| 5172 | If the self is meaningful, it must be constructed from sense-experiences [Ayer] |
| 5173 | Two experiences belong to one self if their contents belong with one body [Ayer] |
| 5176 | Empiricists can define personal identity as bodily identity, which consists of sense-contents [Ayer] |
| 5171 | The supposed 'gulf' between mind and matter is based on the senseless concept of 'substances' [Ayer] |
| 15168 | That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle] |
| 5181 | A sentence is factually significant to someone if they know how to verify its proposition [Ayer] |
| 5184 | Factual propositions imply (in conjunction with a few other premises) possible experiences [Ayer] |
| 5186 | Tautologies and empirical hypotheses form the entire class of significant propositions [Ayer] |
| 15166 | Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle] |
| 15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
| 5205 | Moral intuition is worthless if there is no criterion to decide between intuitions [Ayer] |
| 23725 | Ayer defends the emotivist version of expressivism [Ayer, by Smith,M] |
| 5206 | To say an act is wrong makes no further statement about it, but merely expresses disapproval [Ayer] |
| 17394 | Natural kinds are what are differentiated by nature, and not just by us [Scerri] |
| 17421 | If elements are natural kinds, might the groups of the periodic table also be natural kinds? [Scerri] |
| 17396 | The colour of gold is best explained by relativistic effects due to fast-moving inner-shell electrons [Scerri] |
| 15178 | Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle] |
| 17420 | The stability of nuclei can be estimated through their binding energy [Scerri] |
| 17411 | If all elements are multiples of one (of hydrogen), that suggests once again that matter is unified [Scerri] |
| 17407 | The electron is the main source of chemical properties [Scerri] |
| 17415 | A big chemistry idea is that covalent bonds are shared electrons, not transfer of electrons [Scerri] |
| 17392 | How can poisonous elements survive in the nutritious compound they compose? [Scerri] |
| 17391 | Periodicity and bonding are the two big ideas in chemistry [Scerri] |
| 17404 | Chemistry does not work from general principles, but by careful induction from large amounts of data [Scerri] |
| 17409 | Does radioactivity show that only physics can explain chemistry? [Scerri] |
| 17418 | It is now thought that all the elements have literally evolved from hydrogen [Scerri] |
| 17398 | 19th C views said elements survived abstractly in compounds, but also as 'material ingredients' [Scerri] |
| 17406 | Moseley, using X-rays, showed that atomic number ordered better than atomic weight [Scerri] |
| 17408 | Some suggested basing the new periodic table on isotopes, not elements [Scerri] |
| 17412 | Elements are placed in the table by the number of positive charges - the atomic number [Scerri] |
| 17413 | Elements in the table are grouped by having the same number of outer-shell electrons [Scerri] |
| 17416 | Orthodoxy says the periodic table is explained by quantum mechanics [Scerri] |
| 17414 | Pauli explained the electron shells, but not the lengths of the periods in the table [Scerri] |
| 17395 | Elements were ordered by equivalent weight; later by atomic weight; finally by atomic number [Scerri] |
| 17422 | The best classification needs the deepest and most general principles of the atoms [Scerri] |
| 17419 | Since 99.96% of the universe is hydrogen and helium, the periodic table hardly matters [Scerri] |
| 17417 | To explain the table, quantum mechanics still needs to explain order of shell filling [Scerri] |
| 17410 | Moseley showed the elements progress in units, and thereby clearly identified the gaps [Scerri] |
| 5208 | A person with non-empirical attributes is unintelligible. [Ayer] |
| 5187 | When we ascribe an attribute to a thing, we covertly assert that it exists [Ayer] |
| 5207 | If theism is non-sensical, then so is atheism. [Ayer] |
| 5209 | The 'truths' expressed by theists are not literally significant [Ayer] |