62 ideas
12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
16512 | Semantic facts are preferable to transcendental philosophical fiction [Wiggins] |
10308 | Questions about objects are questions about certain non-vacuous singular terms [Hale] |
10314 | An expression is a genuine singular term if it resists elimination by paraphrase [Hale] |
10316 | We should decide whether singular terms are genuine by their usage [Hale] |
10312 | Often the same singular term does not ensure reliable inference [Hale] |
10313 | Plenty of clear examples have singular terms with no ontological commitment [Hale] |
10322 | If singular terms can't be language-neutral, then we face a relativity about their objects [Hale] |
17529 | Maybe the concept needed under which things coincide must also yield a principle of counting [Wiggins] |
17530 | The sortal needed for identities may not always be sufficient to support counting [Wiggins] |
10512 | The abstract/concrete distinction is based on what is perceivable, causal and located [Hale] |
10517 | Colours and points seem to be both concrete and abstract [Hale] |
10519 | The abstract/concrete distinction is in the relations in the identity-criteria of object-names [Hale] |
10520 | Token-letters and token-words are concrete objects, type-letters and type-words abstract [Hale] |
10524 | There is a hierarchy of abstraction, based on steps taken by equivalence relations [Hale] |
16523 | Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts [Wiggins] |
16524 | Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality [Wiggins] |
16526 | Animal classifications: the Emperor's, fabulous, innumerable, like flies, stray dogs, embalmed…. [Wiggins] |
10318 | Realists take universals to be the referrents of both adjectives and of nouns [Hale] |
10511 | It is doubtful if one entity, a universal, can be picked out by both predicates and abstract nouns [Hale] |
10521 | If F can't have location, there is no problem of things having F in different locations [Hale] |
10310 | Objections to Frege: abstracta are unknowable, non-independent, unstatable, unindividuated [Hale] |
10518 | Shapes and directions are of something, but games and musical compositions are not [Hale] |
10513 | Many abstract objects, such as chess, seem non-spatial, but are not atemporal [Hale] |
10514 | If the mental is non-spatial but temporal, then it must be classified as abstract [Hale] |
10523 | Being abstract is based on a relation between things which are spatially separated [Hale] |
10307 | The modern Fregean use of the term 'object' is much broader than the ordinary usage [Hale] |
10315 | We can't believe in a 'whereabouts' because we ask 'what kind of object is it?' [Hale] |
16492 | Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out [Wiggins] |
16493 | Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers [Wiggins] |
16496 | Singling out extends back and forward in time [Wiggins] |
16495 | The only singling out is singling out 'as' something [Wiggins] |
16501 | In Aristotle's sense, saying x falls under f is to say what x is [Wiggins] |
16506 | Every determinate thing falls under a sortal, which fixes its persistence [Wiggins] |
16509 | Natural kinds are well suited to be the sortals which fix substances [Wiggins] |
16514 | Artefacts are individuated by some matter having a certain function [Wiggins] |
16510 | Nominal essences don't fix membership, ignore evolution, and aren't contextual [Wiggins] |
16503 | 'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing [Wiggins] |
16499 | A restored church is the same 'church', but not the same 'building' or 'brickwork' [Wiggins] |
16515 | A thing begins only once; for a clock, it is when its making is first completed [Wiggins] |
16517 | Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction [Wiggins] |
10522 | The relations featured in criteria of identity are always equivalence relations [Hale] |
16498 | Identity cannot be defined, because definitions are identities [Wiggins] |
16497 | Leibniz's Law (not transitivity, symmetry, reflexivity) marks what is peculiar to identity [Wiggins] |
16502 | Identity is primitive [Wiggins] |
10321 | We sometimes apply identity without having a real criterion [Hale] |
16521 | A is necessarily A, so if B is A, then B is also necessarily A [Wiggins] |
16505 | By the principle of Indiscernibility, a symmetrical object could only be half of itself! [Wiggins] |
16494 | We want to explain sameness as coincidence of substance, not as anything qualitative [Wiggins] |
16522 | It is hard or impossible to think of Caesar as not human [Wiggins] |
12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
16525 | Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience [Wiggins] |
12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
16518 | We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us [Wiggins] |
16511 | A 'conception' of a horse is a full theory of what it is (and not just the 'concept') [Wiggins] |
12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |