47 ideas
| 4697 | There has been a distinct 'Social Turn' in recent philosophy, like the earlier 'Linguistic Turn' [O'Grady] |
| 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] |
| 17713 | After 1903, Husserl avoids metaphysical commitments [Mares] |
| 4731 | Good reasoning will avoid contradiction, enhance coherence, not ignore evidence, and maximise evidence [O'Grady] |
| 4735 | Just as maps must simplify their subject matter, so thought has to be reductionist about reality [O'Grady] |
| 4703 | The epistemic theory of truth presents it as 'that which is licensed by our best theory of reality' [O'Grady] |
| 4701 | To say a relative truth is inexpressible in other frameworks is 'weak', while saying it is false is 'strong' [O'Grady] |
| 4705 | Logical relativism appears if we allow more than one legitimate logical system [O'Grady] |
| 4700 | A third value for truth might be "indeterminate", or a point on a scale between 'true' and 'false' [O'Grady] |
| 4704 | Wittgenstein reduced Russell's five primitive logical symbols to a mere one [O'Grady] |
| 17715 | The truth of the axioms doesn't matter for pure mathematics, but it does for applied [Mares] |
| 17716 | Mathematics is relations between properties we abstract from experience [Mares] |
| 4711 | Anti-realists say our theories (such as wave-particle duality) give reality incompatible properties [O'Grady] |
| 4698 | What counts as a fact partly depends on the availability of human concepts to describe them [O'Grady] |
| 4715 | We may say that objects have intrinsic identity conditions, but still allow multiple accounts of them [O'Grady] |
| 4719 | Maybe developments in logic and geometry have shown that the a priori may be relative [O'Grady] |
| 17703 | Light in straight lines is contingent a priori; stipulated as straight, because they happen to be so [Mares] |
| 17714 | Aristotelians dislike the idea of a priori judgements from pure reason [Mares] |
| 4720 | Sense-data are only safe from scepticism if they are primitive and unconceptualised [O'Grady] |
| 17705 | Empiricists say rationalists mistake imaginative powers for modal insights [Mares] |
| 12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
| 4722 | Modern epistemology centres on debates about foundations, and about external justification [O'Grady] |
| 4724 | Internalists say the reasons for belief must be available to the subject, and externalists deny this [O'Grady] |
| 17700 | The most popular view is that coherent beliefs explain one another [Mares] |
| 4723 | Coherence involves support from explanation and evidence, and also probability and confirmation [O'Grady] |
| 4709 | Ontological relativists are anti-realists, who deny that our theories carve nature at the joints [O'Grady] |
| 4725 | Contextualism says that knowledge is relative to its context; 'empty' depends on your interests [O'Grady] |
| 12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
| 17704 | Operationalism defines concepts by our ways of measuring them [Mares] |
| 12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
| 4732 | One may understand a realm of ideas, but be unable to judge their rationality or truth [O'Grady] |
| 12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
| 17710 | Aristotelian justification uses concepts abstracted from experience [Mares] |
| 17706 | The essence of a concept is either its definition or its conceptual relations? [Mares] |
| 4710 | Verificationism was attacked by the deniers of the analytic-synthetic distinction, needed for 'facts' [O'Grady] |
| 17701 | Possible worlds semantics has a nice compositional account of modal statements [Mares] |
| 17702 | Unstructured propositions are sets of possible worlds; structured ones have components [Mares] |
| 4717 | If we abandon the analytic-synthetic distinction, scepticism about meaning may be inevitable [O'Grady] |
| 4706 | Early Quine says all beliefs could be otherwise, but later he said we would assume mistranslation [O'Grady] |
| 4734 | Cryptographers can recognise that something is a language, without translating it [O'Grady] |
| 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] |
| 17708 | Maybe space has points, but processes always need regions with a size [Mares] |
| 4727 | The chief problem for fideists is other fideists who hold contrary ideas [O'Grady] |