36 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] |
| 9023 | If you say that a contradiction is true, you change the meaning of 'not', and so change the subject [Quine] |
| 9012 | Talk of 'truth' when sentences are mentioned; it reminds us that reality is the point of sentences [Quine] |
| 9011 | Truth is redundant for single sentences; we do better to simply speak the sentence [Quine] |
| 9013 | We can eliminate 'or' from our basic theory, by paraphrasing 'p or q' as 'not(not-p and not-q)' [Quine] |
| 9020 | My logical grammar has sentences by predication, then negation, conjunction, and existential quantification [Quine] |
| 9028 | Maybe logical truth reflects reality, but in different ways in different languages [Quine] |
| 10014 | Quine rejects second-order logic, saying that predicates refer to multiple objects [Quine, by Hodes] |
| 10828 | Quantifying over predicates is treating them as names of entities [Quine] |
| 9024 | Excluded middle has three different definitions [Quine] |
| 10012 | Quantification theory can still be proved complete if we add identity [Quine] |
| 9016 | Names are not essential, because naming can be turned into predication [Quine] |
| 9015 | Universal quantification is widespread, but it is definable in terms of existential quantification [Quine] |
| 9025 | You can't base quantification on substituting names for variables, if the irrationals cannot all be named [Quine] |
| 9026 | Some quantifications could be false substitutionally and true objectually, because of nameless objects [Quine] |
| 10705 | Putting a predicate letter in a quantifier is to make it the name of an entity [Quine] |
| 9027 | A sentence is logically true if all sentences with that grammatical structure are true [Quine] |
| 9017 | Predicates are not names; predicates are the other parties to predication [Quine] |
| 9018 | A physical object is the four-dimensional material content of a portion of space-time [Quine] |
| 9019 | Four-d objects helps predication of what no longer exists, and quantification over items from different times [Quine] |
| 4577 | There is no necessity higher than natural necessity, and that is just regularity [Quine] |
| 9014 | Some conditionals can be explained just by negation and conjunction: not(p and not-q) [Quine] |
| 12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
| 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] |
| 9009 | Single words are strongly synonymous if their interchange preserves truth [Quine] |
| 9007 | It makes no sense to say that two sentences express the same proposition [Quine] |
| 9008 | There is no rule for separating the information from other features of sentences [Quine] |
| 9010 | We can abandon propositions, and just talk of sentences and equivalence [Quine] |
| 9021 | A good way of explaining an expression is saying what conditions make its contexts true [Quine] |
| 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] |