76 ideas
| 19635 | Hegel produced modern optimism; he failed to grasp that consciousness never progresses [Hegel, by Cioran] |
| 8215 | Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book [Hegel, by Derrida] |
| 16011 | Hegel doesn't storm the heavens like the giants, but works his way up by syllogisms [Kierkegaard on Hegel] |
| 5433 | For Hegel, things are incomplete, and contain external references in their own nature [Hegel, by Russell] |
| 13567 | Ontology should give insight into or an explanation of the world revealed by science [Ellis] |
| 3301 | On the continent it is generally believed that metaphysics died with Hegel [Benardete,JA on Hegel] |
| 19661 | Making sufficient reason an absolute devalues the principle of non-contradiction [Hegel, by Meillassoux] |
| 20952 | Rather than in three stages, Hegel presented his dialectic as 'negation of the negation' [Hegel, by Bowie] |
| 13604 | Real possibility and necessity has the logic of S5, which links equivalence classes of worlds of the same kind [Ellis] |
| 17925 | Showing a disproof is impossible is not a proof, so don't eliminate double negation [Colyvan] |
| 17926 | Rejecting double negation elimination undermines reductio proofs [Colyvan] |
| 17924 | Excluded middle says P or not-P; bivalence says P is either true or false [Colyvan] |
| 21777 | Negation of negation doubles back into a self-relationship [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 13606 | Humean conceptions of reality drive the adoption of extensional logic [Ellis] |
| 17929 | Löwenheim proved his result for a first-order sentence, and Skolem generalised it [Colyvan] |
| 17930 | Axioms are 'categorical' if all of their models are isomorphic [Colyvan] |
| 17928 | Ordinal numbers represent order relations [Colyvan] |
| 17923 | Intuitionists only accept a few safe infinities [Colyvan] |
| 17941 | Infinitesimals were sometimes zero, and sometimes close to zero [Colyvan] |
| 17922 | Reducing real numbers to rationals suggested arithmetic as the foundation of maths [Colyvan] |
| 17936 | Transfinite induction moves from all cases, up to the limit ordinal [Colyvan] |
| 17940 | Most mathematical proofs are using set theory, but without saying so [Colyvan] |
| 17931 | Structuralism say only 'up to isomorphism' matters because that is all there is to it [Colyvan] |
| 17932 | If 'in re' structures relies on the world, does the world contain rich enough structures? [Colyvan] |
| 5645 | The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| 5646 | Hegel gives an ontological proof of the existence of everything [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| 21755 | For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 21754 | Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 22079 | Hegel said Kant's fixed categories actually vary with culture and era [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 13584 | The extension of a property is a contingent fact, so cannot be the essence of the property [Ellis] |
| 13587 | There is no property of 'fragility', as things are each fragile in a distinctive way [Ellis] |
| 13577 | Typical 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, such as shape [Ellis] |
| 9436 | The property of 'being an electron' is not of anything, and only electrons could have it [Ellis] |
| 13582 | 'Being a methane molecule' is not a property - it is just a predicate [Ellis] |
| 13580 | Causal powers must necessarily act the way they do [Ellis] |
| 13598 | Causal powers are often directional (e.g. centripetal, centrifugal, circulatory) [Ellis] |
| 13568 | Basic powers may not be explained by structure, if at the bottom level there is no structure [Ellis] |
| 13586 | Maybe dispositions can be explained by intrinsic properties or structures [Ellis] |
| 13585 | The most fundamental properties of nature (mass, charge, spin ...) all seem to be dispositions [Ellis] |
| 13596 | A causal power is a disposition to produce forces [Ellis] |
| 13599 | Powers are dispositions of the essences of kinds that involve them in causation [Ellis] |
| 13572 | There are 'substantive' (objects of some kind), 'dynamic' (events of some kind) and 'property' universals [Ellis] |
| 13573 | Universals are all types of natural kind [Ellis] |
| 13571 | Scientific essentialism doesn't really need Kripkean individual essences [Ellis] |
| 13578 | The old idea that identity depends on essence and behaviour is rejected by the empiricists [Ellis] |
| 13576 | Necessities are distinguished by their grounds, not their different modalities [Ellis] |
| 13570 | Individual essences necessitate that individual; natural kind essences necessitate kind membership [Ellis] |
| 9225 | Hegel reputedly claimed to know a priori that there are five planets [Hegel, by Field,H] |
| 13607 | If events are unconnected, then induction cannot be solved [Ellis] |
| 17943 | Probability supports Bayesianism better as degrees of belief than as ratios of frequencies [Colyvan] |
| 13597 | Good explanations unify [Ellis] |
| 17939 | Mathematics can reveal structural similarities in diverse systems [Colyvan] |
| 17938 | Mathematics can show why some surprising events have to occur [Colyvan] |
| 13601 | Explanations of particular events are not essentialist, as they don't reveal essential structures [Ellis] |
| 13569 | To give essentialist explanations there have to be natural kinds [Ellis] |
| 17933 | Reductio proofs do not seem to be very explanatory [Colyvan] |
| 17935 | If inductive proofs hold because of the structure of natural numbers, they may explain theorems [Colyvan] |
| 17942 | Can a proof that no one understands (of the four-colour theorem) really be a proof? [Colyvan] |
| 17934 | Proof by cases (by 'exhaustion') is said to be unexplanatory [Colyvan] |
| 17937 | Mathematical generalisation is by extending a system, or by abstracting away from it [Colyvan] |
| 13600 | The point of models in theories is not to idealise, but to focus on what is essential [Ellis] |
| 21758 | Humans have no fixed identity, but produce and reveal their shifting identity in history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 20414 | Hegel's Absolute Spirit is the union of human rational activity at a moment, and whatever that sustains [Hegel, by Eldridge] |
| 3909 | Society isn’t founded on a contract, since contracts presuppose a society [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| 4347 | When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural [Hegel] |
| 13583 | There might be uninstantiated natural kinds, such as transuranic elements which have never occurred [Ellis] |
| 13574 | Natural kinds are distinguished by resting on essences [Ellis] |
| 13575 | If there are borderline cases between natural kinds, that makes them superficial [Ellis] |
| 13595 | Laws don't exist in the world; they are true of the world [Ellis] |
| 13566 | A proton must have its causal role, because without it it wouldn't be a proton [Ellis] |
| 13579 | What is most distinctive of scientific essentialism is regarding processes as natural kinds [Ellis] |
| 13581 | Scientific essentialism is more concerned with explanation than with identity (Locke, not Kripke) [Ellis] |
| 13594 | The ontological fundamentals are dispositions, and also categorical (spatio-temporal and structural) properties [Ellis] |
| 13603 | A primary aim of science is to show the limits of the possible [Ellis] |
| 4188 | Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof [Schopenhauer on Hegel] |
| 6686 | Hegel said he was offering an encyclopaedic rationalisation of Christianity [Hegel, by Graham] |