68 ideas
| 13917 | Metaphysics aims to identify categories of being, and show their interdependency [Lowe] |
| 21761 | If we start with indeterminate being, we arrive at being and nothing as a united pair [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 21764 | Thought about being leads to a string of other concepts, like becoming, quantity, specificity, causality... [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 21769 | We must start with absolute abstraction, with no presuppositions, so we start with pure being [Hegel] |
| 13919 | Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of things [Lowe] |
| 22037 | Objectivity is not by correspondence, but by the historical determined necessity of Geist [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
| 21983 | Being and nothing are the same and not the same, which is the identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel] |
| 21985 | The so-called world is filled with contradiction [Hegel] |
| 21766 | Dialectic is the instability of thoughts generating their opposite, and then new more complex thoughts [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 21978 | Hegel's dialectic is not thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but usually negation of negation of the negation [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
| 18395 | Sets are mereological sums of the singletons of their members [Lewis, by Armstrong] |
| 15496 | We can build set theory on singletons: classes are then fusions of subclasses, membership is the singleton [Lewis] |
| 15500 | Classes divide into subclasses in many ways, but into members in only one way [Lewis] |
| 15499 | A subclass of a subclass is itself a subclass; a member of a member is not in general a member [Lewis] |
| 15503 | We needn't accept this speck of nothingness, this black hole in the fabric of Reality! [Lewis] |
| 15498 | We can accept the null set, but there is no null class of anything [Lewis] |
| 15502 | There are four main reasons for asserting that there is an empty set [Lewis] |
| 15497 | We can replace the membership relation with the member-singleton relation (plus mereology) [Lewis] |
| 15506 | If we don't understand the singleton, then we don't understand classes [Lewis] |
| 15511 | If singleton membership is external, why is an object a member of one rather than another? [Lewis] |
| 15513 | Maybe singletons have a structure, of a thing and a lasso? [Lewis] |
| 15507 | Set theory has some unofficial axioms, generalisations about how to understand it [Lewis] |
| 10191 | Set theory reduces to a mereological theory with singletons as the only atoms [Lewis, by MacBride] |
| 15523 | Set theory isn't innocent; it generates infinities from a single thing; but mathematics needs it [Lewis] |
| 15508 | If singletons are where their members are, then so are all sets [Lewis] |
| 15514 | A huge part of Reality is only accepted as existing if you have accepted set theory [Lewis] |
| 15525 | Plural quantification lacks a complete axiom system [Lewis] |
| 15518 | I like plural quantification, but am not convinced of its connection with second-order logic [Lewis] |
| 15524 | Zermelo's model of arithmetic is distinctive because it rests on a primitive of set theory [Lewis] |
| 15517 | Giving up classes means giving up successful mathematics because of dubious philosophy [Lewis] |
| 15515 | To be a structuralist, you quantify over relations [Lewis] |
| 15520 | Existence doesn't come in degrees; once asserted, it can't then be qualified [Lewis] |
| 21762 | To grasp an existence, we must consider its non-existence [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 21977 | Nothing exists, as thinkable and expressible [Hegel] |
| 21760 | Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 21765 | The ground of a thing is not another thing, but the first thing's substance or rational concept [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 15501 | We have no idea of a third sort of thing, that isn't an individual, a class, or their mixture [Lewis] |
| 15504 | Atomless gunk is an individual whose parts all have further proper parts [Lewis] |
| 22059 | Kant's thing-in-itself is just an abstraction from our knowledge; things only exist for us [Hegel, by Bowie] |
| 22083 | Hegel believe that the genuine categories reveal things in themselves [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 22080 | The nature of each category relates itself to another [Hegel] |
| 15516 | A property is any class of possibilia [Lewis] |
| 13918 | Holes, shadows and spots of light can coincide without being identical [Lowe] |
| 14748 | The many are many and the one is one, so they can't be identical [Lewis] |
| 6129 | Lewis affirms 'composition as identity' - that an object is no more than its parts [Lewis, by Merricks] |
| 15512 | In mereology no two things consist of the same atoms [Lewis] |
| 15519 | Trout-turkeys exist, despite lacking cohesion, natural joints and united causal power [Lewis] |
| 15521 | Given cats, a fusion of cats adds nothing further to reality [Lewis] |
| 15522 | The one has different truths from the many; it is one rather than many, one rather than six [Lewis] |
| 10566 | Lewis prefers giving up singletons to giving up sums [Lewis, by Fine,K] |
| 14244 | Lewis only uses fusions to create unities, but fusions notoriously flatten our distinctions [Oliver/Smiley on Lewis] |
| 10660 | A commitment to cat-fusions is not a further commitment; it is them and they are it [Lewis] |
| 13921 | All things must have an essence (a 'what it is'), or we would be unable to think about them [Lowe] |
| 13922 | Knowing an essence is just knowing what the thing is, not knowing some further thing [Lowe] |
| 13920 | Each thing has to be of a general kind, because it belongs to some category [Lowe] |
| 21772 | In absolute knowing, the gap between object and oneself closes, producing certainty [Hegel] |
| 20954 | The 'absolute idea' is when all the contradictions are exhausted [Hegel, by Bowie] |
| 21972 | Hegel, unlike Kant, said how things appear is the same as how things are [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
| 22038 | Hegel's non-subjective idealism is the unity of subjective and objective viewpoints [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
| 22044 | Hegel claimed his system was about the world, but it only mapped conceptual interdependence [Pinkard on Hegel] |
| 22084 | Authentic thinking and reality have the same content [Hegel] |
| 21464 | The Absolute is the primitive system of concepts which are actualised [Hegel, by Gardner] |
| 21975 | The absolute idea is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and all truth [Hegel] |
| 21976 | The absolute idea is the great unity of the infinite system of concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
| 15509 | Some say qualities are parts of things - as repeatable universals, or as particulars [Lewis] |
| 22058 | Hegel's 'absolute idea' is the interdependence of all truths to justify any of them [Hegel, by Bowie] |
| 20953 | Every concept depends on the counter-concepts of what it is not [Hegel, by Bowie] |
| 21763 | When we explicate the category of being, we watch a new category emerge [Hegel, by Houlgate] |