93 ideas
| 2474 | It seems likely that analysis of concepts is impossible, but justification can survive without it [Fodor] |
| 2481 | Despite all the efforts of philosophers, nothing can ever be reduced to anything [Fodor] |
| 2505 | Turing invented the idea of mechanical rationality (just based on syntax) [Fodor] |
| 2470 | Transcendental arguments move from knowing Q to knowing P because it depends on Q [Fodor] |
| 18019 | People have dreams which involve category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 17998 | Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic [Magidor] |
| 18012 | Category mistakes as syntactic needs a huge number of fine-grained rules [Magidor] |
| 18013 | Embedded (in 'he said that…') category mistakes show syntax isn't the problem [Magidor] |
| 18011 | Category mistakes seem to be universal across languages [Magidor] |
| 18016 | Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd [Magidor] |
| 18015 | The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18017 | If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18021 | Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 18030 | A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18031 | If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18032 | Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18034 | Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18037 | Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply? [Magidor] |
| 18039 | If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value? [Magidor] |
| 18041 | Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality) [Magidor] |
| 18055 | In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured [Magidor] |
| 18056 | Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false') [Magidor] |
| 18057 | 'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable [Magidor] |
| 18058 | Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things? [Magidor] |
| 18059 | The presuppositions in category mistakes reveal nothing about ontology [Magidor] |
| 18040 | Intensional logic maps logical space, showing which predicates are compatible or incompatible [Magidor] |
| 17997 | Some suggest that the Julius Caesar problem involves category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 2469 | The world is full of messy small things producing stable large-scale properties (e.g. mountains) [Fodor] |
| 12710 | As well as extension, bodies contain powers [Leibniz] |
| 2475 | Don't define something by a good instance of it; a good example is a special case of the ordinary example [Fodor] |
| 18060 | We can explain the statue/clay problem by a category mistake with a false premise [Magidor] |
| 2502 | How do you count beliefs? [Fodor] |
| 2501 | Berkeley seems to have mistakenly thought that chairs are the same as after-images [Fodor] |
| 2465 | Maybe explaining the mechanics of perception will explain the concepts involved [Fodor] |
| 2504 | Rationalism can be based on an evolved computational brain with innate structure [Fodor] |
| 2493 | According to empiricists abstraction is the fundamental mental process [Fodor] |
| 2494 | Rationalists say there is more to a concept than the experience that prompts it [Fodor] |
| 2508 | The function of a mind is obvious [Fodor] |
| 2503 | Empirical approaches see mind connections as mirrors/maps of reality [Fodor] |
| 2485 | Do intentional states explain our behaviour? [Fodor] |
| 2506 | If I have a set of mental modules, someone had better be in charge of them! [Fodor] |
| 2467 | Functionalists see pains as properties involving relations and causation [Fodor] |
| 2489 | Why bother with neurons? You don't explain bird flight by examining feathers [Fodor] |
| 2468 | Type physicalism is a stronger claim than token physicalism [Fodor] |
| 2490 | Modern connectionism is just Hume's theory of the 'association' of 'ideas' [Fodor] |
| 2476 | The goal of thought is to understand the world, not instantly sort it into conceptual categories [Fodor] |
| 18020 | Propositional attitudes relate agents to either propositions, or meanings, or sentence/utterances [Magidor] |
| 2500 | Babies talk in consistent patterns [Fodor] |
| 2507 | Rationality rises above modules [Fodor] |
| 2491 | Modules have encapsulation, inaccessibility, private concepts, innateness [Fodor] |
| 2497 | Something must take an overview of the modules [Fodor] |
| 2495 | Obvious modules are language and commonsense explanation [Fodor] |
| 2499 | Modules analyse stimuli, they don't tell you what to do [Fodor] |
| 2498 | Modules make the world manageable [Fodor] |
| 2496 | Blindness doesn't destroy spatial concepts [Fodor] |
| 2509 | Modules have in-built specialist information [Fodor] |
| 2480 | Language is ambiguous, but thought isn't [Fodor] |
| 2483 | Mentalese doesn't require a theory of meaning [Fodor] |
| 2487 | Mentalese may also incorporate some natural language [Fodor] |
| 18035 | Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content [Magidor] |
| 2486 | Content can't be causal role, because causal role is decided by content [Fodor] |
| 2492 | Experience can't explain itself; the concepts needed must originate outside experience [Fodor] |
| 2471 | Are concepts best seen as capacities? [Fodor] |
| 2472 | For Pragmatists having a concept means being able to do something [Fodor] |
| 18018 | To grasp 'two' and 'green', must you know that two is not green? [Magidor] |
| 2482 | It seems unlikely that meaning can be reduced to communicative intentions, or any mental states [Fodor] |
| 2477 | If to understand "fish" you must know facts about them, where does that end? [Fodor] |
| 18008 | Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules [Magidor] |
| 18010 | 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure [Magidor] |
| 18053 | The semantics of a sentence is its potential for changing a context [Magidor] |
| 17999 | Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18000 | Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts [Magidor] |
| 18014 | Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional [Magidor] |
| 18001 | Are there partial propositions, lacking truth value in some possible worlds? [Magidor] |
| 2473 | Analysis is impossible without the analytic/synthetic distinction [Fodor] |
| 2484 | The theory of the content of thought as 'Mentalese' explains why the Private Language Argument doesn't work [Fodor] |
| 18036 | A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value [Magidor] |
| 18051 | In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion [Magidor] |
| 18043 | The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set [Magidor] |
| 18042 | The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set [Magidor] |
| 18047 | A presupposition is what makes an utterance sound wrong if it is not assumed? [Magidor] |
| 18048 | A test for presupposition would be if it provoked 'hey wait a minute - I have no idea that....' [Magidor] |
| 18049 | The best tests for presupposition are projecting it to negation, conditional, conjunction, questions [Magidor] |
| 18050 | If both s and not-s entail a sentence p, then p is a presupposition [Magidor] |
| 18054 | Why do certain words trigger presuppositions? [Magidor] |
| 18028 | Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings [Magidor] |
| 18029 | Non-cognitivist views of metaphor says there are no metaphorical meanings, just effects of the literal [Magidor] |
| 18022 | Metaphors tend to involve category mistakes, by joining disjoint domains [Magidor] |
| 18024 | One theory says metaphors mean the same as the corresponding simile [Magidor] |
| 18023 | Theories of metaphor divide over whether they must have literal meanings [Magidor] |
| 18025 | The simile view of metaphors removes their magic, and won't explain why we use them [Magidor] |
| 18026 | Maybe a metaphor is just a substitute for what is intended literally, like 'icy' for 'unemotional' [Magidor] |
| 18027 | Metaphors as substitutes for the literal misses one predicate varying with context [Magidor] |