49 ideas
3358 | Metaphysics focuses on Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism [Benardete,JA] |
3312 | There are the 'is' of predication (a function), the 'is' of identity (equals), and the 'is' of existence (quantifier) [Benardete,JA] |
3352 | Analytical philosophy analyses separate concepts successfully, but lacks a synoptic vision of the results [Benardete,JA] |
3329 | Presumably the statements of science are true, but should they be taken literally or not? [Benardete,JA] |
18806 | Frege thought traditional categories had psychological and linguistic impurities [Frege, by Rumfitt] |
3326 | Set theory attempts to reduce the 'is' of predication to mathematics [Benardete,JA] |
3327 | The set of Greeks is included in the set of men, but isn't a member of it [Benardete,JA] |
3335 | The standard Z-F Intuition version of set theory has about ten agreed axioms [Benardete,JA, by PG] |
8490 | First-level functions have objects as arguments; second-level functions take functions as arguments [Frege] |
8492 | Relations are functions with two arguments [Frege] |
3332 | Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic [Benardete,JA] |
3330 | Negatives, rationals, irrationals and imaginaries are all postulated to solve baffling equations [Benardete,JA] |
3337 | Natural numbers are seen in terms of either their ordinality (Peano), or cardinality (set theory) [Benardete,JA] |
8487 | Arithmetic is a development of logic, so arithmetical symbolism must expand into logical symbolism [Frege] |
18899 | Frege takes the existence of horses to be part of their concept [Frege, by Sommers] |
3310 | If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist [Benardete,JA] |
12793 | Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns [Benardete,JA] |
4028 | Frege allows either too few properties (as extensions) or too many (as predicates) [Mellor/Oliver on Frege] |
3353 | If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them? [Benardete,JA] |
8489 | The concept 'object' is too simple for analysis; unlike a function, it is an expression with no empty place [Frege] |
3304 | Why should packed-together particles be a thing (Mt Everest), but not scattered ones? [Benardete,JA] |
3350 | Could a horse lose the essential property of being a horse, and yet continue to exist? [Benardete,JA] |
3309 | If a soldier continues to exist after serving as a soldier, does the wind cease to exist after it ceases to blow? [Benardete,JA] |
3351 | One can step into the same river twice, but not into the same water [Benardete,JA] |
3323 | Maybe self-identity isn't existence, if Pegasus can be self-identical but non-existent [Benardete,JA] |
3314 | Absolutists might accept that to exist is relative, but relative to what? How about relative to itself? [Benardete,JA] |
3306 | The clearest a priori knowledge is proving non-existence through contradiction [Benardete,JA] |
3341 | Logical positivism amounts to no more than 'there is no synthetic a priori' [Benardete,JA] |
3344 | Assertions about existence beyond experience can only be a priori synthetic [Benardete,JA] |
3349 | If we know truths about prime numbers, we seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge of Platonic objects [Benardete,JA] |
3345 | Appeals to intuition seem to imply synthetic a priori knowledge [Benardete,JA] |
9947 | Concepts are the ontological counterparts of predicative expressions [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
10319 | An assertion about the concept 'horse' must indirectly speak of an object [Frege, by Hale] |
8488 | A concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value [Frege] |
9948 | Unlike objects, concepts are inherently incomplete [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
4972 | I may regard a thought about Phosphorus as true, and the same thought about Hesperus as false [Frege] |
20086 | Nowadays sovereignty (once the basis of a state) has become relative [Reybrouck] |
20090 | Today it seems almost impossible to learn the will of the people [Reybrouck] |
20087 | There are no united monolothic 'peoples', and no 'national gut feelings' [Reybrouck] |
20089 | Technocrats may be efficient, but they lose legitimacy as soon as they do unpopular things [Reybrouck] |
20088 | Technocrats are expert managers, who replace politicians, and can be long-term and unpopular [Reybrouck] |
20085 | Democracy is the best compromise between legitimacy and efficiency [Reybrouck] |
20095 | A referendum result arises largely from ignorance [Reybrouck] |
20094 | You don't really govern people if you don't involve them [Reybrouck] |
20093 | In the 18th century democratic lots lost out to elections, that gave us a non-hereditary aristocracy [Reybrouck] |
20091 | Representative elections were developed in order to avoid democracy [Reybrouck] |
3334 | Rationalists see points as fundamental, but empiricists prefer regions [Benardete,JA] |
3308 | In the ontological argument a full understanding of the concept of God implies a contradiction in 'There is no God' [Benardete,JA] |
8491 | The Ontological Argument fallaciously treats existence as a first-level concept [Frege] |