56 ideas
| 3993 | Arguments are nearly always open to challenge, but they help to explain a position rather than force people to believe [Lewis] |
| 9449 | The plausible Barcan formula implies modality in the actual world [Bird] |
| 9501 | If all existents are causally active, that excludes abstracta and causally isolated objects [Bird] |
| 3990 | The whole truth supervenes on the physical truth [Lewis] |
| 3991 | Where pixels make up a picture, supervenience is reduction [Lewis] |
| 9500 | If naturalism refers to supervenience, that leaves necessary entities untouched [Bird] |
| 9502 | There might be just one fundamental natural property [Bird] |
| 9477 | Categorical properties are not modally fixed, but change across possible worlds [Bird] |
| 9490 | The categoricalist idea is that a property is only individuated by being itself [Bird] |
| 9495 | If we abstractly define a property, that doesn't mean some object could possess it [Bird] |
| 9492 | Categoricalists take properties to be quiddities, with no essential difference between them [Bird] |
| 9503 | To name an abundant property is either a Fregean concept, or a simple predicate [Bird] |
| 14540 | Only real powers are fundamental [Bird, by Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14329 | Some dispositional properties (such as mental ones) may have no categorical base [Price,HH] |
| 9450 | If all properties are potencies, and stimuli and manifestation characterise them, there is a regress [Bird] |
| 9498 | The essence of a potency involves relations, e.g. mass, to impressed force and acceleration [Bird] |
| 9474 | A disposition is finkish if a time delay might mean the manifestation fizzles out [Bird] |
| 9475 | A robust pot attached to a sensitive bomb is not fragile, but if struck it will easily break [Bird] |
| 9499 | Megarian actualists deny unmanifested dispositions [Bird] |
| 9486 | Why should a universal's existence depend on instantiation in an existing particular? [Bird] |
| 9472 | Resemblance itself needs explanation, presumably in terms of something held in common [Bird] |
| 9482 | If the laws necessarily imply p, that doesn't give a new 'nomological' necessity [Bird] |
| 9481 | Logical necessitation is not a kind of necessity; George Orwell not being Eric Blair is not a real possibility [Bird] |
| 9505 | Empiricist saw imaginability and possibility as close, but now they seem remote [Bird] |
| 9491 | Haecceitism says identity is independent of qualities and without essence [Bird] |
| 9487 | We can't reject all explanations because of a regress; inexplicable A can still explain B [Bird] |
| 3995 | A mind is an organ of representation [Lewis] |
| 9032 | Before we can abstract from an instance of violet, we must first recognise it [Price,HH] |
| 9035 | If judgement of a characteristic is possible, that part of abstraction must be complete [Price,HH] |
| 9034 | There may be degrees of abstraction which allow recognition by signs, without full concepts [Price,HH] |
| 9036 | There is pre-verbal sign-based abstraction, as when ice actually looks cold [Price,HH] |
| 9037 | Intelligent behaviour, even in animals, has something abstract about it [Price,HH] |
| 3994 | Human pain might be one thing; Martian pain might be something else [Lewis] |
| 3989 | I am a reductionist about mind because I am an a priori reductionist about everything [Lewis] |
| 9033 | Recognition must precede the acquisition of basic concepts, so it is the fundamental intellectual process [Price,HH] |
| 3992 | Folk psychology makes good predictions, by associating mental states with causal roles [Lewis] |
| 3996 | Folk psychology doesn't say that there is a language of thought [Lewis] |
| 3998 | If you don't share an external world with a brain-in-a-vat, then externalism says you don't share any beliefs [Lewis] |
| 3997 | Nothing shows that all content is 'wide', or that wide content has logical priority [Lewis] |
| 3999 | A spontaneous duplicate of you would have your brain states but no experience, so externalism would deny him any beliefs [Lewis] |
| 4000 | Wide content derives from narrow content and relationships with external things [Lewis] |
| 9030 | Abstractions can be interpreted dispositionally, as the ability to recognise or imagine an item [Price,HH] |
| 9029 | If ideas have to be images, then abstract ideas become a paradoxical problem [Price,HH] |
| 9031 | The basic concepts of conceptual cognition are acquired by direct abstraction from instances [Price,HH] |
| 9493 | We should explain causation by powers, not powers by causation [Bird] |
| 9494 | Singularism about causes is wrong, as the universals involved imply laws [Bird] |
| 9507 | Laws are explanatory relationships of things, which supervene on their essences [Bird] |
| 9488 | Laws are either disposition regularities, or relations between properties [Bird] |
| 9496 | That other diamonds are hard does not explain why this one is [Bird] |
| 9479 | Dispositional essentialism says laws (and laws about laws) are guaranteed regularities [Bird] |
| 9473 | Laws cannot offer unified explanations if they don't involve universals [Bird] |
| 9484 | If the universals for laws must be instantiated, a vanishing particular could destroy a law [Bird] |
| 9506 | Salt necessarily dissolves in water, because of the law which makes the existence of salt possible [Bird] |
| 23713 | Most laws supervene on fundamental laws, which are explained by basic powers [Bird, by Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 9489 | Essentialism can't use conditionals to explain regularities, because of possible interventions [Bird] |
| 9504 | The relational view of space-time doesn't cover times and places where things could be [Bird] |