31 ideas
| 15435 | If you think universals are immanent, you must believe them to be sparse, and not every related predicate [Lewis] |
| 15451 | I assume there could be natural properties that are not instantiated in our world [Lewis] |
| 15433 | Tropes are particular properties, which cannot recur, but can be exact duplicates [Lewis] |
| 14329 | Some dispositional properties (such as mental ones) may have no categorical base [Price,HH] |
| 15436 | Universals are meant to give an account of resemblance [Lewis] |
| 15438 | We can add a primitive natural/unnatural distinction to class nominalism [Lewis] |
| 15448 | The 'magical' view of structural universals says they are atoms, even though they have parts [Lewis] |
| 15449 | If 'methane' is an atomic structural universal, it has nothing to connect it to its carbon universals [Lewis] |
| 15439 | The 'pictorial' view of structural universals says they are wholes made of universals as parts [Lewis] |
| 15441 | The structural universal 'methane' needs the universal 'hydrogen' four times over [Lewis] |
| 15445 | Butane and Isobutane have the same atoms, but different structures [Lewis] |
| 15434 | Structural universals have a necessary connection to the universals forming its parts [Lewis] |
| 15437 | We can't get rid of structural universals if there are no simple universals [Lewis] |
| 15446 | Composition is not just making new things from old; there are too many counterexamples [Lewis] |
| 15440 | A whole is distinct from its parts, but is not a further addition in ontology [Lewis] |
| 15444 | Different things (a toy house and toy car) can be made of the same parts at different times [Lewis] |
| 5040 | Necessary truths can be analysed into original truths; contingent truths are infinitely analysable [Leibniz] |
| 13159 | Only God sees contingent truths a priori [Leibniz] |
| 5039 | If non-existents are possible, their existence would replace what now exists, which cannot therefore be necessary [Leibniz] |
| 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] |
| 15450 | Maybe abstraction is just mereological subtraction [Lewis] |
| 9033 | Recognition must precede the acquisition of basic concepts, so it is the fundamental intellectual process [Price,HH] |
| 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] |
| 15443 | Mathematicians abstract by equivalence classes, but that doesn't turn a many into one [Lewis] |
| 5041 | God does everything in a perfect way, and never acts contrary to reason [Leibniz] |