Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Value of Science', 'On the Source of Necessity' and 'Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge'

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9 ideas

1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism
All worthwhile philosophy is synthetic theorizing, evaluated by experience [Papineau]
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 3. Modal Logic Systems / g. System S4
S4 says there must be some necessary truths (the actual ones, of which there is at least one) [Cameron]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / e. Ontological commitment problems
Our best theories may commit us to mathematical abstracta, but that doesn't justify the commitment [Papineau]
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 1. Sources of Necessity
Blackburn fails to show that the necessary cannot be grounded in the contingent [Cameron]
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 9. A Priori from Concepts
A priori knowledge is analytic - the structure of our concepts - and hence unimportant [Papineau]
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 2. Intuition
Intuition and thought-experiments embody substantial information about the world [Papineau]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
Verificationism about concepts means you can't deny a theory, because you can't have the concept [Papineau]
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 11. Against Laws of Nature
The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré]
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / f. Eternalism
The 'moving spotlight' theory makes one time privileged, while all times are on a par ontologically [Cameron]