45 ideas
| 8060 | In the 17th-18th centuries morality offered a cure for egoism, through altruism [MacIntyre] |
| 8053 | Twentieth century social life is re-enacting eighteenth century philosophy [MacIntyre] |
| 8047 | Philosophy has been marginalised by its failure in the Enlightenment to replace religion [MacIntyre] |
| 8062 | Proof is a barren idea in philosophy, and the best philosophy never involves proof [MacIntyre] |
| 10807 | Mathematics reduces to set theory, which reduces, with some mereology, to the singleton function [Lewis] |
| 10809 | We can accept the null set, but not a null class, a class lacking members [Lewis] |
| 10812 | The null set is not a little speck of sheer nothingness, a black hole in Reality [Lewis] |
| 10811 | The null set plays the role of last resort, for class abstracts and for existence [Lewis] |
| 10813 | What on earth is the relationship between a singleton and an element? [Lewis] |
| 10814 | Are all singletons exact intrinsic duplicates? [Lewis] |
| 10806 | Megethology is the result of adding plural quantification to mereology [Lewis] |
| 10816 | We can use mereology to simulate quantification over relations [Lewis] |
| 10808 | Mathematics is generalisations about singleton functions [Lewis] |
| 10815 | We don't need 'abstract structures' to have structural truths about successor functions [Lewis] |
| 10810 | I say that absolutely any things can have a mereological fusion [Lewis] |
| 9169 | A statement can be metaphysically necessary and epistemologically contingent [Putnam] |
| 5819 | Conceivability is no proof of possibility [Putnam] |
| 8052 | To find empiricism and science in the same culture is surprising, as they are really incompatible [MacIntyre] |
| 8057 | Unpredictability doesn't entail inexplicability, and predictability doesn't entail explicability [MacIntyre] |
| 8054 | Social sciences discover no law-like generalisations, and tend to ignore counterexamples [MacIntyre] |
| 21050 | I can only make decisions if I see myself as part of a story [MacIntyre] |
| 8056 | AI can't predict innovation, or consequences, or external relations, or external events [MacIntyre] |
| 9168 | I can't distinguish elm trees, but I mean by 'elm' the same set of trees as everybody else [Putnam] |
| 5820 | 'Water' has an unnoticed indexical component, referring to stuff around here [Putnam] |
| 9170 | We need to recognise the contribution of society and of the world in determining reference [Putnam] |
| 5817 | Language is more like a cooperative steamship than an individual hammer [Putnam] |
| 8059 | The good life for man is the life spent seeking the good life for man [MacIntyre] |
| 8034 | We still have the appearance and language of morality, but we no longer understand it [MacIntyre] |
| 8036 | Unlike expressions of personal preference, evaluative expressions do not depend on context [MacIntyre] |
| 8049 | Moral judgements now are anachronisms from a theistic age [MacIntyre] |
| 8045 | The failure of Enlightenment attempts to justify morality will explain our own culture [MacIntyre] |
| 8051 | Mention of 'intuition' in morality means something has gone wrong with the argument [MacIntyre] |
| 8048 | When 'man' is thought of individually, apart from all roles, it ceases to be a functional concept [MacIntyre] |
| 8035 | In trying to explain the type of approval involved, emotivists are either silent, or viciously circular [MacIntyre] |
| 8037 | The expression of feeling in a sentence is in its use, not in its meaning [MacIntyre] |
| 8040 | Emotivism cannot explain the logical terms in moral discourse ('therefore', 'if..then') [MacIntyre] |
| 8042 | Nowadays most people are emotivists, and it is embodied in our culture [MacIntyre] |
| 8058 | Maybe we can only understand rules if we first understand the virtues [MacIntyre] |
| 7097 | Virtue is secondary to a role-figure, defined within a culture [MacIntyre, by Statman] |
| 8043 | Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies [MacIntyre] |
| 8061 | If morality just is emotion, there are no external criteria for judging emotions [MacIntyre] |
| 8038 | Since Moore thinks the right action produces the most good, he is a utilitarian [MacIntyre] |
| 8050 | There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is nonsense [MacIntyre] |
| 5818 | If water is H2O in the actual world, there is no possible world where it isn't H2O [Putnam] |
| 8055 | If God is omniscient, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions, so decisions are impossible [MacIntyre] |