64 ideas
| 16227 | Philosophers are good at denying the obvious [Hawley] |
| 6267 | A culture needs to admit that knowledge is more extensive than just 'science' [Putnam] |
| 6272 | 'True' and 'refers' cannot be made scientically precise, but are fundamental to science [Putnam] |
| 6276 | 'The rug is green' might be warrantedly assertible even though the rug is not green [Putnam] |
| 6266 | We need the correspondence theory of truth to understand language and science [Putnam] |
| 6277 | Correspondence between concepts and unconceptualised reality is impossible [Putnam] |
| 6264 | In Tarski's definition, you understand 'true' if you accept the notions of the object language [Putnam] |
| 6265 | Tarski has given a correct account of the formal logic of 'true', but there is more to the concept [Putnam] |
| 6269 | Only Tarski has found a way to define 'true' [Putnam] |
| 16216 | Part of the sense of a proper name is a criterion of the thing's identity [Hawley] |
| 16211 | A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience [Hawley] |
| 6280 | Realism is a theory, which explains the convergence of science and the success of language [Putnam] |
| 16219 | Non-linguistic things cannot be indeterminate, because they don't have truth-values at all [Hawley] |
| 16223 | Maybe for the world to be vague, it must be vague in its foundations? [Hawley] |
| 16226 | Epistemic vagueness seems right in the case of persons [Hawley] |
| 16208 | Supervaluation refers to one vaguely specified thing, through satisfaction by everything in some range [Hawley] |
| 16221 | Supervaluationism takes what the truth-value would have been if indecision was resolved [Hawley] |
| 16230 | Maybe the only properties are basic ones like charge, mass and spin [Hawley] |
| 16232 | An object is 'natural' if its stages are linked by certain non-supervenient relations [Hawley] |
| 16200 | Are sortals spatially maximal - so no cat part is allowed to be a cat? [Hawley] |
| 16237 | The modal features of statue and lump are disputed; when does it stop being that statue? [Hawley] |
| 16238 | Perdurantists can adopt counterpart theory, to explain modal differences of identical part-sums [Hawley] |
| 16220 | Vagueness is either in our knowledge, in our talk, or in reality [Hawley] |
| 16222 | Indeterminacy in objects and in properties are not distinct cases [Hawley] |
| 16228 | The constitution theory is endurantism plus more than one object in a place [Hawley] |
| 16229 | Constitution theory needs sortal properties like 'being a sweater' to distinguish it from its thread [Hawley] |
| 14492 | If the constitution view says thread and sweater are two things, why do we talk of one thing? [Hawley] |
| 16193 | 'Adverbialism' explains change by saying an object has-at-some-time a given property [Hawley] |
| 16195 | Presentism solves the change problem: the green banana ceases, so can't 'relate' to the yellow one [Hawley] |
| 16202 | The problem of change arises if there must be 'identity' of a thing over time [Hawley] |
| 16192 | Endurance theory can relate properties to times, or timed instantiations to properties [Hawley] |
| 16196 | Endurance is a sophisticated theory, covering properties, instantiation and time [Hawley] |
| 16197 | How does perdurance theory explain our concern for our own future selves? [Hawley] |
| 16191 | Perdurance needs an atemporal perspective, to say that the object 'has' different temporal parts [Hawley] |
| 16199 | If an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts, its mass is staggeringly large! [Hawley] |
| 16201 | Perdurance says things are sums of stages; Stage Theory says each stage is the thing [Hawley] |
| 16240 | If a life is essentially the sum of its temporal parts, it couldn't be shorter or longer than it was? [Hawley] |
| 16205 | The stages of Stage Theory seem too thin to populate the world, or to be referred to [Hawley] |
| 16203 | Stage Theory seems to miss out the link between stages of the same object [Hawley] |
| 16204 | Stage Theory says every stage is a distinct object, which gives too many objects [Hawley] |
| 16212 | An isolated stage can't be a banana (which involves suitable relations to other stages) [Hawley] |
| 16213 | Stages of one thing are related by extrinsic counterfactual and causal relations [Hawley] |
| 16206 | Stages must be as fine-grained in length as change itself, so any change is a new stage [Hawley] |
| 16225 | If two things might be identical, there can't be something true of one and false of the other [Hawley] |
| 16239 | To decide whether something is a counterpart, we need to specify a relevant sortal concept [Hawley] |
| 6284 | If a tautology is immune from revision, why would that make it true? [Putnam] |
| 6273 | Knowledge depends on believing others, which must be innate, as inferences are not strong enough [Putnam] |
| 6274 | Empathy may not give knowledge, but it can give plausibility or right opinion [Putnam] |
| 17084 | You can't decide which explanations are good if you don't attend to the interest-relative aspects [Putnam] |
| 16218 | On any theory of self, it is hard to explain why we should care about our future selves [Hawley] |
| 6282 | Theory of meaning presupposes theory of understanding and reference [Putnam] |
| 6281 | Truth conditions can't explain understanding a sentence, because that in turn needs explanation [Putnam] |
| 6278 | We should reject the view that truth is prior to meaning [Putnam] |
| 6271 | How reference is specified is not what reference is [Putnam] |
| 6268 | The claim that scientific terms are incommensurable can be blocked if scientific terms are not descriptions [Putnam] |
| 6279 | A private language could work with reference and beliefs, and wouldn't need meaning [Putnam] |
| 6270 | The correct translation is the one that explains the speaker's behaviour [Putnam] |
| 6283 | Language maps the world in many ways (because it maps onto other languages in many ways) [Putnam] |
| 6275 | You can't say 'most speaker's beliefs are true'; in some areas this is not so, and you can't count beliefs [Putnam] |
| 17371 | Some kinds are very explanatory, but others less so, and some not at all [Devitt] |
| 16215 | Causation is nothing more than the counterfactuals it grounds? [Hawley] |
| 16207 | Time could be discrete (like integers) or dense (rationals) or continuous (reals) [Hawley] |
| 17373 | Species pluralism says there are several good accounts of what a species is [Devitt] |
| 17372 | The higher categories are not natural kinds, so the Linnaean hierarchy should be given up [Devitt] |