56 ideas
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] |
6280 | Realism is a theory, which explains the convergence of science and the success of language [Putnam] |
12056 | An ancestral relation is either direct or transitively indirect [Wiggins] |
12050 | Substances contain a source of change or principle of activity [Wiggins] |
12052 | We never single out just 'this', but always 'this something-or-other' [Wiggins] |
12055 | Sortal predications are answers to the question 'what is x?' [Wiggins] |
12059 | A river may change constantly, but not in respect of being a river [Wiggins] |
12063 | Sortal classification becomes science, with cross reference clarifying individuals [Wiggins] |
12051 | If the kinds are divided realistically, they fall into substances [Wiggins] |
12053 | 'Human being' is a better answer to 'what is it?' than 'poet', as the latter comes in degrees [Wiggins] |
12054 | Secondary substances correctly divide primary substances by activity-principles and relations [Wiggins] |
12047 | We refer to persisting substances, in perception and in thought, and they aid understanding [Wiggins] |
12057 | Matter underlies things, composes things, and brings them to be [Wiggins] |
22744 | Parts are not parts if their whole is nothing more than the parts [Sext.Empiricus] |
6284 | If a tautology is immune from revision, why would that make it true? [Putnam] |
22748 | Some say motion is perceived by sense, but others say it is by intellect [Sext.Empiricus] |
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] |
12064 | The category of substance is more important for epistemology than for ontology [Wiggins] |
12049 | Naming the secondary substance provides a mass of general information [Wiggins] |
17084 | You can't decide which explanations are good if you don't attend to the interest-relative aspects [Putnam] |
12065 | Seeing a group of soldiers as an army is irresistible, in ontology and explanation [Wiggins] |
22746 | If we try to conceive of a line with no breadth, it ceases to exist, and so has no length [Sext.Empiricus] |
22741 | The incorporeal is not in the nature of body, and so could not emerge from it [Sext.Empiricus] |
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] |
22747 | A man walking backwards on a forwards-moving ship is moving in a fixed place [Sext.Empiricus] |
22749 | Time doesn't end with the Universe, because tensed statements about destruction remain true [Sext.Empiricus] |
22750 | Time is divisible, into past, present and future [Sext.Empiricus] |
22742 | Socrates either dies when he exists (before his death) or when he doesn't (after his death) [Sext.Empiricus] |
22751 | If the present is just the limit of the past or the future, it can't exist because they don't exist [Sext.Empiricus] |
22739 | God must suffer to understand suffering [Sext.Empiricus] |
22730 | All men agree that God is blessed, imperishable, happy and good [Sext.Empiricus] |
22738 | The Divine must lack the virtues of continence and fortitude, because they are not needed [Sext.Empiricus] |
22734 | God is defended by agreement, order, absurdity of denying God, and refutations [Sext.Empiricus] |
22736 | God's sensations imply change, and hence perishing, which is absurd, so there is no such God [Sext.Empiricus] |
22740 | God without virtue is absurd, but God's virtues will be better than God [Sext.Empiricus] |
22735 | The original substance lacked motion or shape, and was given these by a cause [Sext.Empiricus] |
22732 | The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind [Sext.Empiricus] |
22728 | Gods were invented as watchers of people's secret actions [Sext.Empiricus] |
22737 | An incorporeal God could do nothing, and a bodily god would perish, so there is no God [Sext.Empiricus] |
22731 | It is mad to think that what is useful to us, like lakes and rivers, are gods [Sext.Empiricus] |