72 ideas
| 16227 | Philosophers are good at denying the obvious [Hawley] |
| 18074 | Intuitionists rely on assertability instead of truth, but assertability relies on truth [Kitcher] |
| 16216 | Part of the sense of a proper name is a criterion of the thing's identity [Hawley] |
| 6298 | Kitcher says maths is an idealisation of the world, and our operations in dealing with it [Kitcher, by Resnik] |
| 12392 | Mathematical a priorism is conceptualist, constructivist or realist [Kitcher] |
| 18078 | The interest or beauty of mathematics is when it uses current knowledge to advance undestanding [Kitcher] |
| 12426 | The 'beauty' or 'interest' of mathematics is just explanatory power [Kitcher] |
| 12395 | Real numbers stand to measurement as natural numbers stand to counting [Kitcher] |
| 12425 | Complex numbers were only accepted when a geometrical model for them was found [Kitcher] |
| 18071 | A one-operation is the segregation of a single object [Kitcher] |
| 18066 | The old view is that mathematics is useful in the world because it describes the world [Kitcher] |
| 18083 | With infinitesimals, you divide by the time, then set the time to zero [Kitcher] |
| 12393 | Intuition is no basis for securing a priori knowledge, because it is fallible [Kitcher] |
| 18061 | Mathematical intuition is not the type platonism needs [Kitcher] |
| 12420 | If mathematics comes through intuition, that is either inexplicable, or too subjective [Kitcher] |
| 12387 | Mathematical knowledge arises from basic perception [Kitcher] |
| 12412 | My constructivism is mathematics as an idealization of collecting and ordering objects [Kitcher] |
| 18065 | We derive limited mathematics from ordinary things, and erect powerful theories on their basis [Kitcher] |
| 18077 | The defenders of complex numbers had to show that they could be expressed in physical terms [Kitcher] |
| 12423 | Analyticity avoids abstract entities, but can there be truth without reference? [Kitcher] |
| 18069 | Arithmetic is an idealizing theory [Kitcher] |
| 18068 | Arithmetic is made true by the world, but is also made true by our constructions [Kitcher] |
| 18070 | We develop a language for correlations, and use it to perform higher level operations [Kitcher] |
| 18072 | Constructivism is ontological (that it is the work of an agent) and epistemological (knowable a priori) [Kitcher] |
| 18063 | Conceptualists say we know mathematics a priori by possessing mathematical concepts [Kitcher] |
| 18064 | If meaning makes mathematics true, you still need to say what the meanings refer to [Kitcher] |
| 16211 | A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience [Hawley] |
| 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] |
| 18067 | Abstract objects were a bad way of explaining the structure in mathematics [Kitcher] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 16205 | The stages of Stage Theory seem too thin to populate the world, or to be referred to [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] |
| 12390 | A priori knowledge comes from available a priori warrants that produce truth [Kitcher] |
| 12418 | In long mathematical proofs we can't remember the original a priori basis [Kitcher] |
| 12389 | Knowledge is a priori if the experience giving you the concepts thus gives you the knowledge [Kitcher] |
| 12416 | We have some self-knowledge a priori, such as knowledge of our own existence [Kitcher] |
| 12413 | A 'warrant' is a process which ensures that a true belief is knowledge [Kitcher] |
| 20473 | If experiential can defeat a belief, then its justification depends on the defeater's absence [Kitcher, by Casullo] |
| 1556 | By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias] |
| 18075 | Idealisation trades off accuracy for simplicity, in varying degrees [Kitcher] |
| 16218 | On any theory of self, it is hard to explain why we should care about our future selves [Hawley] |
| 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] |