78 ideas
| 6420 | Only by analysing is progress possible in philosophy [Russell] |
| 6432 | Analysis gives new knowledge, without destroying what we already have [Russell] |
| 6437 | The theory of types makes 'Socrates and killing are two' illegitimate [Russell] |
| 6442 | Truth belongs to beliefs, not to propositions and sentences [Russell] |
| 6436 | I gradually replaced classes with properties, and they ended as a symbolic convenience [Russell] |
| 18739 | Three stages of philosophical logic: syntactic (1905-55), possible worlds (1963-85), widening (1990-) [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 7528 | Leibniz bases everything on subject/predicate and substance/property propositions [Russell] |
| 18741 | Logical formalization makes concepts precise, and also shows their interrelation [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 6439 | Names are meaningless unless there is an object which they designate [Russell] |
| 18744 | Models are sets with functions and relations, and truth built up from the components [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 6423 | We tried to define all of pure maths using logical premisses and concepts [Russell] |
| 6424 | Formalists say maths is merely conventional marks on paper, like the arbitrary rules of chess [Russell] |
| 6425 | Formalism can't apply numbers to reality, so it is an evasion [Russell] |
| 6426 | Intuitionism says propositions are only true or false if there is a method of showing it [Russell] |
| 18740 | If 'exist' doesn't express a property, we can hardly ask for its essence [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 14562 | A process is unified as an expression of a collection of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14541 | Events are essentially changes; property exemplifications are just states of affairs [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 6419 | In 1899-1900 I adopted the philosophy of logical atomism [Russell] |
| 6438 | Complex things can be known, but not simple things [Russell] |
| 6434 | Facts are everything, except simples; they are either relations or qualities [Russell] |
| 14553 | Weak emergence is just unexpected, and strong emergence is beyond all deduction [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14538 | Powers explain properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14555 | Powers offer no more explanation of nature than laws do [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14557 | Powers are not just basic forces, since they combine to make new powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14583 | Dispositionality is a natural selection function, picking outcomes from the range of possibilities [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14536 | We say 'power' and 'disposition' are equivalent, but some say dispositions are manifestable [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14584 | The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14582 | Might dispositions be reduced to normativity, or to intentionality? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 6440 | Universals can't just be words, because words themselves are universals [Russell] |
| 14542 | If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14535 | Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14561 | Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14579 | Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14580 | Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14552 | Relations are naturally necessary when they are generated by the essential mechanisms of the world [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14578 | Possibility might be non-contradiction, or recombinations of the actual, or truth in possible worlds [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14549 | Maybe truths are necessitated by the facts which are their truthmakers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 18745 | A Tarskian model can be seen as a possible state of affairs [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 18747 | The 'spheres model' was added to possible worlds, to cope with counterfactuals [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 18748 | Epistemic logic introduced impossible worlds [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 18746 | Possible worlds models contain sets of possible worlds; this is a large metaphysical commitment [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 18750 | Using possible worlds for knowledge and morality may be a step too far [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| 6430 | In epistemology we should emphasis the continuity between animal and human minds [Russell] |
| 14585 | We have more than five senses; balance and proprioception, for example [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 6441 | Pragmatism judges by effects, but I judge truth by causes [Russell] |
| 6431 | Empiricists seem unclear what they mean by 'experience' [Russell] |
| 6444 | True belief about the time is not knowledge if I luckily observe a stopped clock at the right moment [Russell] |
| 14576 | Smoking disposes towards cancer; smokers without cancer do not falsify this claim [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14551 | If causation were necessary, the past would fix the future, and induction would be simple [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14571 | The only full uniformities in nature occur from the essences of fundamental things [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14570 | Nature is not completely uniform, and some regular causes sometimes fail to produce their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14569 | It is tempting to think that only entailment provides a full explanation [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14568 | A structure won't give a causal explanation unless we know the powers of the structure [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 6433 | Behaviourists struggle to explain memory and imagination, because they won't admit images [Russell] |
| 14556 | Strong emergence seems to imply top-down causation, originating in consciousness [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 6443 | Surprise is a criterion of error [Russell] |
| 6427 | Unverifiable propositions about the remote past are still either true or false [Russell] |
| 6435 | You can believe the meaning of a sentence without thinking of the words [Russell] |
| 14566 | Causation by absence is not real causation, but part of our explanatory practices [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14577 | Causation may not be transitive. Does a fire cause itself to be extinguished by the sprinklers? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14563 | Causation is the passing around of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14587 | We take causation to be primitive, as it is hard to see how it could be further reduced [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14533 | Causation doesn't have two distinct relata; it is a single unfolding process [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14558 | A collision is a process, which involves simultaneous happenings, but not instantaneous ones [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14559 | Does causation need a third tying ingredient, or just two that meet, or might there be a single process? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14565 | Sugar dissolving is a process taking time, not one event and then another [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14567 | Privileging one cause is just an epistemic or pragmatic matter, not an ontological one [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14537 | Coincidence is conjunction without causation; smoking causing cancer is the reverse [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14573 | Occasionally a cause makes no difference (pre-emption, perhaps) so the counterfactual is false [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14572 | Is a cause because of counterfactual dependence, or is the dependence because there is a cause? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14574 | Cases of preventing a prevention may give counterfactual dependence without causation [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14539 | Nature can be interfered with, so a cause never necessitates its effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14550 | We assert causes without asserting that they necessitate their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14546 | Necessary causation should survive antecedent strengthening, but no cause can always survive that [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14575 | A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14548 | There may be necessitation in the world, but causation does not supply it [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14554 | Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14564 | If laws are equations, cause and effect must be simultaneous (or the law would be falsified)! [Mumford/Anjum] |