49 ideas
9593 | Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson] |
22438 | Philosophy is largely concerned with finding the minimum that science could get by with [Quine] |
22436 | Logicians don't paraphrase logic into language, because they think in the symbolic language [Quine] |
22431 | Good algorithms and theories need many occurrences of just a few elements [Quine] |
9594 | Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson] |
22435 | The logician's '→' does not mean the English if-then [Quine] |
22433 | It is important that the quantification over temporal entities is timeless [Quine] |
22437 | Logical languages are rooted in ordinary language, and that connection must be kept [Quine] |
22434 | Reduction to logical forms first simplifies idioms and grammar, then finds a single reading of it [Quine] |
9601 | The realist/anti-realist debate is notoriously obscure and fruitless [Williamson] |
6504 | For physicalists, the only relations are spatial, temporal and causal [Robinson,H] |
9599 | There cannot be vague objects, so there may be no such thing as a mountain [Williamson] |
6520 | If reality just has relational properties, what are its substantial ontological features? [Robinson,H] |
9602 | Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson] |
22432 | Normally conditionals have no truth value; it is the consequent which has a conditional truth value [Quine] |
9598 | Modal thinking isn't a special intuition; it is part of ordinary counterfactual thinking [Williamson] |
16536 | Williamson can't base metaphysical necessity on the psychology of causal counterfactuals [Lowe on Williamson] |
9596 | We scorn imagination as a test of possibility, forgetting its role in counterfactuals [Williamson] |
6485 | When a red object is viewed, the air in between does not become red [Robinson,H] |
6521 | Representative realists believe that laws of phenomena will apply to the physical world [Robinson,H] |
6509 | Representative realists believe some properties of sense-data are shared by the objects themselves [Robinson,H] |
6522 | Phenomenalism can be theistic (Berkeley), or sceptical (Hume), or analytic (20th century) [Robinson,H] |
9597 | There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson] |
6502 | Can we reduce perception to acquisition of information, which is reduced to causation or disposition? [Robinson,H] |
6513 | Would someone who recovered their sight recognise felt shapes just by looking? [Robinson,H] |
6512 | Secondary qualities have one sensory mode, but primary qualities can have more [Robinson,H] |
6497 | We say objects possess no intrinsic secondary qualities because physicists don't need them [Robinson,H] |
6494 | If objects are not coloured, and neither are sense-contents, we are left saying that nothing is coloured [Robinson,H] |
6499 | Shape can be experienced in different ways, but colour and sound only one way [Robinson,H] |
6500 | If secondary qualities match senses, would new senses create new qualities? [Robinson,H] |
6484 | Most moderate empiricists adopt Locke's representative theory of perception [Robinson,H] |
6508 | Sense-data leads to either representative realism or phenomenalism or idealism [Robinson,H] |
6480 | Sense-data do not have any intrinsic intentionality [Robinson,H] |
6482 | For idealists and phenomenalists sense-data are in objects; representative realists say they resemble objects [Robinson,H] |
6505 | Sense-data are rejected because they are a veil between us and reality, leading to scepticism [Robinson,H] |
6506 | 'Sense redly' sounds peculiar, but 'senses redly-squarely tablely' sounds far worse [Robinson,H] |
6507 | Adverbialism sees the contents of sense-experience as modes, not objects [Robinson,H] |
6511 | If there are only 'modes' of sensing, then an object can no more be red or square than it can be proud or lazy. [Robinson,H] |
9592 | Intuition is neither powerful nor vacuous, but reveals linguistic or conceptual competence [Williamson] |
20181 | When analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they present intuitions as their evidence [Williamson] |
6515 | An explanation presupposes something that is improbable unless it is explained [Robinson,H] |
6517 | If all possibilities are equal, order seems (a priori) to need an explanation - or does it? [Robinson,H] |
6481 | If intentional states are intrinsically about other things, what are their own properties? [Robinson,H] |
6503 | Physicalism cannot allow internal intentional objects, as brain states can't be 'about' anything [Robinson,H] |
22430 | If we understand a statement, we know the circumstances of its truth [Quine] |
9595 | You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson] |
9600 | If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson] |
6519 | Locke's solidity is not matter, because that is impenetrability and hardness combined [Robinson,H] |
13713 | Quine holds time to be 'space-like': past objects are as real as spatially remote ones [Quine, by Sider] |