64 ideas
19695 | The devil was wise as an angel, and lost no knowledge when he rebelled [Whitcomb] |
21887 | Derrida focuses on other philosophers, rather than on science [Derrida] |
21888 | Philosophy is just a linguistic display [Derrida] |
21896 | Philosophy aims to build foundations for thought [Derrida, by May] |
21893 | Philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and its writing is aesthetic [Derrida] |
13567 | Ontology should give insight into or an explanation of the world revealed by science [Ellis] |
21892 | Interpretations can be interpreted, so there is no original 'meaning' available [Derrida] |
20925 | Hermeneutics blunts truth, by conforming it to the interpreter [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
20934 | Hermeneutics is hostile, trying to overcome the other person's difference [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
21895 | Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning [Derrida] |
21934 | The idea of being as persistent presence, and meaning as conscious intelligibility, are self-destructive [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
21883 | Sincerity can't be verified, so fiction infuses speech, and hence reality also [Derrida] |
21882 | Sentences are contradictory, as they have opposite meanings in some contexts [Derrida] |
21881 | We aim to explore the limits of expression (as in Mallarmé's poetry) [Derrida] |
4756 | Derrida says that all truth-talk is merely metaphor [Derrida, by Engel] |
21877 | True thoughts are inaccessible, in the subconscious, prior to speech or writing [Derrida] |
13604 | Real possibility and necessity has the logic of S5, which links equivalence classes of worlds of the same kind [Ellis] |
21878 | Names have a subjective aspect, especially the role of our own name [Derrida] |
21889 | 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description [Derrida] |
21879 | Even Kripke can't explain names; the word is the thing, and the thing is the word [Derrida] |
13606 | Humean conceptions of reality drive the adoption of extensional logic [Ellis] |
13584 | The extension of a property is a contingent fact, so cannot be the essence of the property [Ellis] |
13587 | There is no property of 'fragility', as things are each fragile in a distinctive way [Ellis] |
13577 | Typical 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, such as shape [Ellis] |
9436 | The property of 'being an electron' is not of anything, and only electrons could have it [Ellis] |
13582 | 'Being a methane molecule' is not a property - it is just a predicate [Ellis] |
13580 | Causal powers must necessarily act the way they do [Ellis] |
13598 | Causal powers are often directional (e.g. centripetal, centrifugal, circulatory) [Ellis] |
13568 | Basic powers may not be explained by structure, if at the bottom level there is no structure [Ellis] |
13586 | Maybe dispositions can be explained by intrinsic properties or structures [Ellis] |
13585 | The most fundamental properties of nature (mass, charge, spin ...) all seem to be dispositions [Ellis] |
13596 | A causal power is a disposition to produce forces [Ellis] |
13599 | Powers are dispositions of the essences of kinds that involve them in causation [Ellis] |
13572 | There are 'substantive' (objects of some kind), 'dynamic' (events of some kind) and 'property' universals [Ellis] |
13573 | Universals are all types of natural kind [Ellis] |
13571 | Scientific essentialism doesn't really need Kripkean individual essences [Ellis] |
13578 | The old idea that identity depends on essence and behaviour is rejected by the empiricists [Ellis] |
13576 | Necessities are distinguished by their grounds, not their different modalities [Ellis] |
13570 | Individual essences necessitate that individual; natural kind essences necessitate kind membership [Ellis] |
13607 | If events are unconnected, then induction cannot be solved [Ellis] |
13597 | Good explanations unify [Ellis] |
13601 | Explanations of particular events are not essentialist, as they don't reveal essential structures [Ellis] |
13569 | To give essentialist explanations there have to be natural kinds [Ellis] |
21890 | Heidegger showed that passing time is the key to consciousness [Derrida] |
13600 | The point of models in theories is not to idealise, but to focus on what is essential [Ellis] |
21880 | 'Tacit theory' controls our thinking (which is why Freud is important) [Derrida] |
21894 | Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks in all language [Derrida] |
21886 | Meanings depend on differences and contrasts [Derrida] |
21930 | For Aristotle all proper nouns must have a single sense, which is the purpose of language [Derrida] |
21884 | Capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language [Derrida] |
21935 | The sign is only conceivable as a movement between elusive presences [Derrida] |
21933 | Writing functions even if the sender or the receiver are absent [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
21931 | 'Dissemination' is opposed to polysemia, since that is irreducible, because of multiple understandings [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
21885 | Words exist in 'spacing', so meanings are never synchronic except in writing [Derrida] |
21891 | The good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there is no pure good [Derrida] |
13583 | There might be uninstantiated natural kinds, such as transuranic elements which have never occurred [Ellis] |
13574 | Natural kinds are distinguished by resting on essences [Ellis] |
13575 | If there are borderline cases between natural kinds, that makes them superficial [Ellis] |
13595 | Laws don't exist in the world; they are true of the world [Ellis] |
13566 | A proton must have its causal role, because without it it wouldn't be a proton [Ellis] |
13579 | What is most distinctive of scientific essentialism is regarding processes as natural kinds [Ellis] |
13581 | Scientific essentialism is more concerned with explanation than with identity (Locke, not Kripke) [Ellis] |
13594 | The ontological fundamentals are dispositions, and also categorical (spatio-temporal and structural) properties [Ellis] |
13603 | A primary aim of science is to show the limits of the possible [Ellis] |