46 ideas
7973 | There is no longer anything on which there is nothing to say [Baudrillard] |
6891 | Quine's naturalistic and empirical view is based entirely on first-order logic and set theory [Quine, by Mautner] |
6310 | Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine] |
7975 | The task of philosophy is to unmask the illusion of objective reality [Baudrillard] |
7986 | Drunken boat pilots are less likely to collide than clearly focused ones [Baudrillard] |
7982 | Instead of thesis and antithesis leading to synthesis, they now cancel out, and the conflict is levelled [Baudrillard] |
12798 | Plurals can in principle be paraphrased away altogether [Quine] |
17905 | Any progression will do nicely for numbers; they can all then be used to measure multiplicity [Quine] |
9556 | Nearly all of mathematics has to quantify over abstract objects [Quine] |
7974 | Without God we faced reality: what do we face without reality? [Baudrillard] |
7987 | Nothing is true, but everything is exact [Baudrillard] |
16462 | The quest for ultimate categories is the quest for a simple clear pattern of notation [Quine] |
15723 | Either dispositions rest on structures, or we keep saying 'all things being equal' [Quine] |
15490 | Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB] |
8504 | Quine aims to deal with properties by the use of eternal open sentences, or classes [Quine, by Devitt] |
8464 | Physical objects in space-time are just events or processes, no matter how disconnected [Quine] |
7924 | The notion of a physical object is by far the most useful one for science [Quine] |
8482 | Mathematicians must be rational but not two-legged, cyclists the opposite. So a mathematical cyclist? [Quine] |
12136 | Cyclist are not actually essentially two-legged [Brody on Quine] |
17594 | We can paraphrase 'x=y' as a sequence of the form 'if Fx then Fy' [Quine] |
15725 | Normal conditionals have a truth-value gap when the antecedent is false. [Quine] |
15722 | Conditionals are pointless if the truth value of the antecedent is known [Quine] |
15719 | We feign belief in counterfactual antecedents, and assess how convincing the consequent is [Quine] |
15721 | Counterfactuals are plausible when dispositions are involved, as they imply structures [Quine] |
15720 | What stays the same in assessing a counterfactual antecedent depends on context [Quine] |
15724 | Counterfactuals have no place in a strict account of science [Quine] |
4630 | Two theories can be internally consistent and match all the facts, yet be inconsistent with one another [Quine, by Baggini /Fosl] |
7978 | There is no need to involve the idea of free will to make choices about one's life [Baudrillard] |
3131 | Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism [Quine, by Rey] |
3988 | Indeterminacy of translation also implies indeterminacy in interpreting people's mental states [Dennett on Quine] |
6311 | The firmer the links between sentences and stimuli, the less translations can diverge [Quine] |
6312 | We can never precisely pin down how to translate the native word 'Gavagai' [Quine] |
6313 | Stimulus synonymy of 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not even guarantee they are coextensive [Quine] |
6317 | Dispositions to speech behaviour, and actual speech, are never enough to fix any one translation [Quine] |
6315 | We should be suspicious of a translation which implies that a people have very strange beliefs [Quine] |
6314 | Weird translations are always possible, but they improve if we impose our own logic on them [Quine] |
7980 | In modern times, being useless is the essential aesthetic ingredient for an object [Baudrillard] |
7983 | Good versus evil has been banefully reduced to happiness versus misfortune [Baudrillard] |
7981 | Whole populations are terrorist threats to authorities, who unite against them [Baudrillard] |
7976 | People like democracy because it means they can avoid power [Baudrillard] |
7977 | Only in the last 200 years have people demanded the democratic privilege of being individuals [Baudrillard] |
7979 | The arrival of the news media brought history to an end [Baudrillard] |
7984 | Suicide is ascribed to depression, with the originality of the act of will ignored [Baudrillard] |
8326 | Science has shown that causal relations are just transfers of energy or momentum [Fair, by Sosa/Tooley] |
10379 | Fair shifted his view to talk of counterfactuals about energy flow [Fair, by Schaffer,J] |
7985 | Pascal says secular life is acceptable, but more fun with the hypothesis of God [Baudrillard] |