90 ideas
14912 | There is no test for metaphysics, except devising alternative theories [Ladyman/Ross] |
14904 | Metaphysics builds consilience networks across science [Ladyman/Ross] |
14907 | Progress in metaphysics must be tied to progress in science [Ladyman/Ross] |
14908 | Metaphysics must involve at least two scientific hypotheses, one fundamental, and add to explanation [Ladyman/Ross] |
14910 | Some science is so general that it is metaphysical [Ladyman/Ross] |
14940 | Cutting-edge physics has little to offer metaphysics [Ladyman/Ross] |
14945 | The aim of metaphysics is to unite the special sciences with physics [Ladyman/Ross] |
14898 | Modern metaphysics pursues aesthetic criteria like story-writing, and abandons scientific truth [Ladyman/Ross] |
14899 | Why think that conceptual analysis reveals reality, rather than just how people think? [Ladyman/Ross] |
22270 | Frege changed philosophy by extending logic's ability to check the grounds of thinking [Potter on Frege] |
14936 | A metaphysics based on quantum gravity could result in almost anything [Ladyman/Ross] |
14905 | The supremacy of science rests on its iterated error filters [Ladyman/Ross] |
14897 | We should abandon intuitions, especially that the world is made of little things, and made of something [Ladyman/Ross] |
8952 | We reach 'reflective equilibrium' when intuitions and theory completely align [Fisher] |
8939 | We should not describe human laws of thought, but how to correctly track truth [Frege, by Fisher] |
4971 | I don't use 'subject' and 'predicate' in my way of representing a judgement [Frege] |
17745 | For Frege, 'All A's are B's' means that the concept A implies the concept B [Frege, by Walicki] |
8943 | Three-valued logic says excluded middle and non-contradition are not tautologies [Fisher] |
8945 | Fuzzy logic has many truth values, ranging in fractions from 0 to 1 [Fisher] |
7728 | Frege has a judgement stroke (vertical, asserting or judging) and a content stroke (horizontal, expressing) [Frege, by Weiner] |
16881 | The laws of logic are boundless, so we want the few whose power contains the others [Frege] |
7622 | In 1879 Frege developed second order logic [Frege, by Putnam] |
8951 | Classical logic is: excluded middle, non-contradiction, contradictions imply all, disjunctive syllogism [Fisher] |
14943 | Maybe mathematical logic rests on information-processing [Ladyman/Ross] |
8950 | Logic formalizes how we should reason, but it shouldn't determine whether we are realists [Fisher] |
7729 | Frege replaced Aristotle's subject/predicate form with function/argument form [Frege, by Weiner] |
9950 | A quantifier is a second-level predicate (which explains how it contributes to truth-conditions) [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
9991 | For Frege the variable ranges over all objects [Frege, by Tait] |
10536 | Frege's domain for variables is all objects, but modern interpretations first fix the domain [Dummett on Frege] |
7730 | Frege introduced quantifiers for generality [Frege, by Weiner] |
7742 | Frege reduced most quantifiers to 'everything' combined with 'not' [Frege, by McCullogh] |
13824 | Proof theory began with Frege's definition of derivability [Frege, by Prawitz] |
13609 | Frege produced axioms for logic, though that does not now seem the natural basis for logic [Frege, by Kaplan] |
17855 | It may be possible to define induction in terms of the ancestral relation [Frege, by Wright,C] |
10607 | Frege's logic has a hierarchy of object, property, property-of-property etc. [Frege, by Smith,P] |
11008 | Existence is not a first-order property, but the instantiation of a property [Frege, by Read] |
14942 | Only admit into ontology what is explanatory and predictive [Ladyman/Ross] |
14948 | To be is to be a real pattern [Ladyman/Ross] |
14947 | Any process can be described as transfer of measurable information [Ladyman/Ross] |
14941 | We say there is no fundamental level to ontology, and reality is just patterns [Ladyman/Ross] |
10493 | If concrete is spatio-temporal and causal, and abstract isn't, the distinction doesn't suit physics [Ladyman/Ross] |
14934 | Concrete and abstract are too crude for modern physics [Ladyman/Ross] |
14909 | Physicalism is 'part-whole' (all parts are physical), or 'supervenience/levels' (dependence on physical) [Ladyman/Ross] |
8946 | We could make our intuitions about heaps precise with a million-valued logic [Fisher] |
14926 | Relations without relata must be treated as universals, with their own formal properties [Ladyman/Ross] |
14929 | A belief in relations must be a belief in things that are related [Ladyman/Ross] |
14925 | The normal assumption is that relations depend on properties of the relata [Ladyman/Ross] |
14931 | That there are existent structures not made of entities is no stranger than the theory of universals [Ladyman/Ross] |
14932 | Causal essentialism says properties are nothing but causal relations [Ladyman/Ross] |
14920 | If science captures the modal structure of things, that explains why its predictions work [Ladyman/Ross] |
14952 | Things are constructs for tracking patterns (and not linguistic, because animals do it) [Ladyman/Ross] |
14950 | Maybe individuation can be explained by thermodynamic depth [Ladyman/Ross] |
14927 | Physics seems to imply that we must give up self-subsistent individuals [Ladyman/Ross] |
14944 | There is no single view of individuals, because different sciences operate on different scales [Ladyman/Ross] |
14946 | There are no cats in quantum theory, and no mountains in astrophysics [Ladyman/Ross] |
14928 | Things are abstractions from structures [Ladyman/Ross] |
8944 | Vagueness can involve components (like baldness), or not (like boredom) [Fisher] |
14892 | The idea of composition, that parts of the world are 'made of' something, is no longer helpful [Ladyman/Ross] |
14949 | A sum of things is not a whole if the whole does not support some new generalisation [Ladyman/Ross] |
14951 | We treat the core of a pattern as an essence, in order to keep track of it [Ladyman/Ross] |
14958 | A continuous object might be a type, with instances at each time [Ladyman/Ross] |
8941 | We can't explain 'possibility' in terms of 'possible' worlds [Fisher] |
14903 | Quantum mechanics seems to imply single-case probabilities [Ladyman/Ross] |
14923 | In quantum statistics, two separate classical states of affairs are treated as one [Ladyman/Ross] |
8947 | If all truths are implied by a falsehood, then not-p might imply both q and not-q [Fisher] |
8949 | In relevance logic, conditionals help information to flow from antecedent to consequent [Fisher] |
14955 | Rats find some obvious associations easier to learn than less obvious ones [Ladyman/Ross] |
14918 | The doctrine of empiricism does not itself seem to be empirically justified [Ladyman/Ross] |
14891 | There is no reason to think our intuitions are good for science or metaphysics [Ladyman/Ross] |
14915 | The theory of evolution was accepted because it explained, not because of its predictions [Ladyman/Ross] |
14916 | What matters is whether a theory can predict - not whether it actually does so [Ladyman/Ross] |
14922 | The Ramsey sentence describes theoretical entities; it skips reference, but doesn't eliminate it [Ladyman/Ross] |
14921 | The Ramsey-sentence approach preserves observations, but eliminates unobservables [Ladyman/Ross] |
14953 | Induction is reasoning from the observed to the unobserved [Ladyman/Ross] |
14914 | Inductive defences of induction may be rule-circular, but not viciously premise-circular [Ladyman/Ross] |
14913 | We explain by deriving the properties of a phenomenon by embedding it in a large abstract theory [Ladyman/Ross] |
14930 | Maybe the only way we can think about a domain is by dividing it up into objects [Ladyman/Ross] |
14939 | Two versions of quantum theory say that the world is deterministic [Ladyman/Ross] |
14911 | Science is opposed to downward causation [Ladyman/Ross] |
22280 | Frege's account was top-down and decompositional, not bottom-up and compositional [Frege, by Potter] |
14956 | Explanation by kinds and by clusters of properties just express the stability of reality [Ladyman/Ross] |
14957 | There is nothing more to a natural kind than a real pattern in nature [Ladyman/Ross] |
14954 | Causation is found in the special sciences, but may have no role in fundamental physics [Ladyman/Ross] |
14902 | Science may have uninstantiated laws, inferred from approaching some unrealised limit [Ladyman/Ross] |
14937 | That the universe must be 'made of' something is just obsolete physics [Ladyman/Ross] |
14900 | In physics, matter is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental ontology [Ladyman/Ross] |
14901 | Spacetime may well be emergent, rather than basic [Ladyman/Ross] |
14924 | If spacetime is substantial, what is the substance? [Ladyman/Ross] |
14938 | A fixed foliation theory of quantum gravity could make presentism possible [Ladyman/Ross] |
7741 | The predicate 'exists' is actually a natural language expression for a quantifier [Frege, by Weiner] |