31 ideas
| 2510 | Traditionally philosophy is an a priori enquiry into general truths about reality [Katz] |
| 2516 | Most of philosophy begins where science leaves off [Katz] |
| 3859 | We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain [Newton-Smith] |
| 3870 | The real problem of science is how to choose between possible explanations [Newton-Smith] |
| 3853 | For science to be rational, we must explain scientific change rationally [Newton-Smith] |
| 3855 | Critics attack positivist division between theory and observation [Newton-Smith] |
| 3854 | Positivists hold that theoretical terms change, but observation terms don't [Newton-Smith] |
| 3869 | More truthful theories have greater predictive power [Newton-Smith] |
| 3861 | Theories generate infinite truths and falsehoods, so they cannot be used to assess probability [Newton-Smith] |
| 7332 | There is a huge range of sentences of which we do not know the logical form [Davidson] |
| 2521 | 'Real' maths objects have no causal role, no determinate reference, and no abstract/concrete distinction [Katz] |
| 3867 | De re necessity arises from the way the world is [Newton-Smith] |
| 3872 | We must assess the truth of beliefs in identifying them [Newton-Smith] |
| 2513 | We don't have a clear enough sense of meaning to pronounce some sentences meaningless or just analytic [Katz] |
| 2522 | Experience cannot teach us why maths and logic are necessary [Katz] |
| 3857 | Defeat relativism by emphasising truth and reference, not meaning [Newton-Smith] |
| 3858 | A full understanding of 'yellow' involves some theory [Newton-Smith] |
| 3862 | All theories contain anomalies, and so are falsified! [Newton-Smith] |
| 3863 | The anomaly of Uranus didn't destroy Newton's mechanics - it led to Neptune's discovery [Newton-Smith] |
| 3864 | Anomalies are judged against rival theories, and support for the current theory [Newton-Smith] |
| 3865 | Why should it matter whether or not a theory is scientific? [Newton-Smith] |
| 3866 | If theories are really incommensurable, we could believe them all [Newton-Smith] |
| 2517 | Structuralists see meaning behaviouristically, and Chomsky says nothing about it [Katz] |
| 2519 | It is generally accepted that sense is defined as the determiner of reference [Katz] |
| 7772 | Compositionality explains how long sentences work, and truth conditions are the main compositional feature [Davidson, by Lycan] |
| 7327 | Davidson thinks Frege lacks an account of how words create sentence-meaning [Davidson, by Miller,A] |
| 2520 | Sense determines meaning and synonymy, not referential properties like denotation and truth [Katz] |
| 7769 | You can state truth-conditions for "I am sick now" by relativising it to a speaker at a time [Davidson, by Lycan] |
| 2518 | Sentences are abstract types (like musical scores), not individual tokens [Katz] |
| 6179 | Should we assume translation to define truth, or the other way around? [Blackburn on Davidson] |
| 3871 | Explaining an action is showing that it is rational [Newton-Smith] |