90 ideas
| 13567 | Ontology should give insight into or an explanation of the world revealed by science [Ellis] |
| 2463 | A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor] |
| 9023 | If you say that a contradiction is true, you change the meaning of 'not', and so change the subject [Quine] |
| 2435 | Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor] |
| 9012 | Talk of 'truth' when sentences are mentioned; it reminds us that reality is the point of sentences [Quine] |
| 9011 | Truth is redundant for single sentences; we do better to simply speak the sentence [Quine] |
| 9013 | We can eliminate 'or' from our basic theory, by paraphrasing 'p or q' as 'not(not-p and not-q)' [Quine] |
| 13604 | Real possibility and necessity has the logic of S5, which links equivalence classes of worlds of the same kind [Ellis] |
| 9020 | My logical grammar has sentences by predication, then negation, conjunction, and existential quantification [Quine] |
| 9028 | Maybe logical truth reflects reality, but in different ways in different languages [Quine] |
| 2442 | Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor] |
| 10014 | Quine rejects second-order logic, saying that predicates refer to multiple objects [Quine, by Hodes] |
| 10828 | Quantifying over predicates is treating them as names of entities [Quine] |
| 9024 | Excluded middle has three different definitions [Quine] |
| 10012 | Quantification theory can still be proved complete if we add identity [Quine] |
| 9016 | Names are not essential, because naming can be turned into predication [Quine] |
| 9015 | Universal quantification is widespread, but it is definable in terms of existential quantification [Quine] |
| 9025 | You can't base quantification on substituting names for variables, if the irrationals cannot all be named [Quine] |
| 9026 | Some quantifications could be false substitutionally and true objectually, because of nameless objects [Quine] |
| 10705 | Putting a predicate letter in a quantifier is to make it the name of an entity [Quine] |
| 9027 | A sentence is logically true if all sentences with that grammatical structure are true [Quine] |
| 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] |
| 9017 | Predicates are not names; predicates are the other parties to predication [Quine] |
| 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] |
| 9018 | A physical object is the four-dimensional material content of a portion of space-time [Quine] |
| 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] |
| 9019 | Four-d objects helps predication of what no longer exists, and quantification over items from different times [Quine] |
| 13576 | Necessities are distinguished by their grounds, not their different modalities [Ellis] |
| 9014 | Some conditionals can be explained just by negation and conjunction: not(p and not-q) [Quine] |
| 13570 | Individual essences necessitate that individual; natural kind essences necessitate kind membership [Ellis] |
| 2462 | Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor] |
| 2460 | Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor] |
| 2454 | We can deliberately cause ourselves to have true thoughts - hence the value of experiments [Fodor] |
| 2455 | Interrogation and experiment submit us to having beliefs caused [Fodor] |
| 2461 | An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor] |
| 2458 | Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| 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] |
| 2443 | I say psychology is intentional, semantics is informational, and thinking is computation [Fodor] |
| 2453 | We are probably the only creatures that can think about our own thoughts [Fodor] |
| 13600 | The point of models in theories is not to idealise, but to focus on what is essential [Ellis] |
| 2445 | Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [Fodor] |
| 2446 | Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor] |
| 2464 | Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor] |
| 2447 | Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor] |
| 2440 | Propositional attitudes are propositions presented in a certain way [Fodor] |
| 2450 | Rationality has mental properties - autonomy, productivity, experiment [Fodor] |
| 2437 | XYZ (Twin Earth 'water') is an impossibility [Fodor] |
| 2441 | Truth conditions require a broad concept of content [Fodor] |
| 3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
| 2452 | Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor] |
| 2432 | Is content basically information, fixed externally? [Fodor] |
| 2438 | In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor] |
| 2439 | Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor] |
| 2457 | If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| 2451 | To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor] |
| 2433 | For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor] |
| 9009 | Single words are strongly synonymous if their interchange preserves truth [Quine] |
| 2436 | It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor] |
| 2434 | Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor] |
| 2459 | Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor] |
| 9007 | It makes no sense to say that two sentences express the same proposition [Quine] |
| 9008 | There is no rule for separating the information from other features of sentences [Quine] |
| 9010 | We can abandon propositions, and just talk of sentences and equivalence [Quine] |
| 9021 | A good way of explaining an expression is saying what conditions make its contexts true [Quine] |
| 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] |