67 ideas
16512 | Semantic facts are preferable to transcendental philosophical fiction [Wiggins] |
2463 | A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor] |
2435 | Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor] |
2442 | Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor] |
18755 | Validity is explained as truth in all models, because that relies on the logical terms [McGee] |
18751 | Natural language includes connectives like 'because' which are not truth-functional [McGee] |
18761 | Second-order variables need to range over more than collections of first-order objects [McGee] |
18753 | An ontologically secure semantics for predicate calculus relies on sets [McGee] |
18754 | Logically valid sentences are analytic truths which are just true because of their logical words [McGee] |
18757 | Soundness theorems are uninformative, because they rely on soundness in their proofs [McGee] |
17529 | Maybe the concept needed under which things coincide must also yield a principle of counting [Wiggins] |
17530 | The sortal needed for identities may not always be sufficient to support counting [Wiggins] |
18760 | The culmination of Euclidean geometry was axioms that made all models isomorphic [McGee] |
16523 | Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts [Wiggins] |
16524 | Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality [Wiggins] |
16526 | Animal classifications: the Emperor's, fabulous, innumerable, like flies, stray dogs, embalmed…. [Wiggins] |
16492 | Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out [Wiggins] |
16493 | Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers [Wiggins] |
16496 | Singling out extends back and forward in time [Wiggins] |
16495 | The only singling out is singling out 'as' something [Wiggins] |
16501 | In Aristotle's sense, saying x falls under f is to say what x is [Wiggins] |
16506 | Every determinate thing falls under a sortal, which fixes its persistence [Wiggins] |
16509 | Natural kinds are well suited to be the sortals which fix substances [Wiggins] |
16514 | Artefacts are individuated by some matter having a certain function [Wiggins] |
16510 | Nominal essences don't fix membership, ignore evolution, and aren't contextual [Wiggins] |
16503 | 'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing [Wiggins] |
16499 | A restored church is the same 'church', but not the same 'building' or 'brickwork' [Wiggins] |
16515 | A thing begins only once; for a clock, it is when its making is first completed [Wiggins] |
16517 | Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction [Wiggins] |
16498 | Identity cannot be defined, because definitions are identities [Wiggins] |
16497 | Leibniz's Law (not transitivity, symmetry, reflexivity) marks what is peculiar to identity [Wiggins] |
16502 | Identity is primitive [Wiggins] |
16521 | A is necessarily A, so if B is A, then B is also necessarily A [Wiggins] |
16505 | By the principle of Indiscernibility, a symmetrical object could only be half of itself! [Wiggins] |
16494 | We want to explain sameness as coincidence of substance, not as anything qualitative [Wiggins] |
16522 | It is hard or impossible to think of Caesar as not human [Wiggins] |
2462 | Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor] |
16525 | Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience [Wiggins] |
2461 | An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [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] |
2460 | Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor] |
2458 | Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor] |
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] |
2446 | Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor] |
2445 | Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [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] |
16518 | We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us [Wiggins] |
2438 | In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor] |
16511 | A 'conception' of a horse is a full theory of what it is (and not just the 'concept') [Wiggins] |
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] |
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] |
18762 | A maxim claims that if we are allowed to assert a sentence, that means it must be true [McGee] |