13 ideas
| 20349 | Metaphysics aims at the essence of things, and a system to show how this explains other truths [Richardson] |
| 20351 | Metaphysics needs systems, because analysis just obsesses over details [Richardson] |
| 20350 | Metaphysics generalises the data, to get at the ontology [Richardson] |
| 8207 | The quest for simplicity drove scientists to posit new entities, such as molecules in gases [Quine] |
| 8208 | In arithmetic, ratios, negatives, irrationals and imaginaries were created in order to generalise [Quine] |
| 8205 | Explaining events just by bodies can't explain two events identical in space-time [Quine] |
| 14590 | If we accept scattered objects such as archipelagos, why not think of cars that way? [Hawthorne] |
| 14591 | Four-dimensionalists say instantaneous objects are more fundamental than long-lived ones [Hawthorne] |
| 8206 | Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia [Quine] |
| 14589 | A modal can reverse meaning if the context is seen differently, so maybe context is all? [Hawthorne] |
| 20356 | Humans dominate because, unlike other animals, they have a synthesis of conflicting drives [Richardson] |
| 20366 | A mind that could see cause and effect as a continuum would deny cause and effect [Richardson] |
| 14588 | Modern metaphysicians tend to think space-time points are more fundamental than space-time regions [Hawthorne] |