49 ideas
3358 | Metaphysics focuses on Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism [Benardete,JA] |
3312 | There are the 'is' of predication (a function), the 'is' of identity (equals), and the 'is' of existence (quantifier) [Benardete,JA] |
3352 | Analytical philosophy analyses separate concepts successfully, but lacks a synoptic vision of the results [Benardete,JA] |
3329 | Presumably the statements of science are true, but should they be taken literally or not? [Benardete,JA] |
18543 | Do aesthetic reasons count as reasons, if they are rejectable without contradiction? [Scruton] |
3993 | Arguments are nearly always open to challenge, but they help to explain a position rather than force people to believe [Lewis] |
18542 | Defining truth presupposes that there can be a true definition [Scruton] |
3326 | Set theory attempts to reduce the 'is' of predication to mathematics [Benardete,JA] |
3327 | The set of Greeks is included in the set of men, but isn't a member of it [Benardete,JA] |
3335 | The standard Z-F Intuition version of set theory has about ten agreed axioms [Benardete,JA, by PG] |
3332 | Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic [Benardete,JA] |
3330 | Negatives, rationals, irrationals and imaginaries are all postulated to solve baffling equations [Benardete,JA] |
3337 | Natural numbers are seen in terms of either their ordinality (Peano), or cardinality (set theory) [Benardete,JA] |
3310 | If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist [Benardete,JA] |
3990 | The whole truth supervenes on the physical truth [Lewis] |
3991 | Where pixels make up a picture, supervenience is reduction [Lewis] |
12793 | Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns [Benardete,JA] |
3353 | If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them? [Benardete,JA] |
3304 | Why should packed-together particles be a thing (Mt Everest), but not scattered ones? [Benardete,JA] |
3350 | Could a horse lose the essential property of being a horse, and yet continue to exist? [Benardete,JA] |
3309 | If a soldier continues to exist after serving as a soldier, does the wind cease to exist after it ceases to blow? [Benardete,JA] |
3351 | One can step into the same river twice, but not into the same water [Benardete,JA] |
3323 | Maybe self-identity isn't existence, if Pegasus can be self-identical but non-existent [Benardete,JA] |
3314 | Absolutists might accept that to exist is relative, but relative to what? How about relative to itself? [Benardete,JA] |
3306 | The clearest a priori knowledge is proving non-existence through contradiction [Benardete,JA] |
3349 | If we know truths about prime numbers, we seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge of Platonic objects [Benardete,JA] |
3341 | Logical positivism amounts to no more than 'there is no synthetic a priori' [Benardete,JA] |
3344 | Assertions about existence beyond experience can only be a priori synthetic [Benardete,JA] |
3345 | Appeals to intuition seem to imply synthetic a priori knowledge [Benardete,JA] |
3995 | A mind is an organ of representation [Lewis] |
3994 | Human pain might be one thing; Martian pain might be something else [Lewis] |
3989 | I am a reductionist about mind because I am an a priori reductionist about everything [Lewis] |
3992 | Folk psychology makes good predictions, by associating mental states with causal roles [Lewis] |
3996 | Folk psychology doesn't say that there is a language of thought [Lewis] |
3997 | Nothing shows that all content is 'wide', or that wide content has logical priority [Lewis] |
3998 | If you don't share an external world with a brain-in-a-vat, then externalism says you don't share any beliefs [Lewis] |
3999 | A spontaneous duplicate of you would have your brain states but no experience, so externalism would deny him any beliefs [Lewis] |
4000 | Wide content derives from narrow content and relationships with external things [Lewis] |
18546 | The pleasure taken in beauty also aims at understanding and valuing [Scruton] |
18550 | Art gives us imaginary worlds which we can view impartially [Scruton] |
18544 | Maybe 'beauty' is too loaded, and we should talk of fittingness or harmony [Scruton] |
18553 | Beauty shows us what we should want in order to achieve human fulfilment [Scruton] |
18556 | Beauty is rationally founded, inviting meaning, comparison and self-reflection [Scruton] |
18548 | Natural beauty reassures us that the world is where we belong [Scruton] |
18551 | Croce says art makes inarticulate intuitions conscious; rival views say the audience is the main concern [Scruton] |
18541 | Beauty (unlike truth and goodness) is questionable as an ultimate value [Scruton] |
18554 | Prostitution is wrong because it hardens the soul, since soul and body are one [Scruton] |
3334 | Rationalists see points as fundamental, but empiricists prefer regions [Benardete,JA] |
3308 | In the ontological argument a full understanding of the concept of God implies a contradiction in 'There is no God' [Benardete,JA] |