110 ideas
| 12330 | In ontology, logic dominated language, until logic was mathematized [Badiou] |
| 12318 | The female body, when taken in its entirety, is the Phallus itself [Badiou] |
| 3358 | Metaphysics focuses on Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism [Benardete,JA] |
| 12325 | Philosophy has been relieved of physics, cosmology, politics, and now must give up ontology [Badiou] |
| 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] |
| 12324 | Consensus is the enemy of thought [Badiou] |
| 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] |
| 12337 | There is 'transivity' iff membership ∈ also means inclusion ⊆ [Badiou] |
| 3335 | The standard Z-F Intuition version of set theory has about ten agreed axioms [Benardete,JA, by PG] |
| 12321 | The axiom of choice must accept an indeterminate, indefinable, unconstructible set [Badiou] |
| 12342 | Topos theory explains the plurality of possible logics [Badiou] |
| 12341 | Logic is a mathematical account of a universe of relations [Badiou] |
| 3137 | Varieties of singular terms are used to designate token particulars [Rey] |
| 3332 | Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic [Benardete,JA] |
| 12335 | Numbers are for measuring and for calculating (and the two must be consistent) [Badiou] |
| 12334 | There is no single unified definition of number [Badiou] |
| 12333 | Each type of number has its own characteristic procedure of introduction [Badiou] |
| 12322 | Must we accept numbers as existing when they no longer consist of units? [Badiou] |
| 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] |
| 12327 | The undecidability of the Continuum Hypothesis may have ruined or fragmented set theory [Badiou] |
| 12329 | If mathematics is a logic of the possible, then questions of existence are not intrinsic to it [Badiou] |
| 12328 | Platonists like axioms and decisions, Aristotelians like definitions, possibilities and logic [Badiou] |
| 3143 | Physics requires the existence of properties, and also the abstract objects of arithmetic [Rey] |
| 12331 | Logic is definitional, but real mathematics is axiomatic [Badiou] |
| 12340 | There is no Being as a whole, because there is no set of all sets [Badiou] |
| 12323 | Existence is Being itself, but only as our thought decides it [Badiou] |
| 12332 | The modern view of Being comes when we reject numbers as merely successions of One [Badiou] |
| 12326 | The primitive name of Being is the empty set; in a sense, only the empty set 'is' [Badiou] |
| 3310 | If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist [Benardete,JA] |
| 12793 | Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns [Benardete,JA] |
| 12320 | Ontology is (and always has been) Cantorian mathematics [Badiou] |
| 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] |
| 3314 | Absolutists might accept that to exist is relative, but relative to what? How about relative to itself? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3323 | Maybe self-identity isn't existence, if Pegasus can be self-identical but non-existent [Benardete,JA] |
| 3145 | The Indiscernibility of Identicals is a truism; but the Identity of Indiscernibles depends on possible identical worlds [Rey] |
| 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] |
| 3172 | Empiricism says experience is both origin and justification of all knowledge [Rey] |
| 3166 | Animal learning is separate from their behaviour [Rey] |
| 3232 | Abduction could have true data and a false conclusion, and may include data not originally mentioned [Rey] |
| 3128 | It's not at all clear that explanation needs to stop anywhere [Rey] |
| 3136 | The three theories are reduction, dualism, eliminativism [Rey] |
| 3141 | Is consciousness 40Hz oscillations in layers 5 and 6 of the visual cortex? [Rey] |
| 3148 | Dualist privacy is seen as too deep for even telepathy to reach [Rey] |
| 3164 | Intentional explanations are always circular [Rey] |
| 3138 | Arithmetic and unconscious attitudes have no qualia [Rey] |
| 3142 | Why qualia, and why this particular quale? [Rey] |
| 3224 | If qualia have no function, their attachment to thoughts is accidental [Rey] |
| 3227 | Are qualia a type of propositional attitude? [Rey] |
| 3226 | Are qualia irrelevant to explaining the mind? [Rey] |
| 3229 | If colour fits a cone mapping hue, brightness and saturation, rotating the cone could give spectrum inversion [Rey] |
| 3223 | Self-consciousness may just be nested intentionality [Rey] |
| 3162 | Experiments prove that people are often unaware of their motives [Rey] |
| 3163 | Brain damage makes the unreliability of introspection obvious [Rey] |
| 3195 | If reason could be explained in computational terms, there would be no need for the concept of 'free will' [Rey] |
| 3196 | Free will isn't evidence against a theory of thought if there is no evidence for free will [Rey] |
| 3180 | Maybe behaviourists should define mental states as a group [Rey] |
| 3165 | Behaviourism is eliminative, or reductionist, or methodological [Rey] |
| 3167 | Animals don't just respond to stimuli, they experiment [Rey] |
| 3173 | How are stimuli and responses 'similar'? [Rey] |
| 3179 | Behaviour is too contingent and irrelevant to be the mind [Rey] |
| 3186 | If a normal person lacked a brain, would you say they had no mind? [Rey] |
| 3127 | Dualism and physicalism explain nothing, and don't suggest any research [Rey] |
| 3188 | Homuncular functionalism (e.g. Freud) could be based on simpler mechanical processes [Rey] |
| 3216 | Is the room functionally the same as a Chinese speaker? [Rey] |
| 3220 | Searle is guilty of the fallacy of division - attributing a property of the whole to a part [Rey] |
| 3206 | One computer program could either play chess or fight a war [Rey] |
| 3140 | If you explain water as H2O, you have reduced water, but not eliminated it [Rey] |
| 3134 | Human behaviour can show law-like regularity, which eliminativism can't explain [Rey] |
| 3200 | Pattern recognition is puzzling for computation, but makes sense for connectionism [Rey] |
| 3201 | Connectionism explains well speed of perception and 'graceful degradation' [Rey] |
| 3202 | Connectionism explains irrationality (such as the Gamblers' Fallacy) quite well [Rey] |
| 3199 | Connectionism assigns numbers to nodes and branches, and plots the outcomes [Rey] |
| 3150 | Can identity explain reason, free will, non-extension, intentionality, subjectivity, experience? [Rey] |
| 3129 | Physicalism offers something called "complexity" instead of mental substance [Rey] |
| 3139 | Some attitudes are information (belief), others motivate (hatred) [Rey] |
| 3171 | Children speak 90% good grammar [Rey] |
| 3174 | Good grammar can't come simply from stimuli [Rey] |
| 3213 | Animals may also use a language of thought [Rey] |
| 3170 | We train children in truth, not in grammar [Rey] |
| 3215 | Images can't replace computation, as they need it [Rey] |
| 3194 | CRTT is good on deduction, but not so hot on induction, abduction and practical reason [Rey] |
| 3147 | Problem-solving clearly involves manipulating images [Rey] |
| 3175 | Animals map things over time as well as over space [Rey] |
| 3207 | Simple externalism is that the meaning just is the object [Rey] |
| 3176 | Anything bears a family resemblance to a game, but obviously not anything counts as one [Rey] |
| 3181 | A one hour gap in time might be indirectly verified, but then almost anything could be [Rey] |
| 3204 | The meaning of "and" may be its use, but not of "animal" [Rey] |
| 3205 | Semantic holism means new evidence for a belief changes the belief, and we can't agree on concepts [Rey] |
| 3209 | Causal theories of reference (by 'dubbing') don't eliminate meanings in the heads of dubbers [Rey] |
| 3210 | If meaning and reference are based on causation, then virtually everything has meaning [Rey] |
| 3149 | Referential Opacity says truth is lost when you substitute one referring term ('mother') for another ('Jocasta') [Rey] |
| 12338 | We must either assert or deny any single predicate of any single subject [Badiou] |
| 3169 | A simple chaining device can't build sentences containing 'either..or', or 'if..then' [Rey] |
| 3221 | Our desires become important when we have desires about desires [Rey] |
| 12316 | For Enlightenment philosophers, God was no longer involved in politics [Badiou] |
| 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] |
| 12317 | The God of religion results from an encounter, not from a proof [Badiou] |