47 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] |
| 9921 | 'True' is only occasionally useful, as in 'everything Fermat believed was true' [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9924 | Modal logic gives an account of metalogical possibility, not metaphysical possibility [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 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] |
| 9933 | The paradoxes are only a problem for Frege; Cantor didn't assume every condition determines a set [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9928 | Mereology implies that acceptance of entities entails acceptance of conglomerates [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9926 | A relation is either a set of sets of sets, or a set of sets [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9932 | The paradoxes no longer seem crucial in critiques of set theory [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 3332 | Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic [Benardete,JA] |
| 9923 | We should talk about possible existence, rather than actual existence, of numbers [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 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] |
| 9925 | Structuralism and nominalism are normally rivals, but might work together [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9934 | Number words became nouns around the time of Plato [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 3310 | If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist [Benardete,JA] |
| 9918 | Abstract/concrete is a distinction of kind, not degree [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9929 | Much of what science says about concrete entities is 'abstraction-laden' [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9927 | Mathematics has ascended to higher and higher levels of abstraction [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9930 | Abstraction is on a scale, of sets, to attributes, to type-formulas, to token-formulas [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 12793 | Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns [Benardete,JA] |
| 23651 | Universals are not objects of sense and cannot be imagined - but can be conceived [Reid] |
| 3353 | If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them? [Benardete,JA] |
| 23650 | Only individuals exist [Reid] |
| 23649 | No one thinks two sheets possess a single whiteness, but all agree they are both white [Reid] |
| 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] |
| 11874 | Real identity admits of no degrees [Reid] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 23652 | We must first conceive things before we can consider them [Reid] |
| 23648 | First we notice and name attributes ('abstracting'); then we notice that subjects share them ('generalising') [Reid] |
| 9919 | The old debate classified representations as abstract, not entities [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9922 | If space is really just a force-field, then it is a physical entity [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 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] |