51 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] |
| 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] |
| 10676 | The Axiom of Choice is a non-logical principle of set-theory [Hossack] |
| 10686 | The Axiom of Choice guarantees a one-one correspondence from sets to ordinals [Hossack] |
| 10687 | Maybe we reduce sets to ordinals, rather than the other way round [Hossack] |
| 10677 | Extensional mereology needs two definitions and two axioms [Hossack] |
| 10671 | Plural definite descriptions pick out the largest class of things that fit the description [Hossack] |
| 10666 | Plural reference will refer to complex facts without postulating complex things [Hossack] |
| 10669 | Plural reference is just an abbreviation when properties are distributive, but not otherwise [Hossack] |
| 10675 | A plural comprehension principle says there are some things one of which meets some condition [Hossack] |
| 10673 | Plural language can discuss without inconsistency things that are not members of themselves [Hossack] |
| 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] |
| 10680 | The theory of the transfinite needs the ordinal numbers [Hossack] |
| 10684 | I take the real numbers to be just lengths [Hossack] |
| 10674 | A plural language gives a single comprehensive induction axiom for arithmetic [Hossack] |
| 10681 | In arithmetic singularists need sets as the instantiator of numeric properties [Hossack] |
| 10685 | Set theory is the science of infinity [Hossack] |
| 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] |
| 10668 | We are committed to a 'group' of children, if they are sitting in a circle [Hossack] |
| 3353 | If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them? [Benardete,JA] |
| 10664 | Complex particulars are either masses, or composites, or sets [Hossack] |
| 10678 | The relation of composition is indispensable to the part-whole relation for individuals [Hossack] |
| 3304 | Why should packed-together particles be a thing (Mt Everest), but not scattered ones? [Benardete,JA] |
| 10665 | Leibniz's Law argues against atomism - water is wet, unlike water molecules [Hossack] |
| 10682 | The fusion of five rectangles can decompose into more than five parts that are rectangles [Hossack] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 3488 | Freud treats the unconscious as intentional and hence mental [Freud, by Searle] |
| 5689 | Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker] |
| 10663 | A thought can refer to many things, but only predicate a universal and affirm a state of affairs [Hossack] |
| 23950 | Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon] |
| 22344 | Freud is pessimistic about human nature; it is ambivalent motive and fantasy, rather than reason [Freud, by Murdoch] |
| 10683 | We could ignore space, and just talk of the shape of matter [Hossack] |
| 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] |