40 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] |
19740 | A very hungry man cannot choose between equidistant piles of food [Aristotle] |
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] |
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] |
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] |
22419 | 'I' is a subject in 'I am in pain' and an object in 'I am bleeding' [Wittgenstein, by McGinn] |
6318 | The doctrine of indeterminacy of translation seems implied by the later Wittgenstein [Wittgenstein, by Quine] |
398 | Each thing that has a function is for the sake of that function [Aristotle] |
394 | An unworn sandal is in vain, but nothing in nature is in vain [Aristotle] |
396 | There has to be some goal, and not just movement to infinity [Aristotle] |
16102 | Aether moves in circles and is imperishable; the four elements perish, and move in straight lines [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
17463 | An element is what bodies are analysed into, and won't itself divide into something else [Aristotle] |
399 | If the more you raise some earth the faster it moves, why does the whole earth not move? [Aristotle] |
20918 | Void is a kind of place, so it can't explain place [Aristotle] |
3334 | Rationalists see points as fundamental, but empiricists prefer regions [Benardete,JA] |
402 | The Earth must be spherical, because it casts a convex shadow on the moon [Aristotle] |
403 | The earth must be round and of limited size, because moving north or south makes different stars visible [Aristotle] |
1498 | Everyone agrees that the world had a beginning, but thinkers disagree over whether it will end [Aristotle] |
395 | It seems possible that there exists a limited number of other worlds apart from this one [Aristotle] |
3308 | In the ontological argument a full understanding of the concept of God implies a contradiction in 'There is no God' [Benardete,JA] |