44 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] |
| 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] |
| 14064 | If a statue is identical with the clay of which it is made, that identity is contingent [Gibbard] |
| 14066 | A 'piece' of clay begins when its parts stick together, separately from other clay [Gibbard] |
| 14067 | Clay and statue are two objects, which can be named and reasoned about [Gibbard] |
| 14069 | We can only investigate the identity once we have designated it as 'statue' or as 'clay' [Gibbard] |
| 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] |
| 14076 | Essentialism is the existence of a definite answer as to whether an entity fulfils a condition [Gibbard] |
| 14077 | Essentialism for concreta is false, since they can come apart under two concepts [Gibbard] |
| 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] |
| 14070 | A particular statue has sortal persistence conditions, so its origin defines it [Gibbard] |
| 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] |
| 14073 | Claims on contingent identity seem to violate Leibniz's Law [Gibbard] |
| 14065 | Two identical things must share properties - including creation and destruction times [Gibbard] |
| 14074 | Leibniz's Law isn't just about substitutivity, because it must involve properties and relations [Gibbard] |
| 14072 | Possible worlds identity needs a sortal [Gibbard] |
| 14078 | Only concepts, not individuals, can be the same across possible worlds [Gibbard] |
| 14079 | Kripke's semantics needs lots of intuitions about which properties are essential [Gibbard] |
| 8808 | Involuntary beliefs can still be evaluated [Feldman/Conee] |
| 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] |
| 8807 | Evidentialism is the view that justification is determined by the quality of the evidence [Feldman/Conee] |
| 8809 | Beliefs should fit evidence, and if you ought to believe it, then you are justified [Feldman/Conee] |
| 8810 | If someone rejects good criticism through arrogance, that is irrelevant to whether they have knowledge [Feldman/Conee] |
| 14071 | Naming a thing in the actual world also invokes some persistence criteria [Gibbard] |
| 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] |