30 ideas
2945 | Most philosophers start with reality and then examine knowledge; Descartes put the study of knowledge first [Lehrer] |
2946 | You cannot demand an analysis of a concept without knowing the purpose of the analysis [Lehrer] |
10794 | The nominalist is tied by standard semantics to first-order, denying higher-order abstracta [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10788 | Nominalists see proper names as a main vehicle of reference [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10786 | Anything which refers tends to be called a 'name', even if it isn't a noun [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10799 | Nominalists should quantify existentially at first-order, and substitutionally when higher [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10790 | Quantifiers are needed to refer to infinitely many objects [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10791 | Substitutional semantics has no domain of objects, but place-markers for substitutions [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10785 | Maybe a substitutional semantics for quantification lends itself to nominalism [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10798 | A true universal sentence might be substitutionally refuted, by an unnamed denumerable object [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10795 | Substitutional language has no ontology, and is just a way of speaking [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10787 | Is being just referent of the verb 'to be'? [Marcus (Barcan)] |
9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
10789 | Nominalists say predication is relations between individuals, or deny that it refers [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10796 | If objects are thoughts, aren't we back to psychologism? [Marcus (Barcan)] |
10797 | Substitutivity won't fix identity, because expressions may be substitutable, but not refer at all [Marcus (Barcan)] |
8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
8424 | Determinism says there can't be two identical worlds up to a time, with identical laws, which then differ [Lewis] |
8420 | A proposition is a set of possible worlds where it is true [Lewis] |
8405 | A theory of causation should explain why cause precedes effect, not take it for granted [Lewis, by Field,H] |
8427 | I reject making the direction of causation axiomatic, since that takes too much for granted [Lewis] |
10392 | It is just individious discrimination to pick out one cause and label it as 'the' cause [Lewis] |
8419 | The modern regularity view says a cause is a member of a minimal set of sufficient conditions [Lewis] |
8421 | Regularity analyses could make c an effect of e, or an epiphenomenon, or inefficacious, or pre-empted [Lewis] |
17525 | The counterfactual view says causes are necessary (rather than sufficient) for their effects [Lewis, by Bird] |
17524 | Lewis has basic causation, counterfactuals, and a general ancestral (thus handling pre-emption) [Lewis, by Bird] |
8397 | Counterfactual causation implies all laws are causal, which they aren't [Tooley on Lewis] |
8423 | My counterfactual analysis applies to particular cases, not generalisations [Lewis] |
8426 | One event causes another iff there is a causal chain from first to second [Lewis] |
4795 | Lewis's account of counterfactuals is fine if we know what a law of nature is, but it won't explain the latter [Cohen,LJ on Lewis] |