40 ideas
| 2945 | Most philosophers start with reality and then examine knowledge; Descartes put the study of knowledge first [Lehrer] |
| 2352 | The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions [Putnam] |
| 2946 | You cannot demand an analysis of a concept without knowing the purpose of the analysis [Lehrer] |
| 15063 | Some sentences depend for their truth on worldly circumstances, and others do not [Fine,K] |
| 2345 | Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation [Putnam] |
| 2347 | Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam] |
| 15078 | There are levels of existence, as well as reality; objects exist at the lowest level in which they can function [Fine,K] |
| 2349 | Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique [Putnam] |
| 15072 | Bottom level facts are subject to time and world, middle to world but not time, and top to neither [Fine,K] |
| 15071 | Tensed and tenseless sentences state two sorts of fact, which belong to two different 'realms' of reality [Fine,K] |
| 2351 | Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved [Putnam] |
| 15075 | Modal features are not part of entities, because they are accounted for by the entity [Fine,K] |
| 15065 | What it is is fixed prior to existence or the object's worldly features [Fine,K] |
| 15076 | Essential features of an object have no relation to how things actually are [Fine,K] |
| 15073 | Self-identity should have two components, its existence, and its neutral identity with itself [Fine,K] |
| 15074 | We would understand identity between objects, even if their existence was impossible [Fine,K] |
| 15064 | Proper necessary truths hold whatever the circumstances; transcendent truths regardless of circumstances [Fine,K] |
| 15070 | It is the nature of Socrates to be a man, so necessarily he is a man [Fine,K] |
| 15068 | The actual world is a totality of facts, so we also think of possible worlds as totalities [Fine,K] |
| 15069 | Possible worlds may be more limited, to how things might actually turn out [Fine,K] |
| 2331 | Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam] |
| 2348 | Is there just one computational state for each specific belief? [Putnam] |
| 2332 | Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic [Putnam] |
| 2071 | If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology [Putnam] |
| 2344 | If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam] |
| 2074 | Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam] |
| 2343 | Reference may be different while mental representation is the same [Putnam] |
| 2346 | Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam] |
| 2354 | "Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam] |
| 2336 | Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam] |
| 2334 | Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam] |
| 2335 | Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam] |
| 2340 | We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam] |
| 2341 | Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam] |
| 2339 | Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam] |
| 2338 | Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam] |
| 2342 | "Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description [Putnam] |
| 15067 | A-theorists tend to reject the tensed/tenseless distinction [Fine,K] |
| 15077 | It is said that in the A-theory, all existents and objects must be tensed, as well as the sentences [Fine,K] |
| 15066 | B-theorists say tensed sentences have an unfilled argument-place for a time [Fine,K] |