Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction'', 'Mathematics and Indispensibility' and 'Neutral Relations'

expand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

10 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 2. Aims of Definition
10528 Definitions concern how we should speak, not how things are [Fine,K]
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 5. Definitions of Number / d. Hume's Principle
10529 If Hume's Principle can define numbers, we needn't worry about its truth [Fine,K]
10530 Hume's Principle is either adequate for number but fails to define properly, or vice versa [Fine,K]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / e. Ontological commitment problems
9558 All scientific tests will verify mathematics, so it is a background, not something being tested [Sober]
8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations
14217 The 'standard' view of relations is that they hold of several objects in a given order [Fine,K]
14216 The 'positionalist' view of relations says the number of places is fixed, but not the order [Fine,K]
14218 A block on top of another contains one relation, not both 'on top of' and 'beneath' [Fine,K]
14219 Language imposes a direction on a road which is not really part of the road [Fine,K]
14220 Explain biased relations as orderings of the unbiased, or the unbiased as permutation classes of the biased? [Fine,K]
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 7. Abstracta by Equivalence
10527 An abstraction principle should not 'inflate', producing more abstractions than objects [Fine,K]