Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'In Defense of Essentialism', 'Truth and Probability' and 'Contextualism Defended (and reply)'

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16 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / e. Individuation by kind
'Substance theorists' take modal properties as primitive, without structure, just falling under a sortal [Paul,LA]
If an object's sort determines its properties, we need to ask what determines its sort [Paul,LA]
Substance essentialism says an object is multiple, as falling under various different sortals [Paul,LA]
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / b. Sums of parts
Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would allow things with incompatible properties [Paul,LA]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 2. Types of Essence
Deep essentialist objects have intrinsic properties that fix their nature; the shallow version makes it contextual [Paul,LA]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 6. Essence as Unifier
Deep essentialists say essences constrain how things could change; modal profiles fix natures [Paul,LA]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
Essentialism must deal with charges of arbitrariness, and failure to reduce de re modality [Paul,LA]
An object's modal properties don't determine its possibilities [Paul,LA]
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / d. Non-truthfunction conditionals
'If' is the same as 'given that', so the degrees of belief should conform to probability theory [Ramsey, by Ramsey]
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 2. Nature of Possible Worlds / a. Nature of possible worlds
'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds [Paul,LA]
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 6. Contextual Justification / a. Contextualism
Our own intuitions about whether we know tend to vacillate [Cohen,S]
We shouldn't jump too quickly to a contextualist account of claims to know [Cohen,S]
The context sensitivity of knowledge derives from its justification [Cohen,S]
Contextualism is good because it allows knowledge, but bad because 'knowing' is less valued [Cohen,S]
13. Knowledge Criteria / D. Scepticism / 6. Scepticism Critique
Contextualists slightly concede scepticism, but only in extremely strict contexts [Cohen,S]
14. Science / C. Induction / 6. Bayes's Theorem
Ramsey gave axioms for an uncertain agent to decide their preferences [Ramsey, by Davidson]