43 ideas
| 6891 | Quine's naturalistic and empirical view is based entirely on first-order logic and set theory [Quine, by Mautner] |
| 6310 | Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine] |
| 19342 | Reason avoids multiplying hypotheses or principles [Leibniz] |
| 12798 | Plurals can in principle be paraphrased away altogether [Quine] |
| 17905 | Any progression will do nicely for numbers; they can all then be used to measure multiplicity [Quine] |
| 9556 | Nearly all of mathematics has to quantify over abstract objects [Quine] |
| 21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
| 16462 | The quest for ultimate categories is the quest for a simple clear pattern of notation [Quine] |
| 12711 | The immediate cause of movements is more real [than geometry] [Leibniz] |
| 15723 | Either dispositions rest on structures, or we keep saying 'all things being equal' [Quine] |
| 15490 | Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB] |
| 8504 | Quine aims to deal with properties by the use of eternal open sentences, or classes [Quine, by Devitt] |
| 8464 | Physical objects in space-time are just events or processes, no matter how disconnected [Quine] |
| 7924 | The notion of a physical object is by far the most useful one for science [Quine] |
| 19349 | The complete notion of a substance implies all of its predicates or attributes [Leibniz] |
| 7558 | Substances mirror God or the universe, each from its own viewpoint [Leibniz] |
| 16761 | Forms are of no value in physics, but are indispensable in metaphysics [Leibniz] |
| 13088 | Subjects include predicates, so full understanding of subjects reveals all the predicates [Leibniz] |
| 8482 | Mathematicians must be rational but not two-legged, cyclists the opposite. So a mathematical cyclist? [Quine] |
| 12136 | Cyclist are not actually essentially two-legged [Brody on Quine] |
| 17594 | We can paraphrase 'x=y' as a sequence of the form 'if Fx then Fy' [Quine] |
| 15725 | Normal conditionals have a truth-value gap when the antecedent is false. [Quine] |
| 15722 | Conditionals are pointless if the truth value of the antecedent is known [Quine] |
| 15719 | We feign belief in counterfactual antecedents, and assess how convincing the consequent is [Quine] |
| 15721 | Counterfactuals are plausible when dispositions are involved, as they imply structures [Quine] |
| 15724 | Counterfactuals have no place in a strict account of science [Quine] |
| 15720 | What stays the same in assessing a counterfactual antecedent depends on context [Quine] |
| 13085 | Leibniz is some form of haecceitist [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| 5024 | Knowledge doesn't just come from the senses; we know the self, substance, identity, being etc. [Leibniz] |
| 4630 | Two theories can be internally consistent and match all the facts, yet be inconsistent with one another [Quine, by Baggini /Fosl] |
| 5027 | If a person's memories became totally those of the King of China, he would be the King of China [Leibniz] |
| 5023 | Future contingent events are certain, because God foresees them, but that doesn't make them necessary [Leibniz] |
| 2119 | People argue for God's free will, but it isn't needed if God acts in perfection following supreme reason [Leibniz] |
| 5025 | Mind and body can't influence one another, but God wouldn't intervene in the daily routine [Leibniz] |
| 3131 | Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism [Quine, by Rey] |
| 3988 | Indeterminacy of translation also implies indeterminacy in interpreting people's mental states [Dennett on Quine] |
| 6311 | The firmer the links between sentences and stimuli, the less translations can diverge [Quine] |
| 6312 | We can never precisely pin down how to translate the native word 'Gavagai' [Quine] |
| 6313 | Stimulus synonymy of 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not even guarantee they are coextensive [Quine] |
| 6317 | Dispositions to speech behaviour, and actual speech, are never enough to fix any one translation [Quine] |
| 6315 | We should be suspicious of a translation which implies that a people have very strange beliefs [Quine] |
| 6314 | Weird translations are always possible, but they improve if we impose our own logic on them [Quine] |
| 5026 | Animals lack morality because they lack self-reflection [Leibniz] |