45 ideas
| 5745 | Quine says quantified modal logic creates nonsense, bad ontology, and false essentialism [Melia on Quine] |
| 8789 | Various strategies try to deal with the ontological commitments of second-order logic [Hale/Wright on Quine] |
| 15105 | F(x) walked into a bar. The barman said.. [Sommers,W] |
| 17518 | Counting 'coin in this box' may have coin as the unit, with 'in this box' merely as the scope [Ayers] |
| 17516 | If counting needs a sortal, what of things which fall under two sortals? [Ayers] |
| 16966 | Philosophers tend to distinguish broad 'being' from narrower 'existence' - but I reject that [Quine] |
| 12408 | Sartre to Waitress: Coffee with no cream, please... [Sommers,W] |
| 16965 | All we have of general existence is what existential quantifiers express [Quine] |
| 17520 | Events do not have natural boundaries, and we have to set them [Ayers] |
| 12397 | Said Plato: 'The things that we feel... [Sommers,W] |
| 16963 | Existence is implied by the quantifiers, not by the constants [Quine] |
| 16964 | Theories are committed to objects of which some of its predicates must be true [Quine] |
| 4216 | Express a theory in first-order predicate logic; its ontology is the types of bound variable needed for truth [Quine, by Lowe] |
| 18966 | Ontological commitment of theories only arise if they are classically quantified [Quine] |
| 14490 | You can be implicitly committed to something without quantifying over it [Thomasson on Quine] |
| 16961 | In formal terms, a category is the range of some style of variables [Quine] |
| 17519 | To express borderline cases of objects, you need the concept of an 'object' [Ayers] |
| 17510 | Speakers need the very general category of a thing, if they are to think about it [Ayers] |
| 17522 | We use sortals to classify physical objects by the nature and origin of their unity [Ayers] |
| 17515 | Seeing caterpillar and moth as the same needs continuity, not identity of sortal concepts [Ayers] |
| 17511 | Recognising continuity is separate from sortals, and must precede their use [Ayers] |
| 17517 | Could the same matter have more than one form or principle of unity? [Ayers] |
| 17513 | If there are two objects, then 'that marble, man-shaped object' is ambiguous [Ayers] |
| 17523 | Sortals basically apply to individuals [Ayers] |
| 17521 | You can't have the concept of a 'stage' if you lack the concept of an object [Ayers] |
| 17514 | Temporal 'parts' cannot be separated or rearranged [Ayers] |
| 17509 | Some say a 'covering concept' completes identity; others place the concept in the reference [Ayers] |
| 17512 | If diachronic identities need covering concepts, why not synchronic identities too? [Ayers] |
| 12407 | Barman to Descartes: Would you like another drink?... [Sommers,W] |
| 12399 | There was a young student called Fred... [Sommers,W] |
| 20963 | A philosopher and his wife are out for a drive... [Sommers,W] |
| 12404 | Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd.... [Sommers,W] |
| 12403 | There once was a man who said: 'God... [Sommers,W] |
| 12402 | ..But if he's a student of Berkeley... [Sommers,W] |
| 12409 | The philosopher Berkeley once said.. [Sommers,W] |
| 14694 | "My dog's got synaesthesia." How does he smell? ..... [Sommers,W] |
| 12401 | A toper who spies in the distance... [Sommers,W] |
| 12410 | There once was a man who said 'Damn!... [Sommers,W] |
| 9392 | How do behaviourists greet each other? [Sommers,W] |
| 12405 | 'If you're aristocratic,' said Nietzsche... [Sommers,W] |
| 9391 | Why do anarchists drink herbal tea? [Sommers,W] |
| 12400 | Cries the maid: 'You must marry me Hume!'... [Sommers,W] |
| 16527 | Causation - we all thought we knew it/ Till Hume came along and saw through it/…. [Sommers,W] |
| 17592 | The barman called 'Time!', and Augustine said..... [Sommers,W] |
| 15208 | The past, present and future walked into a bar.... [Sommers,W] |