34 ideas
| 4568 | If 'Queen of England' does not refer if there is no queen, its meaning can't refer if there is one [Cooper,DE] |
| 14775 | Numbers are just names devised for counting [Peirce] |
| 14776 | That two two-eyed people must have four eyes is a statement about numbers, not a fact [Peirce] |
| 16554 | Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 4574 | If some peoples do not have categories like time or cause, they can't be essential features of rationality [Cooper,DE] |
| 16556 | Penicillin causes nothing; the cause is what penicillin does [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16562 | We understand something by presenting its low-level entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 14770 | Reasoning is based on statistical induction, so it can't achieve certainty or precision [Peirce] |
| 14774 | Innate truths are very uncertain and full of error, so they certainly have exceptions [Peirce] |
| 14771 | Only reason can establish whether some deliverance of revelation really is inspired [Peirce] |
| 14773 | A truth is hard for us to understand if it rests on nothing but inspiration [Peirce] |
| 14772 | If we decide an idea is inspired, we still can't be sure we have got the idea right [Peirce] |
| 4573 | If it is claimed that language correlates with culture, we must be able to identify the two independently [Cooper,DE] |
| 4575 | A person's language doesn't prove their concepts, but how are concepts deduced apart from language? [Cooper,DE] |
| 16563 | The explanation is not the regularity, but the activity sustaining it [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16555 | Functions are not properties of objects, they are activities contributing to mechanisms [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16529 | Mechanisms are systems organised to produce regular change [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16530 | A mechanism explains a phenomenon by showing how it was produced [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16553 | Our account of mechanism combines both entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16559 | Descriptions of explanatory mechanisms have a bottom level, where going further is irrelevant [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16528 | Mechanisms are not just push-pull systems [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16564 | There are four types of bottom-level activities which will explain phenomena [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 14769 | Only imagination can connect phenomena together in a rational way [Peirce] |
| 16561 | We can abstract by taking an exemplary case and ignoring the detail [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 4561 | Many sentences set up dispositions which are irrelevant to the meanings of the sentences [Cooper,DE] |
| 4564 | I can meaningfully speculate that humans may have experiences currently impossible for us [Cooper,DE] |
| 4565 | The verification principle itself seems neither analytic nor verifiable [Cooper,DE] |
| 4562 | Most people know how to use the word "Amen", but they do not know what it means [Cooper,DE] |
| 4563 | 'How now brown cow?' is used for elocution, but this says nothing about its meaning [Cooper,DE] |
| 4566 | Any thesis about reference is also a thesis about what exists to be referred to [Cooper,DE] |
| 4571 | Reference need not be a hit-or-miss affair [Cooper,DE] |
| 4572 | If predicates name things, that reduces every sentence to a mere list of names [Cooper,DE] |
| 4576 | An analytic truth is one which becomes a logical truth when some synonyms have been replaced [Cooper,DE] |
| 16558 | Laws of nature have very little application in biology [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |