20 ideas
| 11103 | We aren't stuck with our native conceptual scheme; we can gradually change it [Quine] |
| 11092 | A river is a process, with stages; if we consider it as one thing, we are considering a process [Quine] |
| 11093 | We don't say 'red' is abstract, unlike a river, just because it has discontinuous shape [Quine] |
| 11101 | General terms don't commit us ontologically, but singular terms with substitution do [Quine] |
| 11096 | Discourse generally departmentalizes itself to some degree [Quine] |
| 4483 | If abstract terms are sets of tropes, 'being a unicorn' and 'being a griffin' turn out identical [Loux] |
| 4481 | Austere nominalists insist that the realist's universals lack the requisite independent identifiability [Loux] |
| 4477 | Universals come in hierarchies of generality [Loux] |
| 4482 | Austere nominalism has to take a host of things (like being red, or human) as primitive [Loux] |
| 4478 | Nominalism needs to account for abstract singular terms like 'circularity'. [Loux] |
| 11099 | Understanding 'is square' is knowing when to apply it, not knowing some object [Quine] |
| 11094 | 'Red' is a single concrete object in space-time; 'red' and 'drop' are parts of a red drop [Quine] |
| 11097 | Red is the largest red thing in the universe [Quine] |
| 4480 | Times and places are identified by objects, so cannot be used in a theory of object-identity [Loux] |
| 17595 | To unite a sequence of ostensions to make one object, a prior concept of identity is needed [Quine] |
| 11095 | We should just identify any items which are indiscernible within a given discourse [Quine] |
| 11104 | Concepts are language [Quine] |
| 11102 | Apply '-ness' or 'class of' to abstract general terms, to get second-level abstract singular terms [Quine] |
| 8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
| 8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |