57 ideas
| 19275 | You cannot understand what exists without understanding possibility and necessity [Hale] |
| 19291 | A canonical defintion specifies the type of thing, and what distinguish this specimen [Hale] |
| 19297 | The two Barcan principles are easily proved in fairly basic modal logic [Hale] |
| 19301 | With a negative free logic, we can dispense with the Barcan formulae [Hale] |
| 9572 | Realists about sets say there exists a null set in the real world, with no members [Chihara] |
| 9550 | We only know relational facts about the empty set, but nothing intrinsic [Chihara] |
| 9562 | In simple type theory there is a hierarchy of null sets [Chihara] |
| 9573 | The null set is a structural position which has no other position in membership relation [Chihara] |
| 9551 | What is special about Bill Clinton's unit set, in comparison with all the others? [Chihara] |
| 9549 | The set theorist cannot tell us what 'membership' is [Chihara] |
| 9571 | ZFU refers to the physical world, when it talks of 'urelements' [Chihara] |
| 9563 | A pack of wolves doesn't cease when one member dies [Chihara] |
| 19296 | If second-order variables range over sets, those are just objects; properties and relations aren't sets [Hale] |
| 19289 | Maybe conventionalism applies to meaning, but not to the truth of propositions expressed [Hale] |
| 9561 | The mathematics of relations is entirely covered by ordered pairs [Chihara] |
| 19298 | Unlike axiom proofs, natural deduction proofs needn't focus on logical truths and theorems [Hale] |
| 9552 | Sentences are consistent if they can all be true; for Frege it is that no contradiction can be deduced [Chihara] |
| 9553 | Analytic geometry gave space a mathematical structure, which could then have axioms [Chihara] |
| 10192 | We can replace existence of sets with possibility of constructing token sentences [Chihara, by MacBride] |
| 19295 | Add Hume's principle to logic, to get numbers; arithmetic truths rest on the nature of the numbers [Hale] |
| 19281 | Interesting supervenience must characterise the base quite differently from what supervenes on it [Hale] |
| 19278 | There is no gap between a fact that p, and it is true that p; so we only have the truth-condtions for p [Hale] |
| 9559 | If a successful theory confirms mathematics, presumably a failed theory disconfirms it? [Chihara] |
| 9566 | No scientific explanation would collapse if mathematical objects were shown not to exist [Chihara] |
| 16185 | Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N] |
| 19302 | If a chair could be made of slightly different material, that could lead to big changes [Hale] |
| 19290 | Absolute necessities are necessarily necessary [Hale] |
| 19286 | 'Absolute necessity' is when there is no restriction on the things which necessitate p [Hale] |
| 19288 | Logical and metaphysical necessities differ in their vocabulary, and their underlying entities [Hale] |
| 19285 | Logical necessity is something which is true, no matter what else is the case [Hale] |
| 19287 | Maybe each type of logic has its own necessity, gradually becoming broader [Hale] |
| 19282 | It seems that we cannot show that modal facts depend on non-modal facts [Hale] |
| 19276 | The big challenge for essentialist views of modality is things having necessary existence [Hale] |
| 19293 | Essentialism doesn't explain necessity reductively; it explains all necessities in terms of a few basic natures [Hale] |
| 19294 | If necessity derives from essences, how do we explain the necessary existence of essences? [Hale] |
| 19279 | What are these worlds, that being true in all of them makes something necessary? [Hale] |
| 19299 | Possible worlds make every proposition true or false, which endorses classical logic [Hale] |
| 16182 | Two main types of explanation are by causes, or by citing a theoretical framework [Cartwright,N] |
| 16184 | An explanation is a model that fits a theory and predicts the phenomenological laws [Cartwright,N] |
| 16167 | Laws get the facts wrong, and explanation rests on improvements and qualifications of laws [Cartwright,N] |
| 16169 | Laws apply to separate domains, but real explanations apply to intersecting domains [Cartwright,N] |
| 16176 | Covering-law explanation lets us explain storms by falling barometers [Cartwright,N] |
| 16177 | I disagree with the covering-law view that there is a law to cover every single case [Cartwright,N] |
| 16180 | You can't explain one quail's behaviour by just saying that all quails do it [Cartwright,N] |
| 16171 | The covering law view assumes that each phenomenon has a 'right' explanation [Cartwright,N] |
| 16183 | In science, best explanations have regularly turned out to be false [Cartwright,N] |
| 19300 | The molecules may explain the water, but they are not what 'water' means [Hale] |
| 9568 | I prefer the open sentences of a Constructibility Theory, to Platonist ideas of 'equivalence classes' [Chihara] |
| 9547 | Mathematical entities are causally inert, so the causal theory of reference won't work for them [Chihara] |
| 16175 | A cause won't increase the effect frequency if other causes keep interfering [Cartwright,N] |
| 6781 | There are fundamental explanatory laws (false!), and phenomenological laws (regularities) [Cartwright,N, by Bird] |
| 16166 | Laws of appearances are 'phenomenological'; laws of reality are 'theoretical' [Cartwright,N] |
| 16179 | Good organisation may not be true, and the truth may not organise very much [Cartwright,N] |
| 16170 | To get from facts to equations, we need a prepared descriptions suited to mathematics [Cartwright,N] |
| 16181 | Simple laws have quite different outcomes when they act in combinations [Cartwright,N] |
| 16178 | There are few laws for when one theory meets another [Cartwright,N] |
| 9574 | 'Gunk' is an individual possessing no parts that are atoms [Chihara] |