49 ideas
| 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] |
| 9561 | The mathematics of relations is entirely covered by ordered pairs [Chihara] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 23708 | Humeans see properties as having no more essential features and relations than their distinctness [Friend/Kimpton-Nye, by PG] |
| 23709 | Dispositions are what individuate properties, and they constitute their essence [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23707 | Powers are properties which necessitate dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23714 | Dispositional essentialism (unlike the grounding view) says only fundamental properties are powers [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23711 | A power is a property which consists entirely of dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23712 | Powers are qualitative properties which fully ground dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23698 | Dispositions have directed behaviour which occurs if triggered [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23699 | 'Masked' dispositions fail to react because something intervenes [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23700 | A disposition is 'altered' when the stimulus reverses the disposition [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23701 | A disposition is 'mimicked' if a different cause produces that effect from that stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23702 | A 'trick' can look like a stimulus for a disposition which will happen without it [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23703 | Some dispositions manifest themselves without a stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23704 | We could analyse dispositions as 'possibilities', with no mention of a stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23710 | Dispositionalism says modality is in the powers of this world, not outsourced to possible worlds [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 23706 | Hume's Dictum says no connections are necessary - so mass and spacetime warping could separate [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 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] |