33 ideas
| 16010 | While faith is a passion (as Kierkegaard says), wisdom is passionless [Wittgenstein] |
| 9921 | 'True' is only occasionally useful, as in 'everything Fermat believed was true' [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9924 | Modal logic gives an account of metalogical possibility, not metaphysical possibility [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9933 | The paradoxes are only a problem for Frege; Cantor didn't assume every condition determines a set [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9928 | Mereology implies that acceptance of entities entails acceptance of conglomerates [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9926 | A relation is either a set of sets of sets, or a set of sets [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9932 | The paradoxes no longer seem crucial in critiques of set theory [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9923 | We should talk about possible existence, rather than actual existence, of numbers [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9925 | Structuralism and nominalism are normally rivals, but might work together [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9934 | Number words became nouns around the time of Plato [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9918 | Abstract/concrete is a distinction of kind, not degree [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9929 | Much of what science says about concrete entities is 'abstraction-laden' [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9927 | Mathematics has ascended to higher and higher levels of abstraction [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 9930 | Abstraction is on a scale, of sets, to attributes, to type-formulas, to token-formulas [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 16185 | Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N] |
| 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] |
| 16171 | The covering law view assumes that each phenomenon has a 'right' explanation [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] |
| 16183 | In science, best explanations have regularly turned out to be false [Cartwright,N] |
| 9919 | The old debate classified representations as abstract, not entities [Burgess/Rosen] |
| 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] |
| 16178 | There are few laws for when one theory meets another [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] |
| 9922 | If space is really just a force-field, then it is a physical entity [Burgess/Rosen] |