67 ideas
| 3005 | 'Jocasta' needs to be distinguished from 'Oedipus's mother' because they are connected by different properties [Fodor] |
| 19482 | Current physics says matter and antimatter should have reduced to light at the big bang [New Sci.] |
| 19483 | CP violation shows a decay imbalance in matter and antimatter, leading to matter's dominance [New Sci.] |
| 7014 | A particle and a coin heads-or-tails pick out to perfectly well-defined predicates and properties [Fodor] |
| 4444 | One moderate nominalist view says that properties and relations exist, but they are particulars [Armstrong] |
| 4445 | If properties and relations are particulars, there is still the problem of how to classify and group them [Armstrong] |
| 4448 | Should we decide which universals exist a priori (through words), or a posteriori (through science)? [Armstrong] |
| 4446 | It is claimed that some universals are not exemplified by any particular, so must exist separately [Armstrong] |
| 4440 | 'Resemblance Nominalism' finds that in practice the construction of resemblance classes is hard [Armstrong] |
| 4439 | 'Resemblance Nominalism' says properties are resemblances between classes of particulars [Armstrong] |
| 4431 | 'Predicate Nominalism' says that a 'universal' property is just a predicate applied to lots of things [Armstrong] |
| 4433 | Concept and predicate nominalism miss out some predicates, and may be viciously regressive [Armstrong] |
| 4432 | 'Concept Nominalism' says a 'universal' property is just a mental concept applied to lots of things [Armstrong] |
| 4436 | 'Class Nominalism' may explain properties if we stick to 'natural' sets, and ignore random ones [Armstrong] |
| 4434 | 'Class Nominalism' says that properties or kinds are merely membership of a set (e.g. of white things) [Armstrong] |
| 4435 | 'Class Nominalism' cannot explain co-extensive properties, or sets with random members [Armstrong] |
| 4437 | 'Mereological Nominalism' sees whiteness as a huge white object consisting of all the white things [Armstrong] |
| 4438 | 'Mereological Nominalism' may work for whiteness, but it doesn't seem to work for squareness [Armstrong] |
| 2990 | Contrary to commonsense, most of what is in the mind seems to be unlearned [Fodor] |
| 3009 | Sticklebacks have an innate idea that red things are rivals [Fodor] |
| 3008 | Evolution suggests that innate knowledge of human psychology would be beneficial [Fodor] |
| 19737 | A system can infer the structure of the world by making predictions about it [New Sci.] |
| 2994 | In CRTT thought may be represented, content must be [Fodor] |
| 15494 | We can't use propositions to explain intentional attitudes, because they would need explaining [Fodor] |
| 7326 | Intentionality doesn't go deep enough to appear on the physicists' ultimate list of things [Fodor] |
| 19736 | Neural networks can extract the car-ness of a car, or the chair-ness of a chair [New Sci.] |
| 3001 | Behaviourism has no theory of mental causation [Fodor] |
| 2993 | Any piece of software can always be hard-wired [Fodor] |
| 3011 | Causal powers must be a crucial feature of mental states [Fodor] |
| 5498 | Mind is a set of hierarchical 'homunculi', which are made up in turn from subcomponents [Fodor, by Lycan] |
| 2995 | Supervenience gives good support for mental causation [Fodor] |
| 2991 | Hume's associationism offers no explanation at all of rational thought [Fodor] |
| 3002 | If mind is just physical, how can it follow the rules required for intelligent thought? [Fodor] |
| 2992 | We may be able to explain rationality mechanically [Fodor] |
| 2988 | Folk psychology is the only explanation of behaviour we have [Fodor] |
| 16419 | No one has yet devised a rationality test [New Sci.] |
| 16417 | About a third of variation in human intelligence is environmental [New Sci.] |
| 16418 | People can be highly intelligent, yet very stupid [New Sci.] |
| 19484 | Psychologists measure personality along five dimensions [New Sci.] |
| 3010 | Belief and desire are structured states, which need mentalese [Fodor] |
| 2999 | Obsession with narrow content leads to various sorts of hopeless anti-realism [Fodor] |
| 3012 | Do identical thoughts have identical causal roles? [Fodor] |
| 2998 | Grice thinks meaning is inherited from the propositional attitudes which sentences express [Fodor] |
| 3006 | Whatever in the mind delivers falsehood is parasitic on what delivers truth [Fodor] |
| 3007 | Many different verification procedures can reach 'star', but it only has one semantic value [Fodor] |
| 3004 | The meaning of a sentence derives from its use in expressing an attitude [Fodor] |
| 3000 | Meaning holism is a crazy doctrine [Fodor] |
| 3003 | Very different mental states can share their contents, so content doesn't seem to be constructed from functional role [Fodor] |
| 2996 | Mental states may have the same content but different extensions [Fodor] |
| 19950 | Entropy is the only time-asymmetric law, so time may be linked to entropy [New Sci.] |
| 19478 | Light moves at a constant space-time speed, but its direction is in neither space nor time [New Sci.] |
| 19474 | Quantum states are measured by external time, of unknown origin [New Sci.] |
| 19473 | The Schrödinger equation describes the evolution of an object's wave function in Hilbert space [New Sci.] |
| 19953 | In string theory space-time has a grainy indivisible substructure [New Sci.] |
| 19476 | String theory needs at least 10 space-time dimensions [New Sci.] |
| 19954 | It is impossible for find a model of actuality among the innumerable models in string theory [New Sci.] |
| 19947 | Hilbert Space is an abstraction representing all possible states of a quantum system [New Sci.] |
| 19948 | Einstein's merging of time with space has left us confused about the nature of time [New Sci.] |
| 19475 | Relativity makes time and space jointly basic; quantum theory splits them, and prioritises time [New Sci.] |
| 19955 | Space-time may be a geometrical manifestation of quantum entanglement [New Sci.] |
| 19949 | Quantum theory relies on a clock outside the system - but where is it located? [New Sci.] |
| 19951 | Entropy is puzzling, so we may need to build new laws which include time directionality [New Sci.] |
| 19477 | General relativity predicts black holes, as former massive stars, and as galaxy centres [New Sci.] |
| 19952 | Black holes have entropy, but general relativity says they are unstructured, and lack entropy [New Sci.] |
| 16420 | 84.5 percent of the universe is made of dark matter [New Sci.] |
| 17604 | We are halfway to synthesising any molecule we want [New Sci.] |
| 17603 | Chemistry just needs the periodic table, and protons, electrons and neutrinos [New Sci.] |