69 ideas
| 21616 | Truth and falsity apply to suppositions as well as to assertions [Williamson] |
| 21623 | True and false are not symmetrical; false is more complex, involving negation [Williamson] |
| 21602 | Many-valued logics don't solve vagueness; its presence at the meta-level is ignored [Williamson] |
| 21611 | Formal semantics defines validity as truth preserved in every model [Williamson] |
| 21606 | 'Bivalence' is the meta-linguistic principle that 'A' in the object language is true or false [Williamson] |
| 21605 | Excluded Middle is 'A or not A' in the object language [Williamson] |
| 21612 | Or-elimination is 'Argument by Cases'; it shows how to derive C from 'A or B' [Williamson] |
| 21599 | A sorites stops when it collides with an opposite sorites [Williamson] |
| 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.] |
| 21589 | When bivalence is rejected because of vagueness, we lose classical logic [Williamson] |
| 21596 | Vagueness undermines the stable references needed by logic [Williamson] |
| 21601 | A vague term can refer to very precise elements [Williamson] |
| 21629 | Equally fuzzy objects can be identical, so fuzziness doesn't entail vagueness [Williamson] |
| 21591 | Vagueness is epistemic. Statements are true or false, but we often don't know which [Williamson] |
| 21619 | If a heap has a real boundary, omniscient speakers would agree where it is [Williamson] |
| 21620 | The epistemic view says that the essence of vagueness is ignorance [Williamson] |
| 21622 | If there is a true borderline of which we are ignorant, this drives a wedge between meaning and use [Williamson] |
| 9120 | Vagueness in a concept is its indiscriminability from other possible concepts [Williamson] |
| 21625 | The vagueness of 'heap' can remain even when the context is fixed [Williamson] |
| 21614 | The 'nihilist' view of vagueness says that 'heap' is not a legitimate concept [Williamson] |
| 21617 | We can say propositions are bivalent, but vague utterances don't express a proposition [Williamson] |
| 21618 | If the vague 'TW is thin' says nothing, what does 'TW is thin if his perfect twin is thin' say? [Williamson] |
| 21590 | Asking when someone is 'clearly' old is higher-order vagueness [Williamson] |
| 21592 | Supervaluation keeps classical logic, but changes the truth in classical semantics [Williamson] |
| 21603 | You can't give a precise description of a language which is intrinsically vague [Williamson] |
| 21604 | Supervaluation assigns truth when all the facts are respected [Williamson] |
| 21607 | Supervaluation has excluded middle but not bivalence; 'A or not-A' is true, even when A is undecided [Williamson] |
| 21608 | Truth-functionality for compound statements fails in supervaluation [Williamson] |
| 21609 | Supervaluationism defines 'supertruth', but neglects it when defining 'valid' [Williamson] |
| 21610 | Supervaluation adds a 'definitely' operator to classical logic [Williamson] |
| 21613 | Supervaluationism cannot eliminate higher-order vagueness [Williamson] |
| 21633 | Nominalists suspect that properties etc are our projections, and could have been different [Williamson] |
| 13160 | To exist and be understood, a multitude must first be reduced to a unity [Leibniz] |
| 13161 | Substances are everywhere in matter, like points in a line [Leibniz] |
| 21630 | If fuzzy edges are fine, then why not fuzzy temporal, modal or mereological boundaries? [Williamson] |
| 21632 | A river is not just event; it needs actual and counterfactual boundaries [Williamson] |
| 21621 | We can't infer metaphysical necessities to be a priori knowable - or indeed knowable in any way [Williamson] |
| 21627 | We have inexact knowledge when we include margins of error [Williamson] |
| 21626 | Knowing you know (KK) is usually denied if the knowledge concept is missing, or not considered [Williamson] |
| 19737 | A system can infer the structure of the world by making predictions about it [New Sci.] |
| 19736 | Neural networks can extract the car-ness of a car, or the chair-ness of a chair [New Sci.] |
| 21631 | To know, believe, hope or fear, one must grasp the thought, but not when you fail to do them [Williamson] |
| 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.] |
| 21600 | 'Blue' is not a family resemblance, because all the blues resemble in some respect [Williamson] |
| 21615 | References to the 'greatest prime number' have no reference, but are meaningful [Williamson] |
| 18038 | The 't' and 'f' of formal semantics has no philosophical interest, and may not refer to true and false [Williamson] |
| 21624 | It is known that there is a cognitive loss in identifying propositions with possible worlds [Williamson] |
| 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.] |
| 19955 | Space-time may be a geometrical manifestation of quantum entanglement [New Sci.] |
| 19475 | Relativity makes time and space jointly basic; quantum theory splits them, and prioritises time [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.] |