97 ideas
| 5333 | Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be [Flanagan] |
| 10468 | A metaphysics has an ontology (objects) and an ideology (expressed ideas about them) [Oliver] |
| 5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
| 10471 | Ockham's Razor has more content if it says believe only in what is causal [Oliver] |
| 10749 | Necessary truths seem to all have the same truth-maker [Oliver] |
| 10750 | Slingshot Argument: seems to prove that all sentences have the same truth-maker [Oliver] |
| 6653 | Syntactical methods of proof need only structure, where semantic methods (truth-tables) need truth [Lowe] |
| 10747 | Accepting properties by ontological commitment tells you very little about them [Oliver] |
| 10748 | Reference is not the only way for a predicate to have ontological commitment [Oliver] |
| 10719 | There are four conditions defining the relations between particulars and properties [Oliver] |
| 10721 | If properties are sui generis, are they abstract or concrete? [Oliver] |
| 10716 | There are just as many properties as the laws require [Oliver] |
| 10720 | We have four options, depending whether particulars and properties are sui generis or constructions [Oliver] |
| 10714 | The expressions with properties as their meanings are predicates and abstract singular terms [Oliver] |
| 10715 | There are five main semantic theories for properties [Oliver] |
| 10738 | Tropes are not properties, since they can't be instantiated twice [Oliver] |
| 10739 | The property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of exactly similar redness [Oliver] |
| 10740 | The orthodox view does not allow for uninstantiated tropes [Oliver] |
| 10741 | Maybe concrete particulars are mereological wholes of abstract particulars [Oliver] |
| 10742 | Tropes can overlap, and shouldn't be splittable into parts [Oliver] |
| 10472 | 'Structural universals' methane and butane are made of the same universals, carbon and hydrogen [Oliver] |
| 10724 | Located universals are wholly present in many places, and two can be in the same place [Oliver] |
| 7963 | Aristotle's instantiated universals cannot account for properties of abstract objects [Oliver] |
| 10730 | If universals ground similarities, what about uniquely instantiated universals? [Oliver] |
| 10727 | Uninstantiated universals seem to exist if they themselves have properties [Oliver] |
| 7962 | Uninstantiated properties are useful in philosophy [Oliver] |
| 10722 | Instantiation is set-membership [Oliver] |
| 10744 | Nominalism can reject abstractions, or universals, or sets [Oliver] |
| 10726 | Things can't be fusions of universals, because two things could then be one thing [Oliver] |
| 10725 | Abstract sets of universals can't be bundled to make concrete things [Oliver] |
| 6618 | A 'substance' is a thing that remains the same when its properties change [Lowe] |
| 10745 | Science is modally committed, to disposition, causation and law [Oliver] |
| 6635 | Causal theories of belief make all beliefs true, and can't explain belief about the future [Lowe] |
| 6619 | Perhaps 'I' no more refers than the 'it' in 'it is raining' [Lowe] |
| 6643 | 'Ecological' approaches say we don't infer information, but pick it up directly from reality [Lowe] |
| 6638 | One must be able to visually recognise a table, as well as knowing its form [Lowe] |
| 6644 | Computationalists object that the 'ecological' approach can't tell us how we get the information [Lowe] |
| 6647 | Comparing shapes is proportional in time to the angle of rotation [Lowe] |
| 6639 | The 'disjunctive' theory of perception says true perceptions and hallucinations need have nothing in common [Lowe] |
| 6640 | A causal theorist can be a direct realist, if all objects of perception are external [Lowe] |
| 6645 | If blindsight shows we don't need perceptual experiences, the causal theory is wrong [Lowe] |
| 6637 | How could one paraphrase very complex sense-data reports adverbially? [Lowe] |
| 6667 | There are memories of facts, memories of practical skills, and autobiographical memory [Lowe] |
| 6642 | Psychologists say illusions only occur in unnatural and passive situations [Lowe] |
| 5340 | Explanation does not entail prediction [Flanagan] |
| 6641 | Externalists say minds depend on environment for their very existence and identity [Lowe] |
| 6617 | The main questions are: is mind distinct from body, and does it have unique properties? [Lowe] |
| 5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
| 6626 | 'Phenomenal' consciousness is of qualities; 'apperceptive' consciousness includes beliefs and desires [Lowe] |
| 5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
| 6646 | The brain may have two systems for vision, with only the older one intact in blindsight [Lowe] |
| 6665 | Persons are selves - subjects of experience, with reflexive self-knowledge [Lowe] |
| 6670 | If my brain could survive on its own, I cannot be identical with my whole body [Lowe] |
| 6671 | It seems impossible to get generally applicable mental concepts from self-observation [Lowe] |
| 5351 | We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan] |
| 6666 | All human languages have an equivalent of the word 'I' [Lowe] |
| 5353 | The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography [Flanagan] |
| 5354 | We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living [Flanagan] |
| 5349 | For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion [Flanagan] |
| 5338 | Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling [Flanagan] |
| 5344 | Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living [Flanagan] |
| 5332 | People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this [Flanagan] |
| 5345 | We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way [Flanagan] |
| 6625 | If qualia are causally inert, how can we even know about them? [Lowe] |
| 5343 | People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free [Flanagan] |
| 5347 | Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation [Flanagan] |
| 6621 | You can only identify behaviour by ascribing belief, so the behaviour can't explain the belief [Lowe] |
| 6654 | A computer program is equivalent to the person AND the manual [Lowe] |
| 6629 | Functionalism commits us to bizarre possibilities, such as 'zombies' [Lowe] |
| 6623 | Functionalism can't distinguish our experiences in spectrum inversion [Lowe] |
| 6628 | Functionalism only discusses relational properties of mental states, not intrinsic properties [Lowe] |
| 5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
| 6622 | Non-reductive physicalism accepts token-token identity (not type-type) and asserts 'supervenience' of mind and brain [Lowe] |
| 6634 | Physicalists must believe in narrow content (because thoughts are merely the brain states) [Lowe] |
| 5342 | Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser [Flanagan] |
| 6630 | Eliminativism is incoherent if it eliminates reason and truth as well as propositional attitudes [Lowe] |
| 6648 | Some behaviourists believe thought is just suppressed speech [Lowe] |
| 5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
| 6651 | People are wildly inaccurate in estimating probabilities about an observed event [Lowe] |
| 6652 | 'Base rate neglect' makes people favour the evidence over its background [Lowe] |
| 6655 | The 'Frame Problem' is how to program the appropriate application of general knowledge [Lowe] |
| 6657 | Computers can't be rational, because they lack motivation and curiosity [Lowe] |
| 6656 | The Turing test is too behaviourist, and too verbal in its methods [Lowe] |
| 6636 | The naturalistic views of how content is created are the causal theory and the teleological theory [Lowe] |
| 6633 | Twin Earth cases imply that even beliefs about kinds of stuff are indexical [Lowe] |
| 10746 | Conceptual priority is barely intelligible [Oliver] |
| 6632 | The same proposition provides contents for the that-clause of an utterance and a belief [Lowe] |
| 6631 | If propositions are abstract entities, how can minds depend on their causal powers? [Lowe] |
| 6659 | The three main theories of action involve the will, or belief-plus-desire, or an agent [Lowe] |
| 6661 | Libet gives empirical support for the will, as a kind of 'executive' mental operation [Lowe] |
| 5348 | Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character' [Flanagan] |
| 6662 | We feel belief and desire as reasons for choice, not causes of choice [Lowe] |
| 6663 | People's actions are explained either by their motives, or their reasons, or the causes [Lowe] |
| 5355 | Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason [Flanagan] |
| 5336 | Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing [Flanagan] |
| 5350 | The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE [Flanagan] |
| 5352 | The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds' [Flanagan] |