50 ideas
| 7623 | For ancient Greeks being wise was an ethical value [Putnam] |
| 4697 | There has been a distinct 'Social Turn' in recent philosophy, like the earlier 'Linguistic Turn' [O'Grady] |
| 4731 | Good reasoning will avoid contradiction, enhance coherence, not ignore evidence, and maximise evidence [O'Grady] |
| 4735 | Just as maps must simplify their subject matter, so thought has to be reductionist about reality [O'Grady] |
| 4714 | Putnam's epistemic notion of truth replaces the realism of correspondence with ontological relativism [Putnam, by O'Grady] |
| 4703 | The epistemic theory of truth presents it as 'that which is licensed by our best theory of reality' [O'Grady] |
| 4701 | To say a relative truth is inexpressible in other frameworks is 'weak', while saying it is false is 'strong' [O'Grady] |
| 7617 | Before Kant, all philosophers had a correspondence theory of truth [Putnam] |
| 4716 | The correspondence theory is wrong, because there is no one correspondence between reality and fact [Putnam, by O'Grady] |
| 7616 | Truth is an idealisation of rational acceptability [Putnam] |
| 4705 | Logical relativism appears if we allow more than one legitimate logical system [O'Grady] |
| 18812 | Split out the logical vocabulary, make an assignment to the rest. It's logical if premises and conclusion match [Tarski, by Rumfitt] |
| 13344 | X follows from sentences K iff every model of K also models X [Tarski] |
| 4700 | A third value for truth might be "indeterminate", or a point on a scale between 'true' and 'false' [O'Grady] |
| 4704 | Wittgenstein reduced Russell's five primitive logical symbols to a mere one [O'Grady] |
| 14203 | Intension is not meaning, as 'cube' and 'square-faced polyhedron' are intensionally the same [Putnam] |
| 13343 | A 'model' is a sequence of objects which satisfies a complete set of sentential functions [Tarski] |
| 14207 | If cats equal cherries, model theory allows reinterpretation of the whole language preserving truth [Putnam] |
| 14214 | If we try to cure the abundance of theories with causal links, this is 'just more theory' [Putnam, by Lewis] |
| 14205 | The sentence 'A cat is on a mat' remains always true when 'cat' means cherry and 'mat' means tree [Putnam] |
| 4711 | Anti-realists say our theories (such as wave-particle duality) give reality incompatible properties [O'Grady] |
| 7610 | A fact is simply what it is rational to accept [Putnam] |
| 4698 | What counts as a fact partly depends on the availability of human concepts to describe them [O'Grady] |
| 7618 | Very nominalistic philosophers deny properties, though scientists accept them [Putnam] |
| 4715 | We may say that objects have intrinsic identity conditions, but still allow multiple accounts of them [O'Grady] |
| 4718 | If necessity is always relative to a description in a language, then there is only 'de dicto' necessity [Putnam, by O'Grady] |
| 4719 | Maybe developments in logic and geometry have shown that the a priori may be relative [O'Grady] |
| 4720 | Sense-data are only safe from scepticism if they are primitive and unconceptualised [O'Grady] |
| 4722 | Modern epistemology centres on debates about foundations, and about external justification [O'Grady] |
| 4724 | Internalists say the reasons for belief must be available to the subject, and externalists deny this [O'Grady] |
| 4723 | Coherence involves support from explanation and evidence, and also probability and confirmation [O'Grady] |
| 4709 | Ontological relativists are anti-realists, who deny that our theories carve nature at the joints [O'Grady] |
| 4725 | Contextualism says that knowledge is relative to its context; 'empty' depends on your interests [O'Grady] |
| 7620 | Some kind of objective 'rightness' is a presupposition of thought itself [Putnam] |
| 14204 | Naïve operationalism would have meanings change every time the tests change [Putnam] |
| 4732 | One may understand a realm of ideas, but be unable to judge their rationality or truth [O'Grady] |
| 7611 | Rationality is one part of our conception of human flourishing [Putnam] |
| 14200 | 'Water' on Twin Earth doesn't refer to water, but no mental difference can account for this [Putnam] |
| 7612 | Reference is social not individual, because we defer to experts when referring to elm trees [Putnam] |
| 7613 | Concepts are (at least in part) abilities and not occurrences [Putnam] |
| 4710 | Verificationism was attacked by the deniers of the analytic-synthetic distinction, needed for 'facts' [O'Grady] |
| 14202 | Neither individual nor community mental states fix reference [Putnam] |
| 14201 | Maybe the total mental state of a language community fixes the reference of a term [Putnam] |
| 13345 | Sentences are 'analytical' if every sequence of objects models them [Tarski] |
| 4717 | If we abandon the analytic-synthetic distinction, scepticism about meaning may be inevitable [O'Grady] |
| 4706 | Early Quine says all beliefs could be otherwise, but later he said we would assume mistranslation [O'Grady] |
| 14206 | There are infinitely many interpretations of a sentence which can all seem to be 'correct' [Putnam] |
| 4734 | Cryptographers can recognise that something is a language, without translating it [O'Grady] |
| 7624 | The word 'inconsiderate' nicely shows the blurring of facts and values [Putnam] |
| 4727 | The chief problem for fideists is other fideists who hold contrary ideas [O'Grady] |