49 ideas
| 16512 | Semantic facts are preferable to transcendental philosophical fiction [Wiggins] |
| 17529 | Maybe the concept needed under which things coincide must also yield a principle of counting [Wiggins] |
| 17530 | The sortal needed for identities may not always be sufficient to support counting [Wiggins] |
| 16523 | Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts [Wiggins] |
| 16524 | Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality [Wiggins] |
| 16526 | Animal classifications: the Emperor's, fabulous, innumerable, like flies, stray dogs, embalmed…. [Wiggins] |
| 16492 | Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out [Wiggins] |
| 16493 | Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers [Wiggins] |
| 16496 | Singling out extends back and forward in time [Wiggins] |
| 16495 | The only singling out is singling out 'as' something [Wiggins] |
| 16501 | In Aristotle's sense, saying x falls under f is to say what x is [Wiggins] |
| 16506 | Every determinate thing falls under a sortal, which fixes its persistence [Wiggins] |
| 16509 | Natural kinds are well suited to be the sortals which fix substances [Wiggins] |
| 16514 | Artefacts are individuated by some matter having a certain function [Wiggins] |
| 16510 | Nominal essences don't fix membership, ignore evolution, and aren't contextual [Wiggins] |
| 16503 | 'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing [Wiggins] |
| 16499 | A restored church is the same 'church', but not the same 'building' or 'brickwork' [Wiggins] |
| 16515 | A thing begins only once; for a clock, it is when its making is first completed [Wiggins] |
| 16517 | Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction [Wiggins] |
| 16497 | Leibniz's Law (not transitivity, symmetry, reflexivity) marks what is peculiar to identity [Wiggins] |
| 16502 | Identity is primitive [Wiggins] |
| 16498 | Identity cannot be defined, because definitions are identities [Wiggins] |
| 16521 | A is necessarily A, so if B is A, then B is also necessarily A [Wiggins] |
| 16505 | By the principle of Indiscernibility, a symmetrical object could only be half of itself! [Wiggins] |
| 16494 | We want to explain sameness as coincidence of substance, not as anything qualitative [Wiggins] |
| 16522 | It is hard or impossible to think of Caesar as not human [Wiggins] |
| 7458 | The reliability of witnesses depends on whether they benefit from their observations [Laplace, by Hacking] |
| 16525 | Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience [Wiggins] |
| 3441 | If a supreme intellect knew all atoms and movements, it could know all of the past and the future [Laplace] |
| 16518 | We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us [Wiggins] |
| 16511 | A 'conception' of a horse is a full theory of what it is (and not just the 'concept') [Wiggins] |
| 23154 | We divide mankind into friend and foe, and cooperate with one and compete with the other [Russell] |
| 23153 | Gradually loyalty to a creed increased, which could even outweigh nationality [Russell] |
| 23152 | Increasingly war expands communities, and unifies them through fear [Russell] |
| 23155 | In early societies the leaders needed cohesion, but the rest just had to obey [Russell] |
| 23156 | The economic and political advantages of great size seem to have no upper limit [Russell] |
| 23157 | Government has a negative purpose, to prevent trouble, and a positive aim of realising our desires [Russell] |
| 23151 | A monarch is known to everyone in the group, and can thus unite large groups [Russell] |
| 23167 | Power should be with smaller bodies, as long as it doesn't restrict central powers [Russell] |
| 23163 | In an anarchy universities, research, books, and even seaside holidays, would be impossible [Russell] |
| 23168 | A state is essential, to control greedy or predatory impulses [Russell] |
| 23166 | In democracy we are more aware of being governed than of our tiny share in government [Russell] |
| 23162 | Managers are just as remote from workers under nationalisation as under capitalism [Russell] |
| 23165 | Socialists say economic justice needs some state control of industries, and of foreign trade [Russell] |
| 23160 | Being a slave of society is hardly better than being a slave of a despot [Russell] |
| 23158 | Slavery began the divorce between the work and the purposes of the worker [Russell] |
| 23161 | Slaves can be just as equal as free people [Russell] |
| 23159 | Scarce goods may be denied entirely, to avoid their unequal distribution [Russell] |
| 23164 | Modern justice is seen as equality, apart from modest extra rewards for exceptional desert [Russell] |