Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Metaphysics: contemporary introduction' and 'Against Structural Universals'

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25 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 4. Intrinsic Properties
15435 If you think universals are immanent, you must believe them to be sparse, and not every related predicate [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 5. Natural Properties
15451 I assume there could be natural properties that are not instantiated in our world [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 13. Tropes / a. Nature of tropes
15433 Tropes are particular properties, which cannot recur, but can be exact duplicates [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 13. Tropes / b. Critique of tropes
4483 If abstract terms are sets of tropes, 'being a unicorn' and 'being a griffin' turn out identical [Loux]
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 1. Universals
4481 Austere nominalists insist that the realist's universals lack the requisite independent identifiability [Loux]
4477 Universals come in hierarchies of generality [Loux]
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 2. Need for Universals
15436 Universals are meant to give an account of resemblance [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 1. Nominalism / a. Nominalism
4482 Austere nominalism has to take a host of things (like being red, or human) as primitive [Loux]
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 1. Nominalism / c. Nominalism about abstracta
4478 Nominalism needs to account for abstract singular terms like 'circularity'. [Loux]
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 5. Class Nominalism
15438 We can add a primitive natural/unnatural distinction to class nominalism [Lewis]
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / c. Individuation by location
4480 Times and places are identified by objects, so cannot be used in a theory of object-identity [Loux]
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 1. Structure of an Object
15448 The 'magical' view of structural universals says they are atoms, even though they have parts [Lewis]
15449 If 'methane' is an atomic structural universal, it has nothing to connect it to its carbon universals [Lewis]
15439 The 'pictorial' view of structural universals says they are wholes made of universals as parts [Lewis]
15441 The structural universal 'methane' needs the universal 'hydrogen' four times over [Lewis]
15445 Butane and Isobutane have the same atoms, but different structures [Lewis]
15434 Structural universals have a necessary connection to the universals forming its parts [Lewis]
15437 We can't get rid of structural universals if there are no simple universals [Lewis]
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 5. Composition of an Object
15446 Composition is not just making new things from old; there are too many counterexamples [Lewis]
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / c. Wholes from parts
15440 A whole is distinct from its parts, but is not a further addition in ontology [Lewis]
15444 Different things (a toy house and toy car) can be made of the same parts at different times [Lewis]
15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 3. Abstraction by mind
15450 Maybe abstraction is just mereological subtraction [Lewis]
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 7. Abstracta by Equivalence
15443 Mathematicians abstract by equivalence classes, but that doesn't turn a many into one [Lewis]
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
13304 Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius]
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure
20820 Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus]