36 ideas
14001 | People who use science to make philosophical points don't realise how philosophical science is [Markosian] |
13991 | Presentism has the problem that if Socrates ceases to exist, so do propositions about him [Markosian] |
17926 | Rejecting double negation elimination undermines reductio proofs [Colyvan] |
17925 | Showing a disproof is impossible is not a proof, so don't eliminate double negation [Colyvan] |
17924 | Excluded middle says P or not-P; bivalence says P is either true or false [Colyvan] |
17929 | Löwenheim proved his result for a first-order sentence, and Skolem generalised it [Colyvan] |
17930 | Axioms are 'categorical' if all of their models are isomorphic [Colyvan] |
17928 | Ordinal numbers represent order relations [Colyvan] |
17923 | Intuitionists only accept a few safe infinities [Colyvan] |
17941 | Infinitesimals were sometimes zero, and sometimes close to zero [Colyvan] |
17922 | Reducing real numbers to rationals suggested arithmetic as the foundation of maths [Colyvan] |
17936 | Transfinite induction moves from all cases, up to the limit ordinal [Colyvan] |
17940 | Most mathematical proofs are using set theory, but without saying so [Colyvan] |
17931 | Structuralism say only 'up to isomorphism' matters because that is all there is to it [Colyvan] |
17932 | If 'in re' structures relies on the world, does the world contain rich enough structures? [Colyvan] |
14002 | Possible worlds must be abstract, because two qualitatively identical worlds are just one world [Markosian] |
17943 | Probability supports Bayesianism better as degrees of belief than as ratios of frequencies [Colyvan] |
17939 | Mathematics can reveal structural similarities in diverse systems [Colyvan] |
17938 | Mathematics can show why some surprising events have to occur [Colyvan] |
17934 | Proof by cases (by 'exhaustion') is said to be unexplanatory [Colyvan] |
17933 | Reductio proofs do not seem to be very explanatory [Colyvan] |
17935 | If inductive proofs hold because of the structure of natural numbers, they may explain theorems [Colyvan] |
17942 | Can a proof that no one understands (of the four-colour theorem) really be a proof? [Colyvan] |
17937 | Mathematical generalisation is by extending a system, or by abstracting away from it [Colyvan] |
14000 | 'Grabby' truth conditions first select their object, unlike 'searchy' truth conditions [Markosian] |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
13990 | Presentism is the view that only present objects exist [Markosian] |
13992 | Presentism says if objects don't exist now, we can't have attitudes to them or relations with them [Markosian] |
13994 | Presentism seems to entail that we cannot talk about other times [Markosian] |
13995 | Serious Presentism says things must exist to have relations and properties; Unrestricted version denies this [Markosian] |
13996 | Maybe Presentists can refer to the haecceity of a thing, after the thing itself disappears [Markosian] |
13997 | Maybe Presentists can paraphrase singular propositions about the past [Markosian] |
13993 | Special Relativity denies the absolute present which Presentism needs [Markosian] |
13998 | Objects in the past, like Socrates, are more like imaginary objects than like remote spatial objects [Markosian] |
13999 | People are mistaken when they think 'Socrates was a philosopher' says something [Markosian] |