90 ideas
| 3656 | The greatest good for a state is true philosophers [Descartes] |
| 19023 | Slippery slope arguments are challenges to show where a non-arbitrary boundary lies [Vetter] |
| 8187 | Frege was strongly in favour of taking truth to attach to propositions [Frege, by Dummett] |
| 19033 | Deontic modalities are 'ought-to-be', for sentences, and 'ought-to-do' for predicates [Vetter] |
| 19032 | S5 is undesirable, as it prevents necessities from having contingent grounds [Vetter] |
| 19036 | The Barcan formula endorses either merely possible things, or makes the unactualised impossible [Vetter] |
| 18772 | We can treat designation by a few words as a proper name [Frege] |
| 14075 | Proper name in modal contexts refer obliquely, to their usual sense [Frege, by Gibbard] |
| 10424 | A Fregean proper name has a sense determining an object, instead of a concept [Frege, by Sainsbury] |
| 18773 | People may have different senses for 'Aristotle', like 'pupil of Plato' or 'teacher of Alexander' [Frege] |
| 4978 | The meaning of a proper name is the designated object [Frege] |
| 10510 | Frege ascribes reference to incomplete expressions, as well as to singular terms [Frege, by Hale] |
| 18937 | If sentences have a 'sense', empty name sentences can be understood that way [Frege, by Sawyer] |
| 18940 | It is a weakness of natural languages to contain non-denoting names [Frege] |
| 18939 | In a logically perfect language every well-formed proper name designates an object [Frege] |
| 9462 | Frege is intensionalist about reference, as it is determined by sense; identity of objects comes first [Frege, by Jacquette] |
| 18936 | Frege moved from extensional to intensional semantics when he added the idea of 'sense' [Frege, by Sawyer] |
| 19034 | The world is either a whole made of its parts, or a container which contains its parts [Vetter] |
| 19015 | Grounding can be between objects ('relational'), or between sentences ('operational') [Vetter] |
| 19012 | The Humean supervenience base entirely excludes modality [Vetter] |
| 19024 | A determinate property must be a unique instance of the determinable class [Vetter] |
| 16744 | All powers can be explained by obvious features like size, shape and motion of matter [Descartes] |
| 19021 | I have an 'iterated ability' to learn the violin - that is, the ability to acquire that ability [Vetter] |
| 19016 | We should think of dispositions as 'to do' something, not as 'to do something, if ....' [Vetter] |
| 19017 | Nomological dispositions (unlike ordinary ones) have to be continually realised [Vetter] |
| 19014 | How can spatiotemporal relations be understood in dispositional terms? [Vetter] |
| 5016 | Five universals: genus, species, difference, property, accident [Descartes] |
| 10533 | We can't get a semantics from nouns and predicates referring to the same thing [Frege, by Dummett] |
| 5015 | A universal is a single idea applied to individual things that are similar to one another [Descartes] |
| 16630 | If we perceive an attribute, we infer the existence of some substance [Descartes] |
| 5013 | A substance needs nothing else in order to exist [Descartes] |
| 16633 | A substance has one principal property which is its nature and essence [Descartes] |
| 19030 | Why does origin matter more than development; why are some features of origin more important? [Vetter] |
| 19040 | We take origin to be necessary because we see possibilities as branches from actuality [Vetter] |
| 4893 | Frege was asking how identities could be informative [Frege, by Perry] |
| 19008 | The modern revival of necessity and possibility treated them as special cases of quantification [Vetter] |
| 19029 | It is necessary that p means that nothing has the potentiality for not-p [Vetter] |
| 19028 | Possibilities are potentialities of actual things, but abstracted from their location [Vetter] |
| 19010 | All possibility is anchored in the potentiality of individual objects [Vetter] |
| 19013 | Possibility is a generalised abstraction from the potentiality of its bearer [Vetter] |
| 19019 | Potentiality is the common genus of dispositions, abilities, and similar properties [Vetter] |
| 19022 | Water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break (by freezing) [Vetter] |
| 23705 | A potentiality may not be a disposition, but dispositions are strong potentialities [Vetter, by Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 19009 | Potentiality does the explaining in metaphysics; we don't explain it away or reduce it [Vetter] |
| 19027 | Potentiality logic is modal system T. Stronger systems collapse iterations, and necessitate potentials [Vetter] |
| 19031 | There are potentialities 'to ...', but possibilities are 'that ....'. [Vetter] |
| 19025 | Potentialities may be too weak to count as 'dispositions' [Vetter] |
| 19011 | If worlds are sets of propositions, how do we know which propositions are genuinely possible? [Vetter] |
| 19037 | Are there possible objects which nothing has ever had the potentiality to produce? [Vetter] |
| 3658 | Total doubt can't include your existence while doubting [Descartes] |
| 5005 | I think, therefore I am, because for a thinking thing to not exist is a contradiction [Descartes] |
| 5006 | 'Thought' is all our conscious awareness, including feeling as well as understanding [Descartes] |
| 5012 | 'Nothing comes from nothing' is an eternal truth found within the mind [Descartes] |
| 5004 | We can know basic Principles without further knowledge, but not the other way round [Descartes] |
| 19018 | Explanations by disposition are more stable and reliable than those be external circumstances [Vetter] |
| 19020 | Grounding is a kind of explanation, suited to metaphysics [Vetter] |
| 5014 | We can understand thinking occuring without imagination or sensation [Descartes] |
| 5017 | In thinking we shut ourselves off from other substances, showing our identity and separateness [Descartes] |
| 5010 | Our free will is so self-evident to us that it must be a basic innate idea [Descartes] |
| 5011 | There are two ultimate classes of existence: thinking substance and extended substance [Descartes] |
| 5018 | Even if tightly united, mind and body are different, as God could separate them [Descartes] |
| 5007 | Most errors of judgement result from an inaccurate perception of the facts [Descartes] |
| 18752 | 'The concept "horse"' denotes a concept, yet seems also to denote an object [Frege, by McGee] |
| 22318 | Frege failed to show when two sets of truth-conditions are equivalent [Frege, by Potter] |
| 4980 | The meaning (reference) of a sentence is its truth value - the circumstance of it being true or false [Frege] |
| 9180 | Holism says all language use is also a change in the rules of language [Frege, by Dummett] |
| 4981 | The reference of a word should be understood as part of the reference of the sentence [Frege] |
| 15597 | Frege's Puzzle: from different semantics we infer different reference for two names with the same reference [Frege, by Fine,K] |
| 17002 | Frege's 'sense' is ambiguous, between the meaning of a designator, and how it fixes reference [Kripke on Frege] |
| 18778 | Every descriptive name has a sense, but may not have a reference [Frege] |
| 7805 | Frege started as anti-realist, but the sense/reference distinction led him to realism [Frege, by Benardete,JA] |
| 4976 | The meaning (reference) of 'evening star' is the same as that of 'morning star', but not the sense [Frege] |
| 4977 | In maths, there are phrases with a clear sense, but no actual reference [Frege] |
| 4979 | We are driven from sense to reference by our desire for truth [Frege] |
| 15155 | Expressions always give ways of thinking of referents, rather than the referents themselves [Frege, by Soames] |
| 11126 | 'Sense' gives meaning to non-referring names, and to two expressions for one referent [Frege, by Margolis/Laurence] |
| 8164 | Frege was the first to construct a plausible theory of meaning [Frege, by Dummett] |
| 9817 | Earlier Frege focuses on content itself; later he became interested in understanding content [Frege, by Dummett] |
| 8171 | Frege divided the meaning of a sentence into sense, force and tone [Frege, by Dummett] |
| 4954 | Frege uses 'sense' to mean both a designator's meaning, and the way its reference is determined [Kripke on Frege] |
| 7304 | Frege explained meaning as sense, semantic value, reference, force and tone [Frege, by Miller,A] |
| 5009 | We do not praise the acts of an efficient automaton, as their acts are necessary [Descartes] |
| 5008 | The greatest perfection of man is to act by free will, and thus merit praise or blame [Descartes] |
| 15987 | Physics only needs geometry or abstract mathematics, which can explain and demonstrate everything [Descartes] |
| 12730 | We will not try to understand natural or divine ends, or final causes [Descartes] |
| 16601 | Matter is not hard, heavy or coloured, but merely extended in space [Descartes] |
| 19039 | The view that laws are grounded in substance plus external necessity doesn't suit dispositionalism [Vetter] |
| 19038 | Dispositional essentialism allows laws to be different, but only if the supporting properties differ [Vetter] |
| 19026 | If time is symmetrical between past and future, why do they look so different? [Vetter] |
| 19041 | Presentists explain cross-temporal relations using surrogate descriptions [Vetter] |