31 ideas
| 15567 | Some events involve no change; they must, because causal histories involve unchanges [Lewis] |
| 15561 | The events that suit semantics may not be the events that suit causation [Lewis] |
| 15565 | Events have inbuilt essences, as necessary conditions for their occurrence [Lewis] |
| 15566 | Events are classes, and so there is a mereology of their parts [Lewis] |
| 15564 | An event is a property of a unique space-time region [Lewis] |
| 7508 | Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker] |
| 15563 | Properties are very abundant (unlike universals), and are used for semantics and higher-order variables [Lewis] |
| 17000 | We might fix identities for small particulars, but it is utopian to hope for such things [Kripke] |
| 11868 | A different piece of wood could have been used for that table; constitution isn't identity [Wiggins on Kripke] |
| 17044 | A relation can clearly be reflexive, and identity is the smallest reflexive relation [Kripke] |
| 16999 | A vague identity may seem intransitive, and we might want to talk of 'counterparts' [Kripke] |
| 17058 | What many people consider merely physically necessary I consider completely necessary [Kripke] |
| 4970 | What is often held to be mere physical necessity is actually metaphysical necessity [Kripke] |
| 17059 | Unicorns are vague, so no actual or possible creature could count as a unicorn [Kripke] |
| 4950 | Possible worlds are useful in set theory, but can be very misleading elsewhere [Kripke] |
| 17003 | Kaplan's 'Dthat' is a useful operator for transforming a description into a rigid designation [Kripke] |
| 9221 | The best known objection to counterparts is Kripke's, that Humphrey doesn't care if his counterpart wins [Kripke, by Sider] |
| 17052 | The a priori analytic truths involving fixing of reference are contingent [Kripke] |
| 7510 | Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker] |
| 7513 | Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker] |
| 4969 | I regard the mind-body problem as wide open, and extremely confusing [Kripke] |
| 7509 | Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker] |
| 7511 | Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker] |
| 7512 | There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG] |
| 4956 | A description may fix a reference even when it is not true of its object [Kripke] |
| 17032 | Even if Gödel didn't produce his theorems, he's still called 'Gödel' [Kripke] |
| 7505 | Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker] |
| 15562 | Causation is a general relation derived from instances of causal dependence [Lewis] |
| 7516 | In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker] |
| 7515 | All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker] |
| 7514 | Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker] |