62 ideas
6891 | Quine's naturalistic and empirical view is based entirely on first-order logic and set theory [Quine, by Mautner] |
6310 | Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine] |
12798 | Plurals can in principle be paraphrased away altogether [Quine] |
17905 | Any progression will do nicely for numbers; they can all then be used to measure multiplicity [Quine] |
9556 | Nearly all of mathematics has to quantify over abstract objects [Quine] |
15682 | Even fairly simple animals make judgements based on categories [Gelman] |
15691 | Children accept real stable categories, with nonobvious potential that gives causal explanations [Gelman] |
16462 | The quest for ultimate categories is the quest for a simple clear pattern of notation [Quine] |
15723 | Either dispositions rest on structures, or we keep saying 'all things being equal' [Quine] |
15490 | Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB] |
8504 | Quine aims to deal with properties by the use of eternal open sentences, or classes [Quine, by Devitt] |
8464 | Physical objects in space-time are just events or processes, no matter how disconnected [Quine] |
7924 | The notion of a physical object is by far the most useful one for science [Quine] |
15700 | In India, upper-castes essentialize caste more than lower-castes do [Gelman] |
15685 | Essentialism is either natural to us, or an accident of our culture, or a necessary result of language [Gelman] |
15684 | Children's concepts include nonobvious features, like internal parts, functions and causes [Gelman] |
15681 | Essentialism: real or representational? sortal, causal or ideal? real particulars, or placeholders? [Gelman] |
15678 | Essentialism says categories have a true hidden nature which gives an object its identity [Gelman] |
15683 | Sortals are needed for determining essence - the thing must be categorised first [Gelman] |
15697 | Kind (unlike individual) essentialism assumes preexisting natural categories [Gelman] |
15687 | Kinship is essence that comes in degrees, and age groups are essences that change over time [Gelman] |
15679 | Essentialism comes from the cognitive need to categorise [Gelman] |
15698 | We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children [Gelman] |
8482 | Mathematicians must be rational but not two-legged, cyclists the opposite. So a mathematical cyclist? [Quine] |
12136 | Cyclist are not actually essentially two-legged [Brody on Quine] |
15709 | Essentialism is useful for predictions, but it is not the actual structure of reality [Gelman] |
15696 | Peope favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is [Gelman] |
17594 | We can paraphrase 'x=y' as a sequence of the form 'if Fx then Fy' [Quine] |
15725 | Normal conditionals have a truth-value gap when the antecedent is false. [Quine] |
15722 | Conditionals are pointless if the truth value of the antecedent is known [Quine] |
15719 | We feign belief in counterfactual antecedents, and assess how convincing the consequent is [Quine] |
15721 | Counterfactuals are plausible when dispositions are involved, as they imply structures [Quine] |
15724 | Counterfactuals have no place in a strict account of science [Quine] |
15720 | What stays the same in assessing a counterfactual antecedent depends on context [Quine] |
15707 | There is intentional, mechanical, teleological, essentialist, vitalist and deontological understanding [Gelman] |
15703 | Memories often conform to a theory, rather than being neutral [Gelman] |
4630 | Two theories can be internally consistent and match all the facts, yet be inconsistent with one another [Quine, by Baggini /Fosl] |
15708 | Inductive success is rewarded with more induction [Gelman] |
15694 | Children overestimate the power of a single example [Gelman] |
15695 | Children make errors in induction by focusing too much on categories [Gelman] |
15692 | People tend to be satisfied with shallow explanations [Gelman] |
3131 | Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism [Quine, by Rey] |
15680 | Folk essentialism rests on belief in natural kinds, in hidden properties, and on words indicating structures [Gelman] |
15686 | Labels may indicate categories which embody an essence [Gelman] |
15690 | Causal properties are seen as more central to category concepts [Gelman] |
15688 | Categories are characterized by distance from a prototype [Gelman] |
15689 | Theory-based concepts use rich models to show which similarities really matter [Gelman] |
15699 | Prelinguistic infants acquire and use many categories [Gelman] |
3988 | Indeterminacy of translation also implies indeterminacy in interpreting people's mental states [Dennett on Quine] |
6311 | The firmer the links between sentences and stimuli, the less translations can diverge [Quine] |
6312 | We can never precisely pin down how to translate the native word 'Gavagai' [Quine] |
6313 | Stimulus synonymy of 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not even guarantee they are coextensive [Quine] |
6317 | Dispositions to speech behaviour, and actual speech, are never enough to fix any one translation [Quine] |
6315 | We should be suspicious of a translation which implies that a people have very strange beliefs [Quine] |
6314 | Weird translations are always possible, but they improve if we impose our own logic on them [Quine] |
15693 | One sample of gold is enough, but one tree doesn't give the height of trees [Gelman] |
15701 | Nouns seem to invoke stable kinds more than predicates do [Gelman] |
15705 | Essentialism encourages us to think about the world scientifically [Gelman] |
15702 | Essentialism doesn't mean we know the essences [Gelman] |
15704 | Essentialism starts from richly structured categories, leading to a search for underlying properties [Gelman] |
15706 | A major objection to real essences is the essentialising of social categories like race, caste and occupation [Gelman] |
5994 | Is the cosmos open or closed, mechanical or teleological, alive or inanimate, and created or eternal? [Robinson,TM, by PG] |