35 ideas
2352 | The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions [Putnam] |
23657 | The existence of tensed verbs shows that not all truths are necessary truths [Reid] |
23655 | An ad hominem argument is good, if it is shown that the man's principles are inconsistent [Reid] |
2345 | Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation [Putnam] |
2347 | Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam] |
2349 | Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique [Putnam] |
2351 | Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved [Putnam] |
23659 | If someone denies that he is thinking when he is conscious of it, we can only laugh [Reid] |
23662 | The existence of ideas is no more obvious than the existence of external objects [Reid] |
23661 | We are only aware of other beings through our senses; without that, we are alone in the universe [Reid] |
23654 | In obscure matters the few must lead the many, but the many usually lead in common sense [Reid] |
23660 | The theory of ideas, popular with philosophers, means past existence has to be proved [Reid] |
23658 | Consciousness is an indefinable and unique operation [Reid] |
2331 | Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam] |
2071 | If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology [Putnam] |
2332 | Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic [Putnam] |
2348 | Is there just one computational state for each specific belief? [Putnam] |
2344 | If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam] |
2074 | Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam] |
23656 | The structure of languages reveals a uniformity in basic human opinions [Reid] |
2343 | Reference may be different while mental representation is the same [Putnam] |
23653 | If you can't distinguish the features of a complex object, your notion of it would be a muddle [Reid] |
2346 | Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam] |
2354 | "Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam] |
2336 | Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam] |
2334 | Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam] |
2335 | Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam] |
2340 | We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam] |
2341 | Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam] |
2339 | Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam] |
2338 | Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam] |
23663 | There are axioms of taste - such as a general consensus about a beautiful face [Reid] |
2342 | "Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description [Putnam] |
16713 | Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics [Tertullian] |
6610 | I believe because it is absurd [Tertullian] |