79 ideas
| 17240 | Definitions are the first step in philosophy [Hobbes] |
| 12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
| 14721 | Metaphysical enquiry can survive if its conclusions are tentative [Sider] |
| 12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
| 12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
| 12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
| 17237 | Definitions of things that are caused must express their manner of generation [Hobbes] |
| 17239 | Definition is resolution of names into successive genera, and finally the difference [Hobbes] |
| 17241 | A defined name should not appear in the definition [Hobbes] |
| 17242 | 'Petitio principii' is reusing the idea to be defined, in disguised words [Hobbes] |
| 17245 | A part of a part is a part of a whole [Hobbes] |
| 17258 | If we just say one, one, one, one, we don't know where we have got to [Hobbes] |
| 17253 | Change is nothing but movement [Hobbes] |
| 14760 | Four-dimensionalism sees things and processes as belonging in the same category [Sider] |
| 14194 | Proper ontology should only use categorical (actual) properties, not hypothetical ones [Sider] |
| 16670 | Accidents are just modes of thinking about bodies [Hobbes] |
| 16621 | Accidents are not parts of bodies (like blood in a cloth); they have accidents as things have a size [Hobbes] |
| 16734 | The complete power of an event is just the aggregate of the qualities that produced it [Hobbes] |
| 17247 | The only generalities or universals are names or signs [Hobbes] |
| 14960 | Bodies are independent of thought, and coincide with part of space [Hobbes] |
| 17250 | If you separate the two places of one thing, you will also separate the thing [Hobbes] |
| 17249 | If you separated two things in the same place, you would also separate the places [Hobbes] |
| 14745 | If sortal terms fix the kind and the persistence conditions, we need to know what kinds there are [Sider] |
| 17248 | If a whole body is moved, its parts must move with it [Hobbes] |
| 14740 | If Tib is all of Tibbles bar her tail, when Tibbles loses her tail, two different things become one [Sider] |
| 14752 | Artists 'create' statues because they are essentially statues, and so lack identity with the lump of clay [Sider] |
| 14743 | The stage view of objects is best for dealing with coincident entities [Sider] |
| 14747 | 'Composition as identity' says that an object just is the objects which compose it [Sider] |
| 16790 | A body is always the same, whether the parts are together or dispersed [Hobbes] |
| 17244 | To make a whole, parts needn't be put together, but can be united in the mind [Hobbes] |
| 17233 | Particulars contain universal things [Hobbes] |
| 17246 | Some accidental features are permanent, unless the object perishes [Hobbes] |
| 14757 | Mereological essentialism says an object's parts are necessary for its existence [Sider] |
| 17251 | The feature which picks out or names a thing is usually called its 'essence' [Hobbes] |
| 14727 | Three-dimensionalists assert 'enduring', being wholly present at each moment, and deny 'temporal parts' [Sider] |
| 14738 | Some might say that its inconsistency with time travel is a reason to favour three-dimensionalism [Sider] |
| 14726 | Four-dimensionalists assert 'temporal parts', 'perduring', and being spread out over time [Sider] |
| 14728 | 4D says intrinsic change is difference between successive parts [Sider] |
| 14729 | 4D says each spatiotemporal object must have a temporal part at every moment at which it exists [Sider] |
| 14730 | Temporal parts exist, but are not prior building blocks for objects [Sider] |
| 14731 | Temporal parts are instantaneous [Sider] |
| 14758 | How can an instantaneous stage believe anything, if beliefs take time? [Sider] |
| 14762 | Four-dimensionalism says temporal parts are caused (through laws of motion) by previous temporal parts [Sider] |
| 17257 | It is the same river if it has the same source, no matter what flows in it [Hobbes] |
| 12853 | Some individuate the ship by unity of matter, and others by unity of form [Hobbes] |
| 17256 | If a new ship were made of the discarded planks, would two ships be numerically the same? [Hobbes] |
| 14741 | The ship undergoes 'asymmetric' fission, where one candidate is seen as stronger [Sider] |
| 16794 | As an infant, Socrates was not the same body, but he was the same human being [Hobbes] |
| 17255 | Two bodies differ when (at some time) you can say something of one you can't say of the other [Hobbes] |
| 14754 | If you say Leibniz's Law doesn't apply to 'timebound' properties, you are no longer discussing identity [Sider] |
| 16582 | We can imagine a point swelling and contracting - but not how this could be done [Hobbes] |
| 14763 | Counterparts rest on similarity, so there are many such relations in different contexts [Sider] |
| 12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
| 12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
| 12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
| 17238 | Science aims to show causes and generation of things [Hobbes] |
| 17260 | Imagination is just weakened sensation [Hobbes] |
| 12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
| 19373 | A 'conatus' is an initial motion, experienced by us as desire or aversion [Hobbes, by Arthur,R] |
| 2948 | Sensation is merely internal motion of the sentient being [Hobbes] |
| 17261 | Apart from pleasure and pain, the only emotions are appetite and aversion [Hobbes] |
| 17236 | Words are not for communication, but as marks for remembering what we have learned [Hobbes] |
| 12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
| 16600 | Prime matter is body considered with mere size and extension, and potential [Hobbes] |
| 17252 | Acting on a body is either creating or destroying a property in it [Hobbes] |
| 17254 | An effect needs a sufficient and necessary cause [Hobbes] |
| 17235 | A cause is the complete sum of the features which necessitate the effect [Hobbes] |
| 12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |
| 14725 | Maybe motion is a dynamical quantity intrinsic to a thing at a particular time [Sider] |
| 17234 | Motion is losing one place and acquiring another [Hobbes] |
| 17259 | 'Force' is the quantity of movement imposed on something [Hobbes] |
| 14735 | Space is 3D and lacks a direction; time seems connected to causation [Sider] |
| 14722 | Between presentism and eternalism is the 'growing block' view - the past is real, the future is not [Sider] |
| 14756 | For Presentists there must always be a temporal vantage point for any description [Sider] |
| 14724 | Presentists must deny truths about multiple times [Sider] |
| 14723 | Talk using tenses can be eliminated, by reducing it to indexical connections for an utterance [Sider] |
| 14736 | The B-theory is adequate, except that it omits to say which time is present [Sider] |
| 14734 | The B-series involves eternalism, and the reduction of tense [Sider] |
| 17243 | Past times can't exist anywhere, apart from in our memories [Hobbes] |