98 ideas
| 17240 | Definitions are the first step in philosophy [Hobbes] |
| 14721 | Metaphysical enquiry can survive if its conclusions are tentative [Sider] |
| 1627 | Any statement can be held true if we make enough adjustment to the rest of the system [Quine] |
| 1623 | Definition rests on synonymy, rather than explaining it [Quine] |
| 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] |
| 9204 | Quine's arguments fail because he naively conflates names with descriptions [Fine,K on Quine] |
| 17258 | If we just say one, one, one, one, we don't know where we have got to [Hobbes] |
| 17738 | Quine blurs the difference between knowledge of arithmetic and of physics [Jenkins on Quine] |
| 17253 | Change is nothing but movement [Hobbes] |
| 14760 | Four-dimensionalism sees things and processes as belonging in the same category [Sider] |
| 19492 | Quine is hopeless circular, deriving ontology from what is literal, and 'literal' from good ontology [Yablo on Quine] |
| 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] |
| 1628 | If physical objects are a myth, they are useful for making sense of experience [Quine] |
| 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] |
| 10929 | Aristotelian essence of the object has become the modern essence of meaning [Quine] |
| 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] |
| 12188 | Contrary to some claims, Quine does not deny logical necessity [Quine, by McFetridge] |
| 15090 | Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction undermined necessary truths [Quine, by Shoemaker] |
| 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] |
| 9383 | Metaphysical analyticity (and linguistic necessity) are hopeless, but epistemic analyticity is a priori [Boghossian on Quine] |
| 12424 | Quine challenges the claim that analytic truths are knowable a priori [Quine, by Kitcher] |
| 9338 | Quine's objections to a priori knowledge only work in the domain of science [Horwich on Quine] |
| 9337 | Science is empirical, simple and conservative; any belief can hence be abandoned; so no a priori [Quine, by Horwich] |
| 9340 | Logic, arithmetic and geometry are revisable and a posteriori; quantum logic could be right [Horwich on Quine] |
| 1620 | Empiricism makes a basic distinction between truths based or not based on facts [Quine] |
| 1629 | Our outer beliefs must match experience, and our inner ones must be simple [Quine] |
| 19488 | The second dogma is linking every statement to some determinate observations [Quine, by Yablo] |
| 1625 | Statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience as a corporate body [Quine] |
| 17238 | Science aims to show causes and generation of things [Hobbes] |
| 17260 | Imagination is just weakened sensation [Hobbes] |
| 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] |
| 1626 | It is troublesome nonsense to split statements into a linguistic and a factual component [Quine] |
| 7317 | 'Renate' and 'cordate' have identical extensions, but are not synonymous [Quine, by Miller,A] |
| 1621 | Once meaning and reference are separated, meaning ceases to seem important [Quine] |
| 9371 | Analytic statements are either logical truths (all reinterpretations) or they depend on synonymy [Quine] |
| 1622 | Did someone ever actually define 'bachelor' as 'unmarried man'? [Quine] |
| 9366 | Quine's attack on analyticity undermined linguistic views of necessity, and analytic views of the a priori [Quine, by Boghossian] |
| 14473 | Quine attacks the Fregean idea that we can define analyticity through synonyous substitution [Quine, by Thomasson] |
| 7321 | The last two parts of 'Two Dogmas' are much the best [Miller,A on Quine] |
| 8803 | Erasing the analytic/synthetic distinction got rid of meanings, and saved philosophy of language [Davidson on Quine] |
| 17737 | The analytic needs excessively small units of meaning and empirical confirmation [Quine, by Jenkins] |
| 1624 | If we try to define analyticity by synonymy, that leads back to analyticity [Quine] |
| 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] |
| 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] |