28 ideas
22101 | Philosophy aims to know the truth about the way things are [Aquinas] |
9136 | The paradox of analysis says that any conceptual analysis must be either trivial or false [Sorensen] |
9131 | Two long understandable sentences can have an unintelligible conjunction [Sorensen] |
9139 | If nothing exists, no truthmakers could make 'Nothing exists' true [Sorensen] |
9140 | Which toothbrush is the truthmaker for 'buy one, get one free'? [Sorensen] |
9119 | No attempt to deny bivalence has ever been accepted [Sorensen] |
9135 | We now see that generalizations use variables rather than abstract entities [Sorensen] |
21642 | If quantification is all substitutional, there is no ontology [Quine] |
9125 | Denying problems, or being romantically defeated by them, won't make them go away [Sorensen] |
9137 | Banning self-reference would outlaw 'This very sentence is in English' [Sorensen] |
1633 | Absolute ontological questions are meaningless, because the answers are circular definitions [Quine] |
9116 | Vague words have hidden boundaries [Sorensen] |
18964 | Ontology is relative to both a background theory and a translation manual [Quine] |
9132 | An offer of 'free coffee or juice' could slowly shift from exclusive 'or' to inclusive 'or' [Sorensen] |
18965 | We know what things are by distinguishing them, so identity is part of ontology [Quine] |
9128 | It is propositional attitudes which can be a priori, not the propositions themselves [Sorensen] |
9130 | Attributing apriority to a proposition is attributing a cognitive ability to someone [Sorensen] |
9118 | The colour bands of the spectrum arise from our biology; they do not exist in the physics [Sorensen] |
9124 | We are unable to perceive a nose (on the back of a mask) as concave [Sorensen] |
9126 | Bayesians build near-certainty from lots of reasonably probable beliefs [Sorensen] |
9121 | Illusions are not a reason for skepticism, but a source of interesting scientific information [Sorensen] |
1634 | Two things are relative - the background theory, and translating the object theory into the background theory [Quine] |
9134 | The negation of a meaningful sentence must itself be meaningful [Sorensen] |
8470 | Reference is inscrutable, because we cannot choose between theories of numbers [Quine, by Orenstein] |
9133 | Propositions are what settle problems of ambiguity in sentences [Sorensen] |
18963 | Indeterminacy translating 'rabbit' depends on translating individuation terms [Quine] |
9129 | I can buy any litre of water, but not every litre of water [Sorensen] |
9122 | God cannot experience unwanted pain, so God cannot understand human beings [Sorensen] |