33 ideas
12104 | All ideas must be understood historically [Comte] |
12105 | Our knowledge starts in theology, passes through metaphysics, and ends in positivism [Comte] |
9593 | Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson] |
12112 | Metaphysics is just the oversubtle qualification of abstract names for phenomena [Comte] |
12106 | Positivism gives up absolute truth, and seeks phenomenal laws, by reason and observation [Comte] |
12111 | Positivism is the final state of human intelligence [Comte] |
12114 | Science can drown in detail, so we need broad scientists (to keep out the metaphysicians) [Comte] |
12116 | Only positivist philosophy can terminate modern social crises [Comte] |
9594 | Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson] |
14664 | Necessary beings (numbers, properties, sets, propositions, states of affairs, God) exist in all possible worlds [Plantinga] |
9601 | The realist/anti-realist debate is notoriously obscure and fruitless [Williamson] |
9599 | There cannot be vague objects, so there may be no such thing as a mountain [Williamson] |
9602 | Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson] |
14666 | Socrates is a contingent being, but his essence is not; without Socrates, his essence is unexemplified [Plantinga] |
9598 | Modal thinking isn't a special intuition; it is part of ordinary counterfactual thinking [Williamson] |
16536 | Williamson can't base metaphysical necessity on the psychology of causal counterfactuals [Lowe on Williamson] |
9596 | We scorn imagination as a test of possibility, forgetting its role in counterfactuals [Williamson] |
14662 | Possible worlds clarify possibility, propositions, properties, sets, counterfacts, time, determinism etc. [Plantinga] |
16472 | Plantinga's actualism is nominal, because he fills actuality with possibilia [Stalnaker on Plantinga] |
9597 | There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson] |
12108 | All real knowledge rests on observed facts [Comte] |
9592 | Intuition is neither powerful nor vacuous, but reveals linguistic or conceptual competence [Williamson] |
20181 | When analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they present intuitions as their evidence [Williamson] |
12109 | We must observe in order to form theories, but connected observations need prior theories [Comte] |
12107 | Positivism explains facts by connecting particular phenomena with general facts [Comte] |
12115 | Introspection is pure illusion; we can obviously observe everything except ourselves [Comte] |
9595 | You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson] |
16469 | Plantinga has domains of sets of essences, variables denoting essences, and predicates as functions [Plantinga, by Stalnaker] |
16470 | Plantinga's essences have their own properties - so will have essences, giving a hierarchy [Stalnaker on Plantinga] |
14663 | Are propositions and states of affairs two separate things, or only one? I incline to say one [Plantinga] |
9600 | If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson] |
12113 | The search for first or final causes is futile [Comte] |
12110 | We can never know origins, purposes or inner natures [Comte] |