77 ideas
| 9593 | Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson] |
| 12249 | 'Animal' is a genus and 'rational' is a specific difference [Oderberg] |
| 12242 | Definition distinguishes one kind from another, and individuation picks out members of the kind [Oderberg] |
| 9594 | Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson] |
| 4098 | The theory of descriptions supports internalism, since they are thinkable when the object is non-existent [Crane] |
| 12238 | The Aristotelian view is that numbers depend on (and are abstracted from) other things [Oderberg] |
| 12254 | Being is substantial/accidental, complete/incomplete, necessary/contingent, possible, relative, intrinsic.. [Oderberg] |
| 4077 | Aesthetic properties of thing supervene on their physical properties [Crane] |
| 4078 | Constitution (as in a statue constituted by its marble) is supervenience without identity [Crane] |
| 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] |
| 4082 | The distinction between 'resultant' properties (weight) and 'emergent' properties is a bit vague [Crane] |
| 4083 | If mental properties are emergent they add a new type of causation, and physics is not complete [Crane] |
| 12253 | If tropes are in space and time, in what sense are they abstract? [Oderberg] |
| 12256 | We need to distinguish the essential from the non-essential powers [Oderberg] |
| 4079 | Properties are causes [Crane] |
| 4068 | Traditional substance is separate from properties and capable of independent existence [Crane] |
| 12252 | Empiricists gave up 'substance', as unknowable substratum, or reducible to a bundle [Oderberg] |
| 9602 | Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson] |
| 12241 | Essences are real, about being, knowable, definable and classifiable [Oderberg, by PG] |
| 12244 | Nominalism is consistent with individual but not with universal essences [Oderberg] |
| 12240 | Essentialism is the main account of the unity of objects [Oderberg] |
| 12247 | Essence is not explanatory but constitutive [Oderberg] |
| 12258 | Properties are not part of an essence, but they flow from it [Oderberg] |
| 12257 | Could we replace essence with collections of powers? [Oderberg] |
| 12236 | Leibniz's Law is an essentialist truth [Oderberg] |
| 12250 | Bodies have act and potency, the latter explaining new kinds of existence [Oderberg] |
| 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] |
| 12234 | Realism about possible worlds is circular, since it needs a criterion of 'possible' [Oderberg] |
| 12235 | Necessity of identity seems trivial, because it leaves out the real essence [Oderberg] |
| 12237 | Rigid designation has at least three essentialist presuppositions [Oderberg] |
| 4096 | Maybe beliefs don't need to be conscious, if you are not conscious of the beliefs guiding your actions [Crane] |
| 4097 | Maybe there are two kinds of belief - 'de re' beliefs and 'de dicto' beliefs [Crane] |
| 4093 | Many cases of knowing how can be expressed in propositional terms (like how to get somewhere) [Crane] |
| 9597 | There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson] |
| 4108 | Phenol-thio-urea tastes bitter to three-quarters of people, but to the rest it is tasteless, so which is it? [Crane] |
| 4104 | One can taste that the wine is sour, and one can also taste the sourness of the wine [Crane] |
| 4105 | The traditional supports for the sense datum theory were seeing double and specks before one's eyes [Crane] |
| 4101 | If we smell something we are aware of the smell separately, but we don't perceive a 'look' when we see [Crane] |
| 4102 | The problems of perception disappear if it is a relation to an intentional state, not to an object or sense datum [Crane] |
| 4109 | If perception is much richer than our powers of description, this suggests that it is non-conceptual [Crane] |
| 4103 | The adverbial theory of perceptions says it is the experiences which have properties, not the objects [Crane] |
| 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] |
| 4065 | Is knowledge just a state of mind, or does it also involve the existence of external things? [Crane] |
| 4092 | The core of the consciousness problem is the case of Mary, zombies, and the Hard Question [Crane] |
| 4087 | Intentionalism does not require that all mental states be propositional attitudes [Crane] |
| 4095 | Object-directed attitudes like love are just as significant as propositional attitudes [Crane] |
| 4106 | If someone removes their glasses the content of experience remains, but the quality changes [Crane] |
| 4089 | Pains have a region of the body as their intentional content, not some pain object [Crane] |
| 4090 | Weak intentionalism says qualia are extra properties; strong intentionalism says they are intentional [Crane] |
| 4107 | With inverted qualia a person's experiences would change, but their beliefs remain the same [Crane] |
| 4069 | Descartes did not think of minds as made of a substance, because they are not divisible [Crane] |
| 4074 | Functionalism defines mental states by their causal properties, which rules out epiphenomenalism [Crane] |
| 4091 | The problems of misrepresentation and error have dogged physicalist reductions of intentionality [Crane] |
| 4070 | Properties dualism says mental properties are distinct from physical, despite a single underlying substance [Crane] |
| 4084 | Non-reductive physicalism seeks an explanation of supervenience, but emergentists accept it as basic [Crane] |
| 4080 | If mental supervenes on the physical, then every physical cause will be accompanied by a mental one [Crane] |
| 4075 | Identity theory is either of particular events, or of properties, depending on your theory of causation [Crane] |
| 4085 | Physicalism may be the source of the mind-body problem, rather than its solution [Crane] |
| 4073 | Overdetermination occurs if two events cause an effect, when each would have caused it alone [Crane] |
| 4072 | The completeness of physics must be an essential component of any physicalist view of mind [Crane] |
| 4094 | Experience teaches us propositions, because we can reason about our phenomenal experience [Crane] |
| 4100 | The Twin Earth argument depends on reference being determined by content, which may be false. [Crane] |
| 4067 | Broad content entails the existence of the object of the thought [Crane] |
| 4063 | In intensional contexts, truth depends on how extensions are conceived. [Crane] |
| 9595 | You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson] |
| 9600 | If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson] |
| 12245 | Essence is the source of a thing's characteristic behaviour [Oderberg] |
| 12246 | What makes Parmenidean reality a One rather than a Many? [Oderberg] |
| 4071 | Causation can be seen in counterfactual terms, or as increased probability, or as energy flow [Crane] |
| 4076 | Causes are properties, not events, because properties are what make a difference in a situation [Crane] |
| 12239 | The real essentialist is not merely a scientist [Oderberg] |
| 12243 | The reductionism found in scientific essentialism is mistaken [Oderberg] |
| 4066 | It seems that 'exists' could sometimes be a predicate [Crane] |