Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Philosophy of Philosophy', 'The Human Animal' and 'Letters to Jourdain'

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19 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / e. Philosophy as reason
Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson]
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson]
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / a. Names
In 'Etna is higher than Vesuvius' the whole of Etna, including all the lava, can't be the reference [Frege]
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / b. Names as descriptive
Any object can have many different names, each with a distinct sense [Frege]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
The realist/anti-realist debate is notoriously obscure and fruitless [Williamson]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / b. Vagueness of reality
There cannot be vague objects, so there may be no such thing as a mountain [Williamson]
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects
Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson]
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 1. A Priori Necessary
Modal thinking isn't a special intuition; it is part of ordinary counterfactual thinking [Williamson]
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / a. Conceivable as possible
Williamson can't base metaphysical necessity on the psychology of causal counterfactuals [Lowe on Williamson]
We scorn imagination as a test of possibility, forgetting its role in counterfactuals [Williamson]
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 2. Self-Evidence
There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson]
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 2. Intuition
Intuition is neither powerful nor vacuous, but reveals linguistic or conceptual competence [Williamson]
When analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they present intuitions as their evidence [Williamson]
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 7. Self and Body / a. Self needs body
Maybe our persistence conditions concern bodies, rather than persons [Olson, by Hawley]
For 'animalism', I exist before I became a person, and can continue after it, so I am not a person [Olson, by Lowe]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / a. Sentence meaning
We understand new propositions by constructing their sense from the words [Frege]
19. Language / B. Reference / 4. Descriptive Reference / a. Sense and reference
Senses can't be subjective, because propositions would be private, and disagreement impossible [Frege]
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 5. Culture
If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson]