Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Philosophy of Philosophy', 'Aenesidemus' and 'Reference and Modality'

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23 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]
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 1. Modal Logic
Maybe we can quantify modally if the objects are intensional, but it seems unlikely [Quine]
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / b. Names as descriptive
Failure of substitutivity shows that a personal name is not purely referential [Quine]
5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 1. Quantification
Quantifying into referentially opaque contexts often produces nonsense [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism
Consciousness is not entirely representational, because there are pains, and the self [Schulze, by Pinkard]
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]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
Quantification into modal contexts requires objects to have an essence [Quine]
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 4. De re / De dicto modality
To be necessarily greater than 7 is not a trait of 7, but depends on how 7 is referred to [Quine]
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 11. Denial of Necessity
Whether 9 is necessarily greater than 7 depends on how '9' is described [Quine, by Fine,K]
Necessity only applies to objects if they are distinctively specified [Quine]
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]
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / a. Transworld identity
We can't quantify in modal contexts, because the modality depends on descriptions, not objects [Quine, by Fine,K]
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]
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]
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 5. Culture
If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson]
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / e. Anti scientific essentialism
We can't say 'necessarily if x is in water then x dissolves' if we can't quantify modally [Quine]