51 ideas
8092 | Logic was merely a branch of rhetoric until the scientific 17th century [Devlin] |
9593 | Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson] |
12027 | There must be a plausible epistemological theory alongside any metaphysical theory [Forbes,G] |
9594 | Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson] |
8081 | 'No councillors are bankers' and 'All bankers are athletes' implies 'Some athletes are not councillors' [Devlin] |
8085 | Modern propositional inference replaces Aristotle's 19 syllogisms with modus ponens [Devlin] |
12005 | The symbol 'ι' forms definite descriptions; (ιx)F(x) says 'the x which is such that F(x)' [Forbes,G] |
8086 | Predicate logic retains the axioms of propositional logic [Devlin] |
8091 | Situation theory is logic that takes account of context [Devlin] |
8089 | Montague's intensional logic incorporated the notion of meaning [Devlin] |
8087 | Golden ages: 1900-1960 for pure logic, and 1950-1985 for applied logic [Devlin] |
8082 | Where a conditional is purely formal, an implication implies a link between premise and conclusion [Devlin] |
8072 | Sentences of apparent identical form can have different contextual meanings [Devlin] |
12010 | Is the meaning of 'and' given by its truth table, or by its introduction and elimination rules? [Forbes,G] |
8075 | Space and time are atomic in the arrow, and divisible in the tortoise [Devlin] |
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] |
12023 | Vagueness problems arise from applying sharp semantics to vague languages [Forbes,G] |
12017 | In all instances of identity, there must be some facts to ensure the identity [Forbes,G] |
12024 | If we combined two clocks, it seems that two clocks may have become one clock. [Forbes,G] |
9602 | Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson] |
11885 | Only individual essences will ground identities across worlds in other properties [Forbes,G, by Mackie,P] |
12014 | An individual essence is a set of essential properties which only that object can have [Forbes,G] |
12015 | Non-trivial individual essence is properties other than de dicto, or universal, or relational [Forbes,G] |
12013 | Essential properties depend on a category, and perhaps also on particular facts [Forbes,G] |
12012 | Essential properties are those without which an object could not exist [Forbes,G] |
12025 | Artefacts have fuzzy essences [Forbes,G] |
12022 | Same parts does not ensure same artefact, if those parts could constitute a different artefact [Forbes,G] |
12020 | An individual might change their sex in a world, but couldn't have differed in sex at origin [Forbes,G] |
11888 | Identities must hold because of other facts, which must be instrinsic [Forbes,G, by Mackie,P] |
12003 | De re modal formulae, unlike de dicto, are sensitive to transworld identities [Forbes,G] |
12028 | De re necessity is a form of conceptual necessity, just as de dicto necessity is [Forbes,G] |
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] |
12008 | Unlike places and times, we cannot separate possible worlds from what is true at them [Forbes,G] |
12009 | The problem with possible worlds realism is epistemological; we can't know properties of possible objects [Forbes,G] |
12007 | Possible worlds are points of logical space, rather like other times than our own [Forbes,G] |
12011 | Transworld identity concerns the limits of possibility for ordinary things [Forbes,G] |
12016 | The problem of transworld identity can be solved by individual essences [Forbes,G] |
12004 | Counterpart theory is not good at handling the logic of identity [Forbes,G] |
12021 | Haecceitism attributes to each individual a primitive identity or thisness [Forbes,G] |
12029 | We believe in thisnesses, because we reject bizarre possibilities as not being about that individual [Forbes,G] |
9597 | There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson] |
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] |
8088 | People still say the Hopi have no time concepts, despite Whorf's later denial [Devlin] |
9595 | You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson] |
8073 | How do we parse 'time flies like an arrow' and 'fruit flies like an apple'? [Devlin] |
8076 | The distinction between sentences and abstract propositions is crucial in logic [Devlin] |
9600 | If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson] |