48 ideas
| 9593 | Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson] |
| 13736 | Quinean metaphysics just lists the beings, which is a domain with no internal structure [Schaffer,J on Quine] |
| 9594 | Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson] |
| 3302 | Set theory is full of Platonist metaphysics, so Quine aimed to keep it separate from logic [Quine, by Benardete,JA] |
| 10211 | Quine wants V = L for a cleaner theory, despite the scepticism of most theorists [Quine, by Shapiro] |
| 3336 | Two things can never entail three things [Quine, by Benardete,JA] |
| 8453 | If we had to name objects to make existence claims, we couldn't discuss all the real numbers [Quine] |
| 10311 | No sense can be made of quantification into opaque contexts [Quine, by Hale] |
| 10538 | Finite quantification can be eliminated in favour of disjunction and conjunction [Quine, by Dummett] |
| 10793 | Quine thought substitutional quantification confused use and mention, but then saw its nominalist appeal [Quine, by Marcus (Barcan)] |
| 8466 | For Quine, intuitionist ontology is inadequate for classical mathematics [Quine, by Orenstein] |
| 8467 | Intuitionists only admit numbers properly constructed, but classical maths covers all reals in a 'limit' [Quine, by Orenstein] |
| 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] |
| 10667 | A logically perfect language could express all truths, so all truths must be logically expressible [Quine, by Hossack] |
| 16021 | Quine says we can expand predicates easily (ideology), but not names (ontology) [Quine, by Noonan] |
| 3325 | For Quine everything exists theoretically, as reference, predication and quantification [Quine, by Benardete,JA] |
| 8534 | Quine says the predicate of a true statement has no ontological implications [Quine, by Armstrong] |
| 10295 | Quine suggests that properties can be replaced with extensional entities like sets [Quine, by Shapiro] |
| 3322 | Quine says that if second-order logic is to quantify over properties, that can be done in first-order predicate logic [Quine, by Benardete,JA] |
| 6078 | Quine brought classes into semantics to get rid of properties [Quine, by McGinn] |
| 8479 | Don't analyse 'red is a colour' as involving properties. Say 'all red things are coloured things' [Quine, by Orenstein] |
| 3751 | Universals are acceptable if they are needed to make an accepted theory true [Quine, by Jacquette] |
| 7970 | Quine is committed to sets, but is more a Class Nominalist than a Platonist [Quine, by Macdonald,C] |
| 15783 | Definite descriptions can't unambiguously pick out an object which doesn't exist [Lycan on Quine] |
| 9602 | Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson] |
| 15782 | Quine wants identity and individuation-conditions for possibilia [Quine, by Lycan] |
| 9598 | Modal thinking isn't a special intuition; it is part of ordinary counterfactual thinking [Williamson] |
| 2796 | For Quine the only way to know a necessity is empirically [Quine, by Dancy,J] |
| 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] |
| 9597 | There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson] |
| 8450 | Quine's empiricism is based on whole theoretical systems, not on single mental events [Quine, by Orenstein] |
| 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] |
| 3868 | To proclaim cultural relativism is to thereby rise above it [Quine, by Newton-Smith] |
| 4713 | For Quine, theories are instruments used to make predictions about observations [Quine, by O'Grady] |
| 9595 | You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson] |
| 4712 | Quine says there is no matter of fact about reference - it is 'inscrutable' [Quine, by O'Grady] |
| 7330 | The principle of charity only applies to the logical constants [Quine, by Miller,A] |
| 9600 | If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson] |
| 17862 | Essence gives an illusion of understanding [Quine, by Almog] |
| 7602 | In the Bible God changes his mind (repenting of creating humanity, in the Flood) [Armstrong,K] |
| 7605 | Monotheism introduced intolerance into religious thinking [Armstrong,K] |
| 7599 | Around 800 BCE teachers superseded gods in India [Armstrong,K] |
| 7597 | There is virtually no sign of monotheism in the Pentateuch [Armstrong,K] |
| 7606 | The idea that Jesus was God was only settled in the fourth century [Armstrong,K] |
| 7596 | Faith is not just belief in propositions, but also putting trust in them [Armstrong,K] |