33 ideas
| 9593 | Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson] |
| 16539 | A definition of a circle will show what it is, and show its generating principle [Lowe] |
| 16540 | Defining an ellipse by conic sections reveals necessities, but not the essence of an ellipse [Lowe] |
| 16548 | An essence is what an entity is, revealed by a real definition; this is not an entity in its own right [Lowe] |
| 16549 | Simple things like 'red' can be given real ostensive definitions [Lowe] |
| 9594 | Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson] |
| 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] |
| 16545 | The essence of lumps and statues shows that two objects coincide but are numerically distinct [Lowe] |
| 16546 | The essence of a bronze statue shows that it could be made of different bronze [Lowe] |
| 9602 | Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson] |
| 16551 | Grasping an essence is just grasping a real definition [Lowe] |
| 16542 | Explanation can't give an account of essence, because it is too multi-faceted [Lowe] |
| 16552 | If we must know some entity to know an essence, we lack a faculty to do that [Lowe] |
| 16533 | Logical necessities, based on laws of logic, are a proper sub-class of metaphysical necessities [Lowe] |
| 16531 | 'Metaphysical' necessity is absolute and objective - the strongest kind of necessity [Lowe] |
| 16532 | 'Epistemic' necessity is better called 'certainty' [Lowe] |
| 16543 | If an essence implies p, then p is an essential truth, and hence metaphysically necessary [Lowe] |
| 16544 | Metaphysical necessity is either an essential truth, or rests on essential truths [Lowe] |
| 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] |
| 16538 | We could give up possible worlds if we based necessity on essences [Lowe] |
| 9597 | There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson] |
| 16534 | 'Intuitions' are just unreliable 'hunches'; over centuries intuitions change enormously [Lowe] |
| 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] |
| 22235 | Feelings are not unchanging, but have a history (especially if they are noble) [Foucault] |
| 16535 | A concept is a way of thinking of things or kinds, whether or not they exist [Lowe] |
| 9595 | You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson] |
| 16550 | Direct reference doesn't seem to require that thinkers know what it is they are thinking about [Lowe] |
| 9600 | If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson] |
| 16547 | H2O isn't necessary, because different laws of nature might affect how O and H combine [Lowe] |