39 ideas
9593 | Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson] |
4739 | In "if and only if" (iff), "if" expresses the sufficient condition, and "only if" the necessary condition [Engel] |
19304 | The rules of reasoning are not the rules of logic [Harman] |
19307 | If there is a great cost to avoiding inconsistency, we learn to reason our way around it [Harman] |
19309 | Logic has little relevance to reasoning, except when logical conclusions are immediate [Harman] |
19306 | It is a principle of reasoning not to clutter your mind with trivialities [Harman] |
19303 | Implication just accumulates conclusions, but inference may also revise our views [Harman] |
4737 | Are truth-bearers propositions, or ideas/beliefs, or sentences/utterances? [Engel] |
4750 | The redundancy theory gets rid of facts, for 'it is a fact that p' just means 'p' [Engel] |
9594 | Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson] |
4744 | We can't explain the corresponding structure of the world except by referring to our thoughts [Engel] |
4738 | The coherence theory says truth is an internal relationship between groups of truth-bearers [Engel] |
4745 | Any coherent set of beliefs can be made more coherent by adding some false beliefs [Engel] |
4753 | Deflationism seems to block philosophers' main occupation, asking metatheoretical questions [Engel] |
4755 | Deflationism cannot explain why we hold beliefs for reasons [Engel] |
4751 | Maybe there is no more to be said about 'true' than there is about the function of 'and' in logic [Engel] |
4752 | Deflationism must reduce bivalence ('p is true or false') to excluded middle ('p or not-p') [Engel] |
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] |
9602 | Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson] |
19305 | The Gambler's Fallacy (ten blacks, so red is due) overemphasises the early part of a sequence [Harman] |
19310 | High probability premises need not imply high probability conclusions [Harman] |
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] |
4762 | The Humean theory of motivation is that beliefs may be motivators as well as desires [Engel] |
4754 | Our beliefs are meant to fit the world (i.e. be true), where we want the world to fit our desires [Engel] |
19308 | We strongly desire to believe what is true, even though logic does not require it [Harman] |
4763 | 'Evidentialists' say, and 'voluntarists' deny, that we only believe on the basis of evidence [Engel] |
9597 | There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson] |
4746 | Pragmatism is better understood as a theory of belief than as a theory of truth [Engel] |
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] |
19311 | In revision of belief, we need to keep track of justifications for foundations, but not for coherence [Harman] |
19312 | Coherence is intelligible connections, especially one element explaining another [Harman] |
4764 | We cannot directly control our beliefs, but we can control the causes of our involuntary beliefs [Engel] |
4759 | Mental states as functions are second-order properties, realised by first-order physical properties [Engel] |
9595 | You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson] |
9600 | If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson] |