29 ideas
9593 | Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson] |
9594 | Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson] |
17644 | Metaphysical realism is committed to there being one ultimate true theory [Putnam] |
9601 | The realist/anti-realist debate is notoriously obscure and fruitless [Williamson] |
17648 | It is an illusion to think there could be one good scientific theory of reality [Putnam] |
9599 | There cannot be vague objects, so there may be no such thing as a mountain [Williamson] |
17643 | Shape is essential relative to 'statue', but not essential relative to 'clay' [Putnam] |
9602 | Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson] |
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] |
9597 | There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson] |
17642 | The old view that sense data are independent of mind is quite dotty [Putnam] |
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] |
17472 | Thick mechanisms map whole reactions, and thin mechanism chart the steps [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
17471 | Using mechanisms as explanatory schemes began in chemistry [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
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] |
17465 | Lavoisier's elements included four types of earth [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
17645 | An alien might think oxygen was the main cause of a forest fire [Putnam] |
17468 | Over 100,000,000 compounds have been discovered or synthesised [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
17470 | Water molecules dissociate, and form large polymers, explaining its properties [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
17473 | It is unlikely that chemistry will ever be reduced to physics [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
17474 | Quantum theory won't tell us which structure a set of atoms will form [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
17475 | For temperature to be mean kinetic energy, a state of equilibrium is also required [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
17469 | 'H2O' just gives the element proportions, not the microstructure [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
17467 | Isotopes (such as those of hydrogen) can vary in their rates of chemical reaction [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
17466 | Mendeleev systematised the elements, and also gave an account of their nature [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |