47 ideas
| 9593 | Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson] |
| 22438 | Philosophy is largely concerned with finding the minimum that science could get by with [Quine] |
| 19199 | Some say metaphysics is a highly generalised empirical study of objects [Tarski] |
| 19193 | Disputes that fail to use precise scientific terminology are all meaningless [Tarski] |
| 22436 | Logicians don't paraphrase logic into language, because they think in the symbolic language [Quine] |
| 22431 | Good algorithms and theories need many occurrences of just a few elements [Quine] |
| 19179 | For a definition we need the words or concepts used, the rules, and the structure of the language [Tarski] |
| 19178 | Definitions of truth should not introduce a new version of the concept, but capture the old one [Tarski] |
| 19177 | A definition of truth should be materially adequate and formally correct [Tarski] |
| 19186 | A rigorous definition of truth is only possible in an exactly specified language [Tarski] |
| 19194 | We may eventually need to split the word 'true' into several less ambiguous terms [Tarski] |
| 9594 | Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson] |
| 19180 | It is convenient to attach 'true' to sentences, and hence the language must be specified [Tarski] |
| 19181 | In the classical concept of truth, 'snow is white' is true if snow is white [Tarski] |
| 19196 | Scheme (T) is not a definition of truth [Tarski] |
| 19183 | Each interpreted T-sentence is a partial definition of truth; the whole definition is their conjunction [Tarski] |
| 19182 | Use 'true' so that all T-sentences can be asserted, and the definition will then be 'adequate' [Tarski] |
| 19198 | We don't give conditions for asserting 'snow is white'; just that assertion implies 'snow is white' is true [Tarski] |
| 19184 | The best truth definition involves other semantic notions, like satisfaction (relating terms and objects) [Tarski] |
| 19191 | Specify satisfaction for simple sentences, then compounds; true sentences are satisfied by all objects [Tarski] |
| 19188 | We can't use a semantically closed language, or ditch our logic, so a meta-language is needed [Tarski] |
| 19189 | The metalanguage must contain the object language, logic, and defined semantics [Tarski] |
| 10824 | If listing equivalences is a reduction of truth, witchcraft is just a list of witch-victim pairs [Field,H on Tarski] |
| 19190 | We need an undefined term 'true' in the meta-language, specified by axioms [Tarski] |
| 19197 | Truth can't be eliminated from universal claims, or from particular unspecified claims [Tarski] |
| 19185 | Semantics is a very modest discipline which solves no real problems [Tarski] |
| 22435 | The logician's '→' does not mean the English if-then [Quine] |
| 19195 | Truth tables give prior conditions for logic, but are outside the system, and not definitions [Tarski] |
| 22433 | It is important that the quantification over temporal entities is timeless [Quine] |
| 22437 | Logical languages are rooted in ordinary language, and that connection must be kept [Quine] |
| 19192 | The truth definition proves semantic contradiction and excluded middle laws (not the logic laws) [Tarski] |
| 22434 | Reduction to logical forms first simplifies idioms and grammar, then finds a single reading of it [Quine] |
| 19187 | The Liar makes us assert a false sentence, so it must be taken seriously [Tarski] |
| 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] |
| 22432 | Normally conditionals have no truth value; it is the consequent which has a conditional truth value [Quine] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 22430 | If we understand a statement, we know the circumstances of its truth [Quine] |
| 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] |
| 13713 | Quine holds time to be 'space-like': past objects are as real as spatially remote ones [Quine, by Sider] |