40 ideas
| 6123 | Empirical investigation can't discover if holes exist, or if two things share a colour [Merricks] |
| 23026 | We know mathematical axioms, such as subtracting equals from equals leaves equals, by a natural light [Leibniz] |
| 6143 | Prolonged events don't seem to endure or exist at any particular time [Merricks] |
| 1630 | We can only see an alien language in terms of our own thought structures (e.g. physical/abstract) [Quine] |
| 6135 | A crumbling statue can't become vague, because vagueness is incoherent [Merricks] |
| 5747 | "No entity without identity" - our ontology must contain items with settled identity conditions [Quine, by Melia] |
| 6145 | Intrinsic properties are those an object still has even if only that object exists [Merricks] |
| 7925 | There is no proper identity concept for properties, and it is hard to distinguish one from two [Quine] |
| 6124 | I say that most of the objects of folk ontology do not exist [Merricks] |
| 6134 | Is swimming pool water an object, composed of its mass or parts? [Merricks] |
| 13387 | Our conceptual scheme becomes more powerful when we posit abstract objects [Quine] |
| 6125 | We can eliminate objects without a commitment to simples [Merricks] |
| 8277 | I prefer 'no object without identity' to Quine's 'no entity without identity' [Lowe on Quine] |
| 14229 | Merricks agrees that there are no composite objects, but offers a different semantics [Merricks, by Liggins] |
| 6142 | The 'folk' way of carving up the world is not intrinsically better than quite arbitrary ways [Merricks] |
| 14472 | If atoms 'arranged baseballwise' break a window, that analytically entails that a baseball did it [Merricks, by Thomasson] |
| 14469 | Overdetermination: the atoms do all the causing, so the baseball causes no breakage [Merricks] |
| 6137 | Clay does not 'constitute' a statue, as they have different persistence conditions (flaking, squashing) [Merricks] |
| 6141 | There is no visible difference between statues, and atoms arranged statuewise [Merricks] |
| 6127 | 'Unrestricted composition' says any two things can make up a third thing [Merricks] |
| 6131 | Composition as identity is false, as identity is never between a single thing and many things [Merricks] |
| 6132 | Composition as identity is false, as it implies that things never change their parts [Merricks] |
| 6130 | 'Composition' says things are their parts; 'constitution' says a whole substance is an object [Merricks] |
| 6138 | It seems wrong that constitution entails that two objects are wholly co-located [Merricks] |
| 6128 | Objects decompose (it seems) into non-overlapping parts that fill its whole region [Merricks] |
| 13189 | A necessary feature (such as air for humans) is not therefore part of the essence [Leibniz] |
| 6136 | Eliminativism about objects gives the best understanding of the Sorites paradox [Merricks] |
| 19432 | Intelligible truth is independent of any external things or experiences [Leibniz] |
| 6133 | If my counterpart is happy, that is irrelevant to whether I 'could' have been happy [Merricks] |
| 19430 | We know objects by perceptions, but their qualities don't reveal what it is we are perceiving [Leibniz] |
| 19431 | There is nothing in the understanding but experiences, plus the understanding itself, and the understander [Leibniz] |
| 6150 | The 'warrant' for a belief is what turns a true belief into knowledge [Merricks] |
| 6144 | You hold a child in your arms, so it is not mental substance, or mental state, or software [Merricks] |
| 6140 | Maybe the word 'I' can only refer to persons [Merricks] |
| 6149 | Free will and determinism are incompatible, since determinism destroys human choice [Merricks] |
| 6148 | Human organisms can exercise downward causation [Merricks] |
| 6147 | The hypothesis of solipsism doesn't seem to be made incoherent by the nature of mental properties [Merricks] |
| 6146 | Before Creation it is assumed that God still had many many mental properties [Merricks] |
| 1631 | You could know the complete behavioural conditions for a foreign language, and still not know their beliefs [Quine] |
| 1632 | Translation of our remote past or language could be as problematic as alien languages [Quine] |