78 ideas
| 16604 | Philosophy consists of choosing between Plato, Aristotle and Democritus [Pasnau] |
| 16606 | Original philosophers invariably seek inspiration from past thinkers [Pasnau] |
| 16586 | The commentaries of Averroes were the leading guide to Aristotle [Pasnau] |
| 16568 | Modernity begins in the late 12th century, with Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle [Pasnau] |
| 16653 | Once accidents were seen as real, 'Categories' became the major text for ontology [Pasnau] |
| 16704 | In 1347, the Church effectively stopped philosophy for the next 300 years [Pasnau] |
| 16605 | After c.1450 all of Plato was available. Before that, only the first half of 'Timaeus' was known [Pasnau] |
| 16607 | Renaissance Platonism is peripheral [Pasnau] |
| 16715 | Plato only made an impact locally in 15th century Italy [Pasnau] |
| 16610 | Philosophy could easily have died in 17th century, if it weren't for Descartes [Pasnau] |
| 16781 | The 17th century is a metaphysical train wreck [Pasnau] |
| 22270 | Frege changed philosophy by extending logic's ability to check the grounds of thinking [Potter on Frege] |
| 8939 | We should not describe human laws of thought, but how to correctly track truth [Frege, by Fisher] |
| 16677 | Anti-Razor: if you can't account for a truth, keep positing things until you can [Pasnau] |
| 4971 | I don't use 'subject' and 'predicate' in my way of representing a judgement [Frege] |
| 17745 | For Frege, 'All A's are B's' means that the concept A implies the concept B [Frege, by Walicki] |
| 7728 | Frege has a judgement stroke (vertical, asserting or judging) and a content stroke (horizontal, expressing) [Frege, by Weiner] |
| 16881 | The laws of logic are boundless, so we want the few whose power contains the others [Frege] |
| 7622 | In 1879 Frege developed second order logic [Frege, by Putnam] |
| 7729 | Frege replaced Aristotle's subject/predicate form with function/argument form [Frege, by Weiner] |
| 8132 | We now have a much more sophisticated understanding of logical form in language [Burge] |
| 9950 | A quantifier is a second-level predicate (which explains how it contributes to truth-conditions) [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| 9991 | For Frege the variable ranges over all objects [Frege, by Tait] |
| 10536 | Frege's domain for variables is all objects, but modern interpretations first fix the domain [Dummett on Frege] |
| 7730 | Frege introduced quantifiers for generality [Frege, by Weiner] |
| 7742 | Frege reduced most quantifiers to 'everything' combined with 'not' [Frege, by McCullogh] |
| 13824 | Proof theory began with Frege's definition of derivability [Frege, by Prawitz] |
| 13609 | Frege produced axioms for logic, though that does not now seem the natural basis for logic [Frege, by Kaplan] |
| 17855 | It may be possible to define induction in terms of the ancestral relation [Frege, by Wright,C] |
| 10607 | Frege's logic has a hierarchy of object, property, property-of-property etc. [Frege, by Smith,P] |
| 11008 | Existence is not a first-order property, but the instantiation of a property [Frege, by Read] |
| 16598 | Priority was a major topic of dispute for scholastics [Pasnau] |
| 16727 | In mixtures, the four elements ceased to exist, replaced by a mixed body with a form [Pasnau] |
| 16732 | 17th C qualities are either microphysical, or phenomenal, or powers [Pasnau] |
| 16733 | 17th century authors only recognised categorical properties, never dispositions [Pasnau] |
| 16662 | The biggest question for scholastics is whether properties are real, or modes of substances [Pasnau] |
| 16767 | There is no centralised power, but we still need essence for a metaphysical understanding [Pasnau] |
| 16788 | Instead of adding Aristotelian forms to physical stuff, one could add dispositions [Pasnau] |
| 16738 | Scholastics reject dispositions, because they are not actual, as forms require [Pasnau] |
| 16649 | Scholastics say there is a genuine thing if it is 'separable' [Pasnau] |
| 16785 | If you reject essences, questions of individuation become extremely difficult [Pasnau] |
| 16680 | Scholastics thought Quantity could be the principle of individuation [Pasnau] |
| 16628 | Corpuscularianism promised a decent account of substance [Pasnau] |
| 16617 | Corpuscularian critics of scholasticism say only substances exist [Pasnau] |
| 16741 | Scholastics wanted to treat Aristotelianism as physics, rather than as metaphysics [Pasnau] |
| 16777 | If crowds are things at all, they seem to be Substances, since they bear properties [Pasnau] |
| 16615 | Scholastics use 'substantia' for thick concrete entities, and for thin metaphysical ones [Pasnau] |
| 16775 | For corpuscularians, a substance is just its integral parts [Pasnau] |
| 16769 | If clay survives destruction of the statue, the statue wasn't a substance, but a mere accident [Pasnau] |
| 16602 | Corpuscularianism rejected not only form, but also the dependence of matter on form [Pasnau] |
| 16612 | Hylomorphism may not be a rival to science, but an abstract account of unity and endurance [Pasnau] |
| 16613 | Hylomorphism declined because scholastics made it into a testable physical theory [Pasnau] |
| 16747 | Scholastics made forms substantial, in a way unintended by Aristotle [Pasnau] |
| 16759 | Scholastics began to see substantial form more as Aristotle's 'efficient' cause [Pasnau] |
| 16748 | Aquinas says a substance has one form; Scotists say it has many forms [Pasnau] |
| 16671 | Scholastic Quantity either gives a body parts, or spreads them out in a unified way [Pasnau] |
| 16579 | There may be different types of substrate, or temporary substrates [Pasnau] |
| 16596 | A substratum can't be 'bare', because it has a job to do [Pasnau] |
| 16584 | If a substrate gives causal support for change, quite a lot of the ingredients must endure [Pasnau] |
| 16580 | A substrate may be 'prime matter', which endures through every change [Pasnau] |
| 16749 | Aristotelians deny that all necessary properties are essential [Pasnau] |
| 16694 | Typical successive things are time and motion [Pasnau] |
| 16583 | Weak ex nihilo says it all comes from something; strong version says the old must partly endure [Pasnau] |
| 16783 | Essences must explain, so we can infer them causally from the accidents [Pasnau] |
| 8126 | Anti-individualism says the environment is involved in the individuation of some mental states [Burge] |
| 8127 | Broad concepts suggest an extension of the mind into the environment (less computer-like) [Burge] |
| 8129 | Anti-individualism may be incompatible with some sorts of self-knowledge [Burge] |
| 8131 | Some qualities of experience, like blurred vision, have no function at all [Burge] |
| 22280 | Frege's account was top-down and decompositional, not bottom-up and compositional [Frege, by Potter] |
| 16609 | Atomists say causation is mechanical collisions, and all true qualities are microscopic [Pasnau] |
| 16603 | In the 17th C matter became body, and was then studied by science [Pasnau] |
| 16592 | Atomism is the commonest version of corpuscularianism, but isn't required by it [Pasnau] |
| 16750 | If there are just arrangements of corpuscles, where are the boundaries between substances? [Pasnau] |
| 16722 | Scholastic causation is by changes in the primary qualities of hot, cold, wet, dry [Pasnau] |
| 16760 | Substantial forms were a step towards scientific essentialism [Pasnau] |
| 16581 | Scholastic authors agree that matter was created by God, out of nothing [Pasnau] |
| 7741 | The predicate 'exists' is actually a natural language expression for a quantifier [Frege, by Weiner] |
| 16642 | Transubstantion says accidents of bread and wine don't inhere in the substance [Pasnau] |