69 ideas
| 6095 | The business of metaphysics is to describe the world [Russell] |
| 6979 | Serious metaphysics cares about entailment between sentences [Jackson] |
| 6980 | Conceptual analysis studies whether one story is made true by another story [Jackson] |
| 6983 | Intuitions about possibilities are basic to conceptual analysis [Jackson] |
| 14707 | Conceptual analysis is needed to establish that metaphysical reductions respect original meanings [Jackson, by Schroeter] |
| 6106 | Reducing entities and premisses makes error less likely [Russell] |
| 15647 | Truth definitions don't produce a good theory, because they go beyond your current language [Halbach] |
| 7005 | Something can only have a place in a preferred account of things if it is entailed by the account [Jackson] |
| 6090 | Facts make propositions true or false, and are expressed by whole sentences [Russell] |
| 6994 | Truth supervenes on being [Jackson] |
| 18348 | Not only atomic truths, but also general and negative truths, have truth-makers [Russell, by Rami] |
| 15649 | In semantic theories of truth, the predicate is in an object-language, and the definition in a metalanguage [Halbach] |
| 15655 | Should axiomatic truth be 'conservative' - not proving anything apart from implications of the axioms? [Halbach] |
| 15654 | If truth is defined it can be eliminated, whereas axiomatic truth has various commitments [Halbach] |
| 15650 | Axiomatic theories of truth need a weak logical framework, and not a strong metatheory [Halbach] |
| 15648 | Instead of a truth definition, add a primitive truth predicate, and axioms for how it works [Halbach] |
| 15656 | Deflationists say truth merely serves to express infinite conjunctions [Halbach] |
| 15657 | To prove the consistency of set theory, we must go beyond set theory [Halbach] |
| 6103 | Normally a class with only one member is a problem, because the class and the member are identical [Russell] |
| 15652 | We can use truth instead of ontologically loaded second-order comprehension assumptions about properties [Halbach] |
| 6092 | In a logically perfect language, there will be just one word for every simple object [Russell] |
| 6101 | Romulus does not occur in the proposition 'Romulus did not exist' [Russell] |
| 15651 | Instead of saying x has a property, we can say a formula is true of x - as long as we have 'true' [Halbach] |
| 6102 | You can understand 'author of Waverley', but to understand 'Scott' you must know who it applies to [Russell] |
| 10423 | There are a set of criteria for pinning down a logically proper name [Russell, by Sainsbury] |
| 7744 | Treat description using quantifiers, and treat proper names as descriptions [Russell, by McCullogh] |
| 10426 | A name has got to name something or it is not a name [Russell] |
| 6104 | Numbers are classes of classes, and hence fictions of fictions [Russell] |
| 6984 | Smooth reductions preserve high-level laws in the lower level [Jackson] |
| 21708 | Russell's new logical atomist was of particulars, universals and facts (not platonic propositions) [Russell, by Linsky,B] |
| 19051 | Russell's atomic facts are actually compounds, and his true logical atoms are sense data [Russell, by Quine] |
| 6089 | Logical atomism aims at logical atoms as the last residue of analysis [Russell] |
| 6100 | Once you have enumerated all the atomic facts, there is a further fact that those are all the facts [Russell] |
| 6105 | Logical atoms aims to get down to ultimate simples, with their own unique reality [Russell] |
| 21709 | You can't name all the facts, so they are not real, but are what propositions assert [Russell] |
| 18376 | Russell asserts atomic, existential, negative and general facts [Russell, by Armstrong] |
| 5465 | Modern trope theory tries, like logical atomism, to reduce things to elementary states [Russell, by Ellis] |
| 6978 | Baldness is just hair distribution, but the former is indeterminate, unlike the latter [Jackson] |
| 6060 | 'Existence' means that a propositional function is sometimes true [Russell] |
| 6993 | Redness is a property, but only as a presentation to normal humans [Jackson] |
| 6099 | Modal terms are properties of propositional functions, not of propositions [Russell] |
| 6987 | We should not multiply senses of necessity beyond necessity [Jackson] |
| 6988 | Mathematical sentences are a problem in a possible-worlds framework [Jackson] |
| 6975 | Possible worlds could be concrete, abstract, universals, sentences, or properties [Jackson] |
| 6982 | Long arithmetic calculations show the a priori can be fallible [Jackson] |
| 6991 | We examine objects to determine colour; we do not introspect [Jackson] |
| 6098 | Perception goes straight to the fact, and not through the proposition [Russell] |
| 6976 | In physicalism, the psychological depends on the physical, not the other way around [Jackson] |
| 6986 | Is the dependence of the psychological on the physical a priori or a posteriori? [Jackson] |
| 6992 | If different states can fulfil the same role, the converse must also be possible [Jackson] |
| 6996 | Folk psychology covers input, internal role, and output [Jackson] |
| 6097 | The theory of error seems to need the existence of the non-existent [Russell] |
| 6977 | Egocentric or de se content seems to be irreducibly so [Jackson] |
| 6990 | Keep distinct the essential properties of water, and application conditions for the word 'water' [Jackson] |
| 6985 | Analysis is finding necessary and sufficient conditions by studying possible cases [Jackson] |
| 6995 | Successful predication supervenes on nature [Jackson] |
| 9022 | Russell uses 'propositional function' to refer to both predicates and to attributes [Quine on Russell] |
| 6989 | I can understand "He has a beard", without identifying 'he', and hence the truth conditions [Jackson] |
| 6091 | Propositions don't name facts, because each fact corresponds to a proposition and its negation [Russell] |
| 21702 | In 1918 still believes in nonlinguistic analogues of sentences, but he now calls them 'facts' [Russell, by Quine] |
| 6094 | An inventory of the world does not need to include propositions [Russell] |
| 6096 | I no longer believe in propositions, especially concerning falsehoods [Russell] |
| 21712 | I know longer believe in shadowy things like 'that today is Wednesday' when it is actually Tuesday [Russell] |
| 6093 | The names in a logically perfect language would be private, and could not be shared [Russell] |
| 6998 | Folk morality does not clearly distinguish between doing and allowing [Jackson] |
| 6997 | Moral functionalism says moral terms get their meaning from their role in folk morality [Jackson] |
| 7000 | Which are prior - thin concepts like right, good, ought; or thick concepts like kindness, equity etc.? [Jackson] |
| 6999 | It is hard to justify the huge difference in our judgements of abortion and infanticide [Jackson] |
| 6119 | You can discuss 'God exists', so 'God' is a description, not a name [Russell] |