47 ideas
| 14092 | Philosophers are often too fussy about words, dismissing perfectly useful ordinary terms [Rosen] |
| 9136 | The paradox of analysis says that any conceptual analysis must be either trivial or false [Sorensen] |
| 3870 | The real problem of science is how to choose between possible explanations [Newton-Smith] |
| 3859 | We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain [Newton-Smith] |
| 3853 | For science to be rational, we must explain scientific change rationally [Newton-Smith] |
| 3854 | Positivists hold that theoretical terms change, but observation terms don't [Newton-Smith] |
| 3855 | Critics attack positivist division between theory and observation [Newton-Smith] |
| 9131 | Two long understandable sentences can have an unintelligible conjunction [Sorensen] |
| 14100 | Figuring in the definition of a thing doesn't make it a part of that thing [Rosen] |
| 3869 | More truthful theories have greater predictive power [Newton-Smith] |
| 3861 | Theories generate infinite truths and falsehoods, so they cannot be used to assess probability [Newton-Smith] |
| 9139 | If nothing exists, no truthmakers could make 'Nothing exists' true [Sorensen] |
| 9140 | Which toothbrush is the truthmaker for 'buy one, get one free'? [Sorensen] |
| 9119 | No attempt to deny bivalence has ever been accepted [Sorensen] |
| 9135 | We now see that generalizations use variables rather than abstract entities [Sorensen] |
| 14096 | Explanations fail to be monotonic [Rosen] |
| 9125 | Denying problems, or being romantically defeated by them, won't make them go away [Sorensen] |
| 9137 | Banning self-reference would outlaw 'This very sentence is in English' [Sorensen] |
| 14097 | Things could be true 'in virtue of' others as relations between truths, or between truths and items [Rosen] |
| 14095 | Facts are structures of worldly items, rather like sentences, individuated by their ingredients [Rosen] |
| 9116 | Vague words have hidden boundaries [Sorensen] |
| 14093 | An 'intrinsic' property is one that depends on a thing and its parts, and not on its relations [Rosen] |
| 9132 | An offer of 'free coffee or juice' could slowly shift from exclusive 'or' to inclusive 'or' [Sorensen] |
| 14094 | The excellent notion of metaphysical 'necessity' cannot be defined [Rosen] |
| 14101 | Are necessary truths rooted in essences, or also in basic grounding laws? [Rosen] |
| 3867 | De re necessity arises from the way the world is [Newton-Smith] |
| 3872 | We must assess the truth of beliefs in identifying them [Newton-Smith] |
| 9128 | It is propositional attitudes which can be a priori, not the propositions themselves [Sorensen] |
| 9130 | Attributing apriority to a proposition is attributing a cognitive ability to someone [Sorensen] |
| 9118 | The colour bands of the spectrum arise from our biology; they do not exist in the physics [Sorensen] |
| 9124 | We are unable to perceive a nose (on the back of a mask) as concave [Sorensen] |
| 9126 | Bayesians build near-certainty from lots of reasonably probable beliefs [Sorensen] |
| 9121 | Illusions are not a reason for skepticism, but a source of interesting scientific information [Sorensen] |
| 3857 | Defeat relativism by emphasising truth and reference, not meaning [Newton-Smith] |
| 3858 | A full understanding of 'yellow' involves some theory [Newton-Smith] |
| 3862 | All theories contain anomalies, and so are falsified! [Newton-Smith] |
| 3863 | The anomaly of Uranus didn't destroy Newton's mechanics - it led to Neptune's discovery [Newton-Smith] |
| 3864 | Anomalies are judged against rival theories, and support for the current theory [Newton-Smith] |
| 3865 | Why should it matter whether or not a theory is scientific? [Newton-Smith] |
| 3866 | If theories are really incommensurable, we could believe them all [Newton-Smith] |
| 9134 | The negation of a meaningful sentence must itself be meaningful [Sorensen] |
| 9133 | Propositions are what settle problems of ambiguity in sentences [Sorensen] |
| 14099 | 'Bachelor' consists in or reduces to 'unmarried' male, but not the other way around [Rosen] |
| 3871 | Explaining an action is showing that it is rational [Newton-Smith] |
| 9129 | I can buy any litre of water, but not every litre of water [Sorensen] |
| 14098 | An acid is just a proton donor [Rosen] |
| 9122 | God cannot experience unwanted pain, so God cannot understand human beings [Sorensen] |