44 ideas
| 16943 | Philosophy is continuous with science, and has no external vantage point [Quine] |
| 17311 | Real definitions don't just single out a thing; they must also explain its essence [Koslicki] |
| 9065 | S5 collapses iterated modalities (◊□P→□P, and ◊◊P→◊P) [Keefe/Smith] |
| 16949 | Klein summarised geometry as grouped together by transformations [Quine] |
| 17312 | It is more explanatory if you show how a number is constructed from basic entities and relations [Koslicki] |
| 17314 | The relata of grounding are propositions or facts, but for dependence it is objects and their features [Koslicki] |
| 16939 | Mass terms just concern spread, but other terms involve both spread and individuation [Quine] |
| 9064 | Objects such as a cloud or Mount Everest seem to have fuzzy boundaries in nature [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9044 | If someone is borderline tall, no further information is likely to resolve the question [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9048 | The simplest approach, that vagueness is just ignorance, retains classical logic and semantics [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9055 | The epistemic view of vagueness must explain why we don't know the predicate boundary [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9049 | Supervaluationism keeps true-or-false where precision can be produced, but not otherwise [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9056 | Vague statements lack truth value if attempts to make them precise fail [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9058 | Some of the principles of classical logic still fail with supervaluationism [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9059 | The semantics of supervaluation (e.g. disjunction and quantification) is not classical [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9060 | Supervaluation misunderstands vagueness, treating it as a failure to make things precise [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9050 | A third truth-value at borderlines might be 'indeterminate', or a value somewhere between 0 and 1 [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9061 | People can't be placed in a precise order according to how 'nice' they are [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9062 | If truth-values for vagueness range from 0 to 1, there must be someone who is 'completely tall' [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9063 | How do we decide if my coat is red to degree 0.322 or 0.321? [Keefe/Smith] |
| 16948 | Once we know the mechanism of a disposition, we can eliminate 'similarity' [Quine] |
| 16945 | We judge things to be soluble if they are the same kind as, or similar to, things that do dissolve [Quine] |
| 9045 | Vague predicates involve uncertain properties, uncertain objects, and paradoxes of gradual change [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9047 | Many vague predicates are multi-dimensional; 'big' involves height and volume; heaps include arrangement [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9053 | If there is a precise borderline area, that is not a case of vagueness [Keefe/Smith] |
| 17313 | Modern views want essences just to individuate things across worlds and times [Koslicki] |
| 17309 | For Fine, essences are propositions true because of identity, so they are just real definitions [Koslicki] |
| 17315 | We need a less propositional view of essence, and so must distinguish it clearly from real definitions [Koslicki] |
| 16944 | Science is common sense, with a sophisticated method [Quine] |
| 16940 | Induction is just more of the same: animal expectations [Quine] |
| 16941 | Induction relies on similar effects following from each cause [Quine] |
| 16933 | Grue is a puzzle because the notions of similarity and kind are dubious in science [Quine] |
| 17317 | A good explanation captures the real-world dependence among the phenomena [Koslicki] |
| 16934 | General terms depend on similarities among things [Quine] |
| 16938 | To learn yellow by observation, must we be told to look at the colour? [Quine] |
| 8486 | Standards of similarity are innate, and the spacing of qualities such as colours can be mapped [Quine] |
| 16947 | Similarity is just interchangeability in the cosmic machine [Quine] |
| 17316 | We can abstract to a dependent entity by blocking out features of its bearer [Koslicki] |
| 16932 | Projectible predicates can be universalised about the kind to which they refer [Quine] |
| 7375 | Quine probably regrets natural kinds now being treated as essences [Quine, by Dennett] |
| 16935 | If similarity has no degrees, kinds cannot be contained within one another [Quine] |
| 16936 | Comparative similarity allows the kind 'colored' to contain the kind 'red' [Quine] |
| 16937 | You can't base kinds just on resemblance, because chains of resemblance are a muddle [Quine] |
| 16942 | It is hard to see how regularities could be explained [Quine] |