14 ideas
8207 | The quest for simplicity drove scientists to posit new entities, such as molecules in gases [Quine] |
8208 | In arithmetic, ratios, negatives, irrationals and imaginaries were created in order to generalise [Quine] |
18755 | Validity is explained as truth in all models, because that relies on the logical terms [McGee] |
18751 | Natural language includes connectives like 'because' which are not truth-functional [McGee] |
18761 | Second-order variables need to range over more than collections of first-order objects [McGee] |
18753 | An ontologically secure semantics for predicate calculus relies on sets [McGee] |
18754 | Logically valid sentences are analytic truths which are just true because of their logical words [McGee] |
18757 | Soundness theorems are uninformative, because they rely on soundness in their proofs [McGee] |
18760 | The culmination of Euclidean geometry was axioms that made all models isomorphic [McGee] |
8205 | Explaining events just by bodies can't explain two events identical in space-time [Quine] |
8206 | Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia [Quine] |
21687 | It seems obvious to prefer the simpler of two theories, on grounds of beauty and convenience [Quine] |
21688 | There are four suspicious reasons why we prefer simpler theories [Quine] |
18762 | A maxim claims that if we are allowed to assert a sentence, that means it must be true [McGee] |