14 ideas
| 15547 | Negative existentials have 'totality facts' as truthmakers [Armstrong, by Lewis] |
| 5500 | Biologists see many organic levels, 'abstract' if seen from below, 'structural' if seen from above [Lycan] |
| 1630 | We can only see an alien language in terms of our own thought structures (e.g. physical/abstract) [Quine] |
| 5747 | "No entity without identity" - our ontology must contain items with settled identity conditions [Quine, by Melia] |
| 7925 | There is no proper identity concept for properties, and it is hard to distinguish one from two [Quine] |
| 13387 | Our conceptual scheme becomes more powerful when we posit abstract objects [Quine] |
| 8277 | I prefer 'no object without identity' to Quine's 'no entity without identity' [Lowe on Quine] |
| 5494 | 'Lightning is electric discharge' and 'Phosphorus is Venus' are synthetic a posteriori identities [Lycan] |
| 15542 | All possibilities are recombinations of properties in the actual world [Armstrong, by Lewis] |
| 5496 | Functionalism has three linked levels: physical, functional, and mental [Lycan] |
| 5499 | A mental state is a functional realisation of a brain state when it serves the purpose of the organism [Lycan] |
| 1631 | You could know the complete behavioural conditions for a foreign language, and still not know their beliefs [Quine] |
| 1632 | Translation of our remote past or language could be as problematic as alien languages [Quine] |
| 5501 | People are trying to explain biological teleology in naturalistic causal terms [Lycan] |