53 ideas
| 4697 | There has been a distinct 'Social Turn' in recent philosophy, like the earlier 'Linguistic Turn' [O'Grady] |
| 9136 | The paradox of analysis says that any conceptual analysis must be either trivial or false [Sorensen] |
| 4731 | Good reasoning will avoid contradiction, enhance coherence, not ignore evidence, and maximise evidence [O'Grady] |
| 9131 | Two long understandable sentences can have an unintelligible conjunction [Sorensen] |
| 9108 | From an impossibility anything follows [William of Ockham] |
| 4735 | Just as maps must simplify their subject matter, so thought has to be reductionist about reality [O'Grady] |
| 4703 | The epistemic theory of truth presents it as 'that which is licensed by our best theory of reality' [O'Grady] |
| 4701 | To say a relative truth is inexpressible in other frameworks is 'weak', while saying it is false is 'strong' [O'Grady] |
| 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] |
| 9107 | A proposition is true if its subject and predicate stand for the same thing [William of Ockham] |
| 16300 | Ockham had an early axiomatic account of truth [William of Ockham, by Halbach] |
| 4705 | Logical relativism appears if we allow more than one legitimate logical system [O'Grady] |
| 9119 | No attempt to deny bivalence has ever been accepted [Sorensen] |
| 4700 | A third value for truth might be "indeterminate", or a point on a scale between 'true' and 'false' [O'Grady] |
| 4704 | Wittgenstein reduced Russell's five primitive logical symbols to a mere one [O'Grady] |
| 9135 | We now see that generalizations use variables rather than abstract entities [Sorensen] |
| 9106 | The word 'every' only signifies when added to a term such as 'man', referring to all men [William of Ockham] |
| 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] |
| 9113 | Just as unity is not a property of a single thing, so numbers are not properties of many things [William of Ockham] |
| 9110 | The words 'thing' and 'to be' assert the same idea, as a noun and as a verb [William of Ockham] |
| 4711 | Anti-realists say our theories (such as wave-particle duality) give reality incompatible properties [O'Grady] |
| 4698 | What counts as a fact partly depends on the availability of human concepts to describe them [O'Grady] |
| 9116 | Vague words have hidden boundaries [Sorensen] |
| 15388 | Universals are single things, and only universal in what they signify [William of Ockham] |
| 4715 | We may say that objects have intrinsic identity conditions, but still allow multiple accounts of them [O'Grady] |
| 9132 | An offer of 'free coffee or juice' could slowly shift from exclusive 'or' to inclusive 'or' [Sorensen] |
| 9109 | If essence and existence were two things, one could exist without the other, which is impossible [William of Ockham] |
| 4719 | Maybe developments in logic and geometry have shown that the a priori may be relative [O'Grady] |
| 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] |
| 4720 | Sense-data are only safe from scepticism if they are primitive and unconceptualised [O'Grady] |
| 9124 | We are unable to perceive a nose (on the back of a mask) as concave [Sorensen] |
| 4722 | Modern epistemology centres on debates about foundations, and about external justification [O'Grady] |
| 4724 | Internalists say the reasons for belief must be available to the subject, and externalists deny this [O'Grady] |
| 4723 | Coherence involves support from explanation and evidence, and also probability and confirmation [O'Grady] |
| 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] |
| 4709 | Ontological relativists are anti-realists, who deny that our theories carve nature at the joints [O'Grady] |
| 4725 | Contextualism says that knowledge is relative to its context; 'empty' depends on your interests [O'Grady] |
| 4732 | One may understand a realm of ideas, but be unable to judge their rationality or truth [O'Grady] |
| 9134 | The negation of a meaningful sentence must itself be meaningful [Sorensen] |
| 4710 | Verificationism was attacked by the deniers of the analytic-synthetic distinction, needed for 'facts' [O'Grady] |
| 9105 | Some concepts for propositions exist only in the mind, and in no language [William of Ockham] |
| 9133 | Propositions are what settle problems of ambiguity in sentences [Sorensen] |
| 4717 | If we abandon the analytic-synthetic distinction, scepticism about meaning may be inevitable [O'Grady] |
| 4706 | Early Quine says all beliefs could be otherwise, but later he said we would assume mistranslation [O'Grady] |
| 4734 | Cryptographers can recognise that something is a language, without translating it [O'Grady] |
| 9129 | I can buy any litre of water, but not every litre of water [Sorensen] |
| 9122 | God cannot experience unwanted pain, so God cannot understand human beings [Sorensen] |
| 4727 | The chief problem for fideists is other fideists who hold contrary ideas [O'Grady] |