60 ideas
7950 | Philosophy tries to explain how the actual is possible, given that it seems impossible [Macdonald,C] |
7923 | 'Did it for the sake of x' doesn't involve a sake, so how can ontological commitments be inferred? [Macdonald,C] |
7933 | Don't assume that a thing has all the properties of its parts [Macdonald,C] |
15879 | The Square of Opposition has two contradictory pairs, one contrary pair, and one sub-contrary pair [Harré] |
15891 | Traditional quantifiers combine ordinary language generality and ontology assumptions [Harré] |
15878 | Some quantifiers, such as 'any', rule out any notion of order within their range [Harré] |
7944 | Reduce by bridge laws (plus property identities?), by elimination, or by reducing talk [Macdonald,C] |
7938 | Relational properties are clearly not essential to substances [Macdonald,C] |
7967 | Being taller is an external relation, but properties and substances have internal relations [Macdonald,C] |
15874 | Scientific properties are not observed qualities, but the dispositions which create them [Harré] |
7965 | Does the knowledge of each property require an infinity of accompanying knowledge? [Macdonald,C] |
7934 | Tropes are abstract (two can occupy the same place), but not universals (they have locations) [Macdonald,C] |
7958 | Properties are sets of exactly resembling property-particulars [Macdonald,C] |
7972 | Tropes are abstract particulars, not concrete particulars, so the theory is not nominalist [Macdonald,C] |
7959 | How do a group of resembling tropes all resemble one another in the same way? [Macdonald,C] |
7960 | Trope Nominalism is the only nominalism to introduce new entities, inviting Ockham's Razor [Macdonald,C] |
7951 | Numerical sameness is explained by theories of identity, but what explains qualitative identity? [Macdonald,C] |
7964 | How can universals connect instances, if they are nothing like them? [Macdonald,C] |
7971 | Real Nominalism is only committed to concrete particulars, word-tokens, and (possibly) sets [Macdonald,C] |
7955 | Resemblance Nominalism cannot explain either new resemblances, or absence of resemblances [Macdonald,C] |
7961 | A 'thing' cannot be in two places at once, and two things cannot be in the same place at once [Macdonald,C] |
7926 | We 'individuate' kinds of object, and 'identify' particular specimens [Macdonald,C] |
7936 | Unlike bundles of properties, substances have an intrinsic unity [Macdonald,C] |
7930 | The bundle theory of substance implies the identity of indiscernibles [Macdonald,C] |
7932 | A phenomenalist cannot distinguish substance from attribute, so must accept the bundle view [Macdonald,C] |
7937 | When we ascribe a property to a substance, the bundle theory will make that a tautology [Macdonald,C] |
7939 | Substances persist through change, but the bundle theory says they can't [Macdonald,C] |
7940 | A substance might be a sequence of bundles, rather than a single bundle [Macdonald,C] |
7948 | A statue and its matter have different persistence conditions, so they are not identical [Macdonald,C] |
7929 | A substance is either a bundle of properties, or a bare substratum, or an essence [Macdonald,C] |
7941 | Each substance contains a non-property, which is its substratum or bare particular [Macdonald,C] |
7942 | The substratum theory explains the unity of substances, and their survival through change [Macdonald,C] |
7943 | A substratum has the quality of being bare, and they are useless because indiscernible [Macdonald,C] |
7927 | At different times Leibniz articulated three different versions of his so-called Law [Macdonald,C] |
7928 | The Identity of Indiscernibles is false, because it is not necessarily true [Macdonald,C] |
15884 | Laws of nature remain the same through any conditions, if the underlying mechanisms are unchanged [Harré] |
15880 | In physical sciences particular observations are ordered, but in biology only the classes are ordered [Harré] |
15869 | Reports of experiments eliminate the experimenter, and present results as the behaviour of nature [Harré] |
15881 | We can save laws from counter-instances by treating the latter as analytic definitions [Harré] |
15882 | Since there are three different dimensions for generalising laws, no one system of logic can cover them [Harré] |
15888 | The grue problem shows that natural kinds are central to science [Harré] |
15887 | 'Grue' introduces a new causal hypothesis - that emeralds can change colour [Harré] |
15889 | It is because ravens are birds that their species and their colour might be connected [Harré] |
15890 | Non-black non-ravens just aren't part of the presuppositions of 'all ravens are black' [Harré] |
15885 | The necessity of Newton's First Law derives from the nature of material things, not from a mechanism [Harré] |
15868 | Idealisation idealises all of a thing's properties, but abstraction leaves some of them out [Harré] |
7947 | In continuity, what matters is not just the beginning and end states, but the process itself [Macdonald,C] |
5845 | Niceratus learnt the whole of Homer by heart, as a guide to goodness [Xenophon] |
15886 | Science rests on the principle that nature is a hierarchy of natural kinds [Harré] |
15864 | Classification is just as important as laws in natural science [Harré] |
15865 | Newton's First Law cannot be demonstrated experimentally, as that needs absence of external forces [Harré] |
15862 | Laws can come from data, from theory, from imagination and concepts, or from procedures [Harré] |
15870 | Are laws of nature about events, or types and universals, or dispositions, or all three? [Harré] |
15871 | Are laws about what has or might happen, or do they also cover all the possibilities? [Harré] |
15876 | Maybe laws of nature are just relations between properties? [Harré] |
15860 | We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws [Harré] |
15867 | Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature [Harré] |
15872 | Must laws of nature be universal, or could they be local? [Harré] |
15892 | Laws of nature state necessary connections of things, events and properties, based on models of mechanisms [Harré] |
15875 | In counterfactuals we keep substances constant, and imagine new situations for them [Harré] |