48 ideas
| 6095 | The business of metaphysics is to describe the world [Russell] |
| 19740 | A very hungry man cannot choose between equidistant piles of food [Aristotle] |
| 6106 | Reducing entities and premisses makes error less likely [Russell] |
| 6090 | Facts make propositions true or false, and are expressed by whole sentences [Russell] |
| 18348 | Not only atomic truths, but also general and negative truths, have truth-makers [Russell, by Rami] |
| 6103 | Normally a class with only one member is a problem, because the class and the member are identical [Russell] |
| 8956 | What is a singleton set, if a set is meant to be a collection of objects? [Szabó] |
| 6092 | In a logically perfect language, there will be just one word for every simple object [Russell] |
| 6101 | Romulus does not occur in the proposition 'Romulus did not exist' [Russell] |
| 6102 | You can understand 'author of Waverley', but to understand 'Scott' you must know who it applies to [Russell] |
| 10423 | There are a set of criteria for pinning down a logically proper name [Russell, by Sainsbury] |
| 7744 | Treat description using quantifiers, and treat proper names as descriptions [Russell, by McCullogh] |
| 10426 | A name has got to name something or it is not a name [Russell] |
| 6104 | Numbers are classes of classes, and hence fictions of fictions [Russell] |
| 21708 | Russell's new logical atomist was of particulars, universals and facts (not platonic propositions) [Russell, by Linsky,B] |
| 19051 | Russell's atomic facts are actually compounds, and his true logical atoms are sense data [Russell, by Quine] |
| 6089 | Logical atomism aims at logical atoms as the last residue of analysis [Russell] |
| 6100 | Once you have enumerated all the atomic facts, there is a further fact that those are all the facts [Russell] |
| 6105 | Logical atoms aims to get down to ultimate simples, with their own unique reality [Russell] |
| 8953 | Abstract entities don't depend on their concrete entities ...but maybe on the totality of concrete things [Szabó] |
| 21709 | You can't name all the facts, so they are not real, but are what propositions assert [Russell] |
| 18376 | Russell asserts atomic, existential, negative and general facts [Russell, by Armstrong] |
| 5465 | Modern trope theory tries, like logical atomism, to reduce things to elementary states [Russell, by Ellis] |
| 6060 | 'Existence' means that a propositional function is sometimes true [Russell] |
| 6099 | Modal terms are properties of propositional functions, not of propositions [Russell] |
| 6098 | Perception goes straight to the fact, and not through the proposition [Russell] |
| 8954 | Geometrical circles cannot identify a circular paint patch, presumably because they lack something [Szabó] |
| 6097 | The theory of error seems to need the existence of the non-existent [Russell] |
| 8955 | Abstractions are imperceptible, non-causal, and non-spatiotemporal (the third explaining the others) [Szabó] |
| 9022 | Russell uses 'propositional function' to refer to both predicates and to attributes [Quine on Russell] |
| 6091 | Propositions don't name facts, because each fact corresponds to a proposition and its negation [Russell] |
| 21702 | In 1918 still believes in nonlinguistic analogues of sentences, but he now calls them 'facts' [Russell, by Quine] |
| 6094 | An inventory of the world does not need to include propositions [Russell] |
| 6096 | I no longer believe in propositions, especially concerning falsehoods [Russell] |
| 21712 | I know longer believe in shadowy things like 'that today is Wednesday' when it is actually Tuesday [Russell] |
| 6093 | The names in a logically perfect language would be private, and could not be shared [Russell] |
| 398 | Each thing that has a function is for the sake of that function [Aristotle] |
| 394 | An unworn sandal is in vain, but nothing in nature is in vain [Aristotle] |
| 396 | There has to be some goal, and not just movement to infinity [Aristotle] |
| 16102 | Aether moves in circles and is imperishable; the four elements perish, and move in straight lines [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| 17463 | An element is what bodies are analysed into, and won't itself divide into something else [Aristotle] |
| 399 | If the more you raise some earth the faster it moves, why does the whole earth not move? [Aristotle] |
| 20918 | Void is a kind of place, so it can't explain place [Aristotle] |
| 403 | The earth must be round and of limited size, because moving north or south makes different stars visible [Aristotle] |
| 402 | The Earth must be spherical, because it casts a convex shadow on the moon [Aristotle] |
| 1498 | Everyone agrees that the world had a beginning, but thinkers disagree over whether it will end [Aristotle] |
| 395 | It seems possible that there exists a limited number of other worlds apart from this one [Aristotle] |
| 6119 | You can discuss 'God exists', so 'God' is a description, not a name [Russell] |