60 ideas
| 13939 | No possible evidence could decide the reality of numbers, so it is a pseudo-question [Carnap] |
| 16252 | Metaphysics uses empty words, or just produces pseudo-statements [Carnap] |
| 13342 | Carnap defined consequence by contradiction, but this is unintuitive and changes with substitution [Tarski on Carnap] |
| 13251 | Each person is free to build their own logic, just by specifying a syntax [Carnap] |
| 13936 | Questions about numbers are answered by analysis, and are analytic, and hence logically true [Carnap] |
| 8748 | Logical positivists incorporated geometry into logicism, saying axioms are just definitions [Carnap, by Shapiro] |
| 8960 | Internal questions about abstractions are trivial, and external ones deeply problematic [Carnap, by Szabó] |
| 458 | Nothing could come out of nothing, and existence could never completely cease [Empedocles] |
| 5112 | Empedocles says things are at rest, unless love unites them, or hatred splits them [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 13933 | Existence questions are 'internal' (within a framework) or 'external' (concerning the whole framework) [Carnap] |
| 13934 | To be 'real' is to be an element of a system, so we cannot ask reality questions about the system itself [Carnap] |
| 13938 | A linguistic framework involves commitment to entities, so only commitment to the framework is in question [Carnap] |
| 11897 | A principle of individuation may pinpoint identity and distinctness, now and over time [Mackie,P] |
| 11898 | Individuation may include counterfactual possibilities, as well as identity and persistence [Mackie,P] |
| 11883 | A haecceity is the essential, simple, unanalysable property of being-this-thing [Mackie,P] |
| 13209 | There is no coming-to-be of anything, but only mixing and separating [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 13935 | We only accept 'things' within a language with formation, testing and acceptance rules [Carnap] |
| 11889 | Essentialism must avoid both reduplication of essences, and multiple occupancy by essences [Mackie,P] |
| 11877 | An individual essence is the properties the object could not exist without [Mackie,P] |
| 11882 | No other object can possibly have the same individual essence as some object [Mackie,P] |
| 11886 | There are problems both with individual essences and without them [Mackie,P] |
| 11909 | Unlike Hesperus=Phosophorus, water=H2O needs further premisses before it is necessary [Mackie,P] |
| 11899 | Why are any sortals essential, and why are only some of them essential? [Mackie,P] |
| 11906 | The Kripke and Putnam view of kinds makes them explanatorily basic, but has modal implications [Mackie,P] |
| 457 | Substance is not created or destroyed in mortals, but there is only mixing and exchange [Empedocles] |
| 11894 | Origin is not a necessity, it is just 'tenacious'; we keep it fixed in counterfactual discussions [Mackie,P] |
| 14305 | In the truth-functional account a burnt-up match was soluble because it never entered water [Carnap] |
| 11887 | Transworld identity without individual essences leads to 'bare identities' [Mackie,P] |
| 11890 | De re modality without bare identities or individual essence needs counterparts [Mackie,P] |
| 11892 | Things may only be counterparts under some particular relation [Mackie,P] |
| 11893 | Possibilities for Caesar must be based on some phase of the real Caesar [Mackie,P] |
| 11884 | The theory of 'haecceitism' does not need commitment to individual haecceities [Mackie,P] |
| 13932 | Empiricists tend to reject abstract entities, and to feel sympathy with nominalism [Carnap] |
| 13937 | New linguistic claims about entities are not true or false, but just expedient, fruitful or successful [Carnap] |
| 462 | One vision is produced by both eyes [Empedocles] |
| 18699 | Carnap tried to define all scientific predicates in terms of primitive relations, using type theory [Carnap, by Button] |
| 13940 | All linguistic forms in science are merely judged by their efficiency as instruments [Carnap] |
| 13048 | Good explications are exact, fruitful, simple and similar to the explicandum [Carnap, by Salmon] |
| 11905 | Locke's kind essences are explanatory, without being necessary to the kind [Mackie,P] |
| 22765 | Wisdom and thought are shared by all things [Empedocles] |
| 1524 | For Empedocles thinking is almost identical to perception [Empedocles, by Theophrastus] |
| 12131 | All concepts can be derived from a few basics, making possible one science of everything [Carnap, by Brody] |
| 11968 | The intension of a sentence is the set of all possible worlds in which it is true [Carnap, by Kaplan] |
| 18285 | All translation loses some content (but language does not create reality) [Carnap] |
| 552 | Empedocles said good and evil were the basic principles [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 589 | 'Nature' is just a word invented by people [Empedocles] |
| 21823 | The principle of 'Friendship' in Empedocles is the One, and is bodiless [Empedocles, by Plotinus] |
| 2680 | Empedocles said that there are four material elements, and two further creative elements [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 6002 | Empedocles says bone is water, fire and earth in ratio 2:4:2 [Empedocles, by Inwood] |
| 13207 | Fire, Water, Air and Earth are elements, being simple as well as homoeomerous [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 459 | All change is unity through love or division through hate [Empedocles] |
| 13218 | The elements combine in coming-to-be, but how do the elements themselves come-to-be? [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
| 13225 | Love and Strife only explain movement if their effects are distinctive [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
| 460 | If the one Being ever diminishes it would no longer exist, and what could ever increase it? [Empedocles] |
| 11907 | Maybe the identity of kinds is necessary, but instances being of that kind is not [Mackie,P] |
| 5090 | Maybe bodies are designed by accident, and the creatures that don't work are destroyed [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| 466 | God is pure mind permeating the universe [Empedocles] |
| 461 | God is a pure, solitary, and eternal sphere [Empedocles] |
| 1719 | In Empedocles' theory God is ignorant because, unlike humans, he doesn't know one of the elements (strife) [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
| 1522 | It is wretched not to want to think clearly about the gods [Empedocles] |