30 ideas
| 13966 | Analytic philosophy loved the necessary a priori analytic, linguistic modality, and rigour [Soames] |
| 23269 | Philosophy must start from clearly observed facts [Galen] |
| 13974 | If philosophy is analysis of meaning, available to all competent speakers, what's left for philosophers? [Soames] |
| 23248 | Early empiricists said reason was just a useless concept introduced by philosophers [Galen, by Frede,M] |
| 15163 | The interest of quantified modal logic is its metaphysical necessity and essentialism [Soames] |
| 16519 | No one can conceive of a possible substance, apart from those which God has created [Arnauld] |
| 15158 | Indefinite descriptions are quantificational in subject position, but not in predicate position [Soames] |
| 15157 | Recognising the definite description 'the man' as a quantifier phrase, not a singular term, is a real insight [Soames] |
| 15156 | The universal and existential quantifiers were chosen to suit mathematics [Soames] |
| 13969 | Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames] |
| 15162 | We understand metaphysical necessity intuitively, from ordinary life [Soames] |
| 15161 | There are more metaphysically than logically necessary truths [Soames] |
| 13973 | A key achievement of Kripke is showing that important modalities are not linguistic in source [Soames] |
| 13968 | Kripkean possible worlds are abstract maximal states in which the real world could have been [Soames] |
| 23266 | The spirit in the soul wants freedom, power and honour [Galen] |
| 6003 | Galen showed by experiment that the brain controls the body [Galen, by Hankinson] |
| 23219 | Stopping the heart doesn't terminate activity; pressing the brain does that [Galen, by Cobb] |
| 21799 | We just use the word 'faculty' when we don't know the psychological cause [Galen] |
| 23264 | Philosophers think faculties are in substances, and invent a faculty for every activity [Galen] |
| 23220 | The brain contains memory and reason, and is the source of sensation and decision [Galen] |
| 23265 | The rational part of the soul is the desire for truth, understanding and recollection [Galen] |
| 15152 | To study meaning, study truth conditions, on the basis of syntax, and representation by the parts [Soames] |
| 15153 | Tarski's account of truth-conditions is too weak to determine meanings [Soames] |
| 13965 | Semantics as theory of meaning and semantics as truth-based logical consequence are very different [Soames] |
| 13964 | Semantic content is a proposition made of sentence constituents (not some set of circumstances) [Soames] |
| 13972 | Two-dimensionalism reinstates descriptivism, and reconnects necessity and apriority to analyticity [Soames] |
| 15154 | We should use cognitive states to explain representational propositions, not vice versa [Soames] |
| 7453 | Galen's medicine followed the mean; each illness was balanced by opposite treatment [Galen, by Hacking] |
| 6030 | Each part of the soul has its virtue - pleasure for appetite, success for competition, and rectitude for reason [Galen] |
| 23268 | We execute irredeemable people, to protect ourselves, as a deterrent, and ending a bad life [Galen] |