77 ideas
| 15787 | Maybe Ockham's Razor is a purely aesthetic principle [Lycan] |
| 15784 | The Razor seems irrelevant for Meinongians, who allow absolutely everything to exist [Lycan] |
| 18877 | Moral realism doesn't seem to entail the existence of any things [Cameron] |
| 18868 | Surely if some propositions are grounded in existence, they all are? [Cameron] |
| 18928 | If maximalism is necessary, then that nothing exists has a truthmaker, which it can't have [Cameron] |
| 18867 | Orthodox Truthmaker applies to all propositions, and necessitates their truth [Cameron] |
| 18873 | God fixes all the truths of the world by fixing what exists [Cameron] |
| 15395 | Give up objects necessitating truths, and say their natures cause the truths? [Cameron] |
| 18931 | Determinate truths don't need extra truthmakers, just truthmakers that are themselves determinate [Cameron] |
| 18879 | What the proposition says may not be its truthmaker [Cameron] |
| 18880 | Rather than what exists, some claim that the truthmakers are ways of existence, dispositions, modalities etc [Cameron] |
| 18874 | Truthmaking doesn't require realism, because we can be anti-realist about truthmakers [Cameron] |
| 18932 | The facts about the existence of truthmakers can't have a further explanation [Cameron] |
| 15394 | Truthmaker requires a commitment to tropes or states of affairs, for contingent truths [Cameron] |
| 18869 | Without truthmakers, negative truths must be ungrounded [Cameron] |
| 18923 | The present property 'having been F' says nothing about a thing's intrinsic nature [Cameron] |
| 18926 | One temporal distibution property grounds our present and past truths [Cameron] |
| 18929 | We don't want present truthmakers for the past, if they are about to cease to exist! [Cameron] |
| 18871 | I support the correspondence theory because I believe in truthmakers [Cameron] |
| 18870 | Maybe truthmaking and correspondence stand together, and are interdefinable [Cameron] |
| 15102 | S4 says there must be some necessary truths (the actual ones, of which there is at least one) [Cameron] |
| 6548 | Physicalism requires the naturalisation or rejection of set theory [Lycan] |
| 7755 | Singular terms refer, using proper names, definite descriptions, singular personal pronouns, demonstratives, etc. [Lycan] |
| 18933 | Not-Being obviously doesn't exist, and the five modes of Being are all impossible [Gorgias, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 6531 | Institutions are not reducible as types, but they are as tokens [Lycan] |
| 6532 | Types cannot be reduced, but levels of reduction are varied groupings of the same tokens [Lycan] |
| 6534 | One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan] |
| 5500 | Biologists see many organic levels, 'abstract' if seen from below, 'structural' if seen from above [Lycan] |
| 18875 | Realism says a discourse is true or false, and some of it is true [Cameron] |
| 18878 | Realism says truths rest on mind-independent reality; truthmaking theories are about which features [Cameron] |
| 18881 | For realists it is analytic that truths are grounded in the world [Cameron] |
| 6529 | I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics [Lycan] |
| 18924 | Being polka-dotted is a 'spatial distribution' property [Cameron] |
| 15401 | Essentialists say intrinsic properties arise from what the thing is, irrespective of surroundings [Cameron] |
| 15393 | An object's intrinsic properties are had in virtue of how it is, independently [Cameron] |
| 15792 | Maybe non-existent objects are sets of properties [Lycan] |
| 15396 | Most criteria for identity over time seem to leave two later objects identical to the earlier one [Cameron] |
| 18930 | Change is instantiation of a non-uniform distributional property, like 'being red-then-orange' [Cameron] |
| 5494 | 'Lightning is electric discharge' and 'Phosphorus is Venus' are synthetic a posteriori identities [Lycan] |
| 15103 | Blackburn fails to show that the necessary cannot be grounded in the contingent [Cameron] |
| 15795 | Treating possible worlds as mental needs more actual mental events [Lycan] |
| 15796 | Possible worlds must be made of intensional objects like propositions or properties [Lycan] |
| 18872 | We should reject distinct but indiscernible worlds [Cameron] |
| 15794 | If 'worlds' are sentences, and possibility their consistency, consistency may rely on possibility [Lycan] |
| 6549 | I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects [Lycan] |
| 6543 | Intentionality comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| 6537 | Teleological views allow for false intentional content, unlike causal and nomological theories [Lycan] |
| 6546 | Pain is composed of urges, desires, impulses etc, at different levels of abstraction [Lycan] |
| 6547 | The right 'level' for qualia is uncertain, though top (behaviourism) and bottom (particles) are false [Lycan] |
| 6527 | If energy in the brain disappears into thin air, this breaches physical conservation laws [Lycan] |
| 6528 | In lower animals, psychology is continuous with chemistry, and humans are continuous with animals [Lycan] |
| 6554 | Two behaviourists meet. The first says,"You're fine; how am I?" [Lycan] |
| 6545 | If functionalism focuses on folk psychology, it ignores lower levels of function [Lycan] |
| 6541 | Functionalism must not be too abstract to allow inverted spectrum, or so structural that it becomes chauvinistic [Lycan] |
| 5496 | Functionalism has three linked levels: physical, functional, and mental [Lycan] |
| 6539 | The distinction between software and hardware is not clear in computing [Lycan] |
| 6533 | Mental types are a subclass of teleological types at a high level of functional abstraction [Lycan] |
| 6535 | Teleological characterisations shade off smoothly into brutely physical ones [Lycan] |
| 5499 | A mental state is a functional realisation of a brain state when it serves the purpose of the organism [Lycan] |
| 6544 | Identity theory is functionalism, but located at the lowest level of abstraction [Lycan] |
| 6530 | We reduce the mind through homuncular groups, described abstractly by purpose [Lycan] |
| 6536 | Teleological functionalism helps us to understand psycho-biological laws [Lycan] |
| 6542 | A Martian may exhibit human-like behaviour while having very different sensations [Lycan] |
| 7768 | The truth conditions theory sees meaning as representation [Lycan] |
| 7766 | Meaning must be known before we can consider verification [Lycan] |
| 7764 | Could I successfully use an expression, without actually understanding it? [Lycan] |
| 7763 | It is hard to state a rule of use for a proper name [Lycan] |
| 7770 | Truth conditions will come out the same for sentences with 'renate' or 'cordate' [Lycan] |
| 7773 | A sentence's truth conditions is the set of possible worlds in which the sentence is true [Lycan] |
| 7774 | Possible worlds explain aspects of meaning neatly - entailment, for example, is the subset relation [Lycan] |
| 9866 | Gorgias says rhetoric is the best of arts, because it enslaves without using force [Gorgias, by Plato] |
| 5864 | Destroy seriousness with laughter, and laughter with seriousness [Gorgias] |
| 6538 | We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| 5501 | People are trying to explain biological teleology in naturalistic causal terms [Lycan] |
| 6551 | 'Physical' means either figuring in physics descriptions, or just located in space-time [Lycan] |
| 15104 | The 'moving spotlight' theory makes one time privileged, while all times are on a par ontologically [Cameron] |
| 18927 | Surely if things extend over time, then time itself must be extended? [Cameron] |