74 ideas
| 14092 | Philosophers are often too fussy about words, dismissing perfectly useful ordinary terms [Rosen] |
| 14100 | Figuring in the definition of a thing doesn't make it a part of that thing [Rosen] |
| 18851 | Pairing (with Extensionality) guarantees an infinity of sets, just from a single element [Rosen] |
| 14650 | Maybe proper names involve essentialism [Plantinga] |
| 14096 | Explanations fail to be monotonic [Rosen] |
| 14648 | Could I name all of the real numbers in one fell swoop? Call them all 'Charley'? [Plantinga] |
| 14664 | Necessary beings (numbers, properties, sets, propositions, states of affairs, God) exist in all possible worlds [Plantinga] |
| 14097 | Things could be true 'in virtue of' others as relations between truths, or between truths and items [Rosen] |
| 14095 | Facts are structures of worldly items, rather like sentences, individuated by their ingredients [Rosen] |
| 14093 | An 'intrinsic' property is one that depends on a thing and its parts, and not on its relations [Rosen] |
| 8915 | How we refer to abstractions is much less clear than how we refer to other things [Rosen] |
| 16435 | Plantinga proposes necessary existent essences as surrogates for the nonexistent things [Plantinga, by Stalnaker] |
| 18852 | A Meinongian principle might say that there is an object for any modest class of properties [Rosen] |
| 14655 | The 'identity criteria' of a name are a group of essential and established facts [Plantinga] |
| 14647 | Surely self-identity is essential to Socrates? [Plantinga] |
| 14658 | 'Being Socrates' and 'being identical with Socrates' characterise Socrates, so they are among his properties [Plantinga] |
| 13132 | A snowball's haecceity is the property of being identical with itself [Plantinga, by Westerhoff] |
| 14666 | Socrates is a contingent being, but his essence is not; without Socrates, his essence is unexemplified [Plantinga] |
| 14656 | Does Socrates have essential properties, plus a unique essence (or 'haecceity') which entails them? [Plantinga] |
| 14646 | An object has a property essentially if it couldn't conceivably have lacked it [Plantinga] |
| 14654 | Properties are 'trivially essential' if they are instantiated by every object in every possible world [Plantinga] |
| 14653 | X is essentially P if it is P in every world, or in every X-world, or in the actual world (and not ¬P elsewhere) [Plantinga] |
| 14660 | If a property is ever essential, can it only ever be an essential property? [Plantinga] |
| 14661 | Essences are instantiated, and are what entails a thing's properties and lack of properties [Plantinga] |
| 14657 | Does 'being identical with Socrates' name a property? I can think of no objections to it [Plantinga] |
| 14649 | Can we find an appropriate 'de dicto' paraphrase for any 'de re' proposition? [Plantinga] |
| 14652 | 'De re' modality is as clear as 'de dicto' modality, because they are logically equivalent [Plantinga] |
| 14642 | Expressing modality about a statement is 'de dicto'; expressing it of property-possession is 'de re' [Plantinga] |
| 14643 | 'De dicto' true and 'de re' false is possible, and so is 'de dicto' false and 'de re' true [Plantinga] |
| 18850 | 'Metaphysical' modality is the one that makes the necessity or contingency of laws of nature interesting [Rosen] |
| 18849 | Metaphysical necessity is absolute and universal; metaphysical possibility is very tolerant [Rosen] |
| 18857 | Standard Metaphysical Necessity: P holds wherever the actual form of the world holds [Rosen] |
| 14094 | The excellent notion of metaphysical 'necessity' cannot be defined [Rosen] |
| 18858 | Sets, universals and aggregates may be metaphysically necessary in one sense, but not another [Rosen] |
| 18856 | Non-Standard Metaphysical Necessity: when ¬P is incompatible with the nature of things [Rosen] |
| 18848 | Something may be necessary because of logic, but is that therefore a special sort of necessity? [Rosen] |
| 18855 | Combinatorial theories of possibility assume the principles of combination don't change across worlds [Rosen] |
| 14101 | Are necessary truths rooted in essences, or also in basic grounding laws? [Rosen] |
| 14659 | We can imagine being beetles or alligators, so it is possible we might have such bodies [Plantinga] |
| 18853 | A proposition is 'correctly' conceivable if an ominiscient being could conceive it [Rosen] |
| 11984 | Asserting a possible property is to say it would have had the property if that world had been actual [Plantinga] |
| 14662 | Possible worlds clarify possibility, propositions, properties, sets, counterfacts, time, determinism etc. [Plantinga] |
| 18383 | Plantinga says there is just this world, with possibilities expressed in propositions [Plantinga, by Armstrong] |
| 16472 | Plantinga's actualism is nominal, because he fills actuality with possibilia [Stalnaker on Plantinga] |
| 11980 | A possible world is a maximal possible state of affairs [Plantinga] |
| 14651 | What Socrates could have been, and could have become, are different? [Plantinga] |
| 11982 | If possible Socrates differs from actual Socrates, the Indiscernibility of Identicals says they are different [Plantinga] |
| 11983 | It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos [Plantinga] |
| 11985 | If individuals can only exist in one world, then they can never lack any of their properties [Plantinga] |
| 11891 | Possibilities for an individual can only refer to that individual, in some possible world [Plantinga, by Mackie,P] |
| 11986 | The counterparts of Socrates have self-identity, but only the actual Socrates has identity-with-Socrates [Plantinga] |
| 11987 | Counterpart Theory absurdly says I would be someone else if things went differently [Plantinga] |
| 6356 | Maybe a reliable justification must come from a process working with its 'proper function' [Plantinga, by Pollock/Cruz] |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| 9086 | The idea of abstract objects is not ontological; it comes from the epistemological idea of abstraction [Plantinga] |
| 9087 | Theists may see abstract objects as really divine thoughts [Plantinga] |
| 8917 | The Way of Abstraction used to say an abstraction is an idea that was formed by abstracting [Rosen] |
| 8912 | Nowadays abstractions are defined as non-spatial, causally inert things [Rosen] |
| 8913 | Chess may be abstract, but it has existed in specific space and time [Rosen] |
| 8914 | Sets are said to be abstract and non-spatial, but a set of books can be on a shelf [Rosen] |
| 8916 | Conflating abstractions with either sets or universals is a big claim, needing a big defence [Rosen] |
| 8918 | Functional terms can pick out abstractions by asserting an equivalence relation [Rosen] |
| 8919 | Abstraction by equivalence relationships might prove that a train is an abstract entity [Rosen] |
| 16469 | Plantinga has domains of sets of essences, variables denoting essences, and predicates as functions [Plantinga, by Stalnaker] |
| 16470 | Plantinga's essences have their own properties - so will have essences, giving a hierarchy [Stalnaker on Plantinga] |
| 14663 | Are propositions and states of affairs two separate things, or only one? I incline to say one [Plantinga] |
| 9085 | If propositions are concrete they don't have to exist, and so they can't be necessary truths [Plantinga] |
| 9084 | Propositions can't just be in brains, because 'there are no human beings' might be true [Plantinga] |
| 14099 | 'Bachelor' consists in or reduces to 'unmarried' male, but not the other way around [Rosen] |
| 18854 | The MRL view says laws are the theorems of the simplest and strongest account of the world [Rosen] |
| 14098 | An acid is just a proton donor [Rosen] |
| 20704 | A possible world contains a being of maximal greatness - which is existence in all worlds [Plantinga, by Davies,B] |
| 1474 | Moral evil may be acceptable to God because it allows free will (even though we don't see why this is necessary) [Plantinga, by PG] |
| 1475 | It is logically possible that natural evil like earthquakes is caused by Satan [Plantinga, by PG] |