46 ideas
14611 | Metaphysics should avoid talk of past, present or future [Smart] |
17713 | After 1903, Husserl avoids metaphysical commitments [Mares] |
17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
18781 | Inconsistency doesn't prevent us reasoning about some system [Mares] |
18789 | Intuitionist logic looks best as natural deduction [Mares] |
18790 | Intuitionism as natural deduction has no rule for negation [Mares] |
18787 | Three-valued logic is useful for a theory of presupposition [Mares] |
18793 | Material implication (and classical logic) considers nothing but truth values for implications [Mares] |
18784 | In classical logic the connectives can be related elegantly, as in De Morgan's laws [Mares] |
18780 | Standard disjunction and negation force us to accept the principle of bivalence [Mares] |
18786 | Excluded middle standardly implies bivalence; attacks use non-contradiction, De M 3, or double negation [Mares] |
18782 | The connectives are studied either through model theory or through proof theory [Mares] |
18783 | Many-valued logics lack a natural deduction system [Mares] |
18792 | Situation semantics for logics: not possible worlds, but information in situations [Mares] |
18785 | Consistency is semantic, but non-contradiction is syntactic [Mares] |
17715 | The truth of the axioms doesn't matter for pure mathematics, but it does for applied [Mares] |
17716 | Mathematics is relations between properties we abstract from experience [Mares] |
18788 | For intuitionists there are not numbers and sets, but processes of counting and collecting [Mares] |
17703 | Light in straight lines is contingent a priori; stipulated as straight, because they happen to be so [Mares] |
17714 | Aristotelians dislike the idea of a priori judgements from pure reason [Mares] |
17705 | Empiricists say rationalists mistake imaginative powers for modal insights [Mares] |
17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
17700 | The most popular view is that coherent beliefs explain one another [Mares] |
17704 | Operationalism defines concepts by our ways of measuring them [Mares] |
17077 | The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart] |
17078 | Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart] |
17074 | Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart] |
17076 | Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart] |
17061 | Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart] |
17071 | An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart] |
17062 | If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart] |
17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
17710 | Aristotelian justification uses concepts abstracted from experience [Mares] |
17706 | The essence of a concept is either its definition or its conceptual relations? [Mares] |
18791 | In 'situation semantics' our main concepts are abstracted from situations [Mares] |
17701 | Possible worlds semantics has a nice compositional account of modal statements [Mares] |
17702 | Unstructured propositions are sets of possible worlds; structured ones have components [Mares] |
22405 | Negative utilitarianism implies that the world should be destroyed, to avoid future misery [Smart] |
22404 | Any group interested in ethics must surely have a sentiment of generalised benevolence [Smart] |
14613 | Special relativity won't determine a preferred frame, but we can pick one externally [Smart] |
17063 | Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart] |
17708 | Maybe space has points, but processes always need regions with a size [Mares] |
14615 | If time flows, then 'how fast does it flow?' is a tricky question [Smart] |
14614 | The past, present, future and tenses of A-theory are too weird, and should be analysed indexically [Smart] |