89 ideas
| 14480 | Maybe analytic truths do not require truth-makers, as they place no demands on the world [Thomasson] |
| 14471 | Analytical entailments arise from combinations of meanings and inference rules [Thomasson] |
| 19482 | Current physics says matter and antimatter should have reduced to light at the big bang [New Sci.] |
| 19483 | CP violation shows a decay imbalance in matter and antimatter, leading to matter's dominance [New Sci.] |
| 14493 | Existence might require playing a role in explanation, or in a causal story, or being composed in some way [Thomasson] |
| 14491 | Rival ontological claims can both be true, if there are analytic relationships between them [Thomasson] |
| 14489 | Theories do not avoid commitment to entities by avoiding certain terms or concepts [Thomasson] |
| 14485 | Ordinary objects may be not indispensable, but they are nearly unavoidable [Thomasson] |
| 14487 | The simple existence conditions for objects are established by our practices, and are met [Thomasson] |
| 21651 | It is analytic that if simples are arranged chair-wise, then there is a chair [Thomasson, by Hofweber] |
| 14467 | Ordinary objects are rejected, to avoid contradictions, or for greater economy in thought [Thomasson] |
| 14479 | To individuate people we need conventions, but conventions are made up by people [Thomasson] |
| 14486 | Eliminativists haven't found existence conditions for chairs, beyond those of the word 'chair' [Thomasson] |
| 14481 | Wherever an object exists, there are intrinsic properties instantiating every modal profile [Thomasson] |
| 14482 | If the statue and the lump are two objects, they require separate properties, so we could add their masses [Thomasson] |
| 14483 | Given the similarity of statue and lump, what could possibly ground their modal properties? [Thomasson] |
| 14476 | Identity claims between objects are only well-formed if the categories are specified [Thomasson] |
| 14477 | Identical entities must be of the same category, and meet the criteria for the category [Thomasson] |
| 14478 | Modal Conventionalism says modality is analytic, not intrinsic to the world, and linguistic [Thomasson] |
| 14466 | A chief task of philosophy is making reflective sense of our common sense worldview [Thomasson] |
| 19737 | A system can infer the structure of the world by making predictions about it [New Sci.] |
| 19736 | Neural networks can extract the car-ness of a car, or the chair-ness of a chair [New Sci.] |
| 16419 | No one has yet devised a rationality test [New Sci.] |
| 16418 | People can be highly intelligent, yet very stupid [New Sci.] |
| 16417 | About a third of variation in human intelligence is environmental [New Sci.] |
| 19484 | Psychologists measure personality along five dimensions [New Sci.] |
| 14475 | How can causal theories of reference handle nonexistence claims? [Thomasson] |
| 14474 | Pure causal theories of reference have the 'qua problem', of what sort of things is being referred to [Thomasson] |
| 14488 | Analyticity is revealed through redundancy, as in 'He bought a house and a building' [Thomasson] |
| 21167 | Gravity is unusual, in that it always attracts and never repels [New Sci.] |
| 19950 | Entropy is the only time-asymmetric law, so time may be linked to entropy [New Sci.] |
| 21176 | In the Big Bang general relativity fails, because gravity is too powerful [New Sci.] |
| 21147 | Quantum electrodynamics incorporates special relativity and quantum mechanics [New Sci.] |
| 19478 | Light moves at a constant space-time speed, but its direction is in neither space nor time [New Sci.] |
| 21155 | Photons have zero rest mass, so virtual photons have infinite range [New Sci.] |
| 21161 | In the standard model all the fundamental force fields merge at extremely high energies [New Sci.] |
| 21146 | Electrons move fast, so are subject to special relativity [New Sci.] |
| 19474 | Quantum states are measured by external time, of unknown origin [New Sci.] |
| 19473 | The Schrödinger equation describes the evolution of an object's wave function in Hilbert space [New Sci.] |
| 21148 | The strong force is repulsive at short distances, strong at medium, and fades at long [New Sci.] |
| 21152 | The strong force binds quarks tight, and the nucleus more weakly [New Sci.] |
| 21151 | Gluons, the particles carrying the strong force, interact because of their colour charge [New Sci.] |
| 21150 | Three different colours of quark (as in the proton) can cancel out to give no colour [New Sci.] |
| 21143 | Quarks in threes can build hadrons with spin ½ or with spin 3/2 [New Sci.] |
| 21142 | Classifying hadrons revealed two symmetry patterns, produced by three basic elements [New Sci.] |
| 21154 | Three particles enable the weak force: W+ and W- are charged, and Z° is not [New Sci.] |
| 21145 | The four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong) are the effects of particles [New Sci.] |
| 21153 | The weak force explains beta decay, and the change of type by quarks and leptons [New Sci.] |
| 21156 | The weak force particles are heavy, so the force has a short range [New Sci.] |
| 21164 | Why do the charges of the very different proton and electron perfectly match up? [New Sci.] |
| 21170 | The Standard Model cannot explain dark energy, survival of matter, gravity, or force strength [New Sci.] |
| 21158 | Fermions, with spin ½, are antisocial, and cannot share quantum states [New Sci.] |
| 21165 | Spin is akin to rotation, and is easily measured in a magnetic field [New Sci.] |
| 21157 | Particles are spread out, with wave-like properties, and higher energy shortens the wavelength [New Sci.] |
| 21140 | Spin is a built-in ration of angular momentum [New Sci.] |
| 21149 | Quarks have red, green or blue colour charge (akin to electric charge) [New Sci.] |
| 21163 | The mass of protons and neutrinos is mostly binding energy, not the quarks [New Sci.] |
| 21168 | Gravitional mass turns out to be the same as inertial mass [New Sci.] |
| 21144 | Top, bottom, charm and strange quarks quickly decay into up and down [New Sci.] |
| 21138 | Neutrons are slightly heavier than protons, and decay into them by emitting an electron [New Sci.] |
| 21141 | Neutrinos were proposed as the missing energy in neutron beta decay [New Sci.] |
| 21169 | Only neutrinos spin anticlockwise [New Sci.] |
| 21166 | Standard antineutrinos have opposite spin and opposite lepton number [New Sci.] |
| 21171 | The symmetry of unified electromagnetic and weak forces was broken by the Higgs field [New Sci.] |
| 19953 | In string theory space-time has a grainy indivisible substructure [New Sci.] |
| 19954 | It is impossible for find a model of actuality among the innumerable models in string theory [New Sci.] |
| 19476 | String theory needs at least 10 space-time dimensions [New Sci.] |
| 21175 | String theory might be tested by colliding strings to make bigger 'stringballs' [New Sci.] |
| 21177 | String theory offers a quantum theory of gravity, by describing the graviton [New Sci.] |
| 21178 | String theory is now part of 11-dimensional M-Theory, involving p-branes [New Sci.] |
| 21179 | Supersymmetric string theory can be expressed using loop quantum gravity [New Sci.] |
| 21159 | Supersymmetry has extra heavy bosons and heavy fermions [New Sci.] |
| 21162 | Only supersymmetry offers to incorporate gravity into the scheme [New Sci.] |
| 21172 | The evidence for supersymmetry keeps failing to appear [New Sci.] |
| 21173 | Supersymmetry says particles and superpartners were unities, but then split [New Sci.] |
| 19947 | Hilbert Space is an abstraction representing all possible states of a quantum system [New Sci.] |
| 21160 | The Higgs field means even low energy space is not empty [New Sci.] |
| 19955 | Space-time may be a geometrical manifestation of quantum entanglement [New Sci.] |
| 19948 | Einstein's merging of time with space has left us confused about the nature of time [New Sci.] |
| 19475 | Relativity makes time and space jointly basic; quantum theory splits them, and prioritises time [New Sci.] |
| 19949 | Quantum theory relies on a clock outside the system - but where is it located? [New Sci.] |
| 19951 | Entropy is puzzling, so we may need to build new laws which include time directionality [New Sci.] |
| 19477 | General relativity predicts black holes, as former massive stars, and as galaxy centres [New Sci.] |
| 19952 | Black holes have entropy, but general relativity says they are unstructured, and lack entropy [New Sci.] |
| 21174 | Dark matter must have mass, to produce gravity, and no electric charge, to not reflect light [New Sci.] |
| 16420 | 84.5 percent of the universe is made of dark matter [New Sci.] |
| 17604 | We are halfway to synthesising any molecule we want [New Sci.] |
| 17603 | Chemistry just needs the periodic table, and protons, electrons and neutrinos [New Sci.] |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |