50 ideas
6575 | Philosophy may never find foundations, and may undermine our lives in the process [Fogelin] |
6585 | Rationality is threatened by fear of inconsistency, illusions of absolutes or relativism, and doubt [Fogelin] |
6557 | Humans may never be able to attain a world view which is both rich and consistent [Fogelin] |
6568 | A game can be played, despite having inconsistent rules [Fogelin] |
6560 | The law of noncontradiction is traditionally the most basic principle of rationality [Fogelin] |
6565 | The law of noncontradiction makes the distinction between asserting something and denying it [Fogelin] |
6574 | Legal reasoning is analogical, not deductive [Fogelin] |
12154 | Are 'word token' and 'word type' different sorts of countable objects, or two ways of counting? [Geach, by Perry] |
10735 | Abstraction from objects won't reveal an operation's being performed 'so many times' [Geach] |
8780 | Attributes are functions, not objects; this distinguishes 'square of 2' from 'double of 2' [Geach] |
8969 | We should abandon absolute identity, confining it to within some category [Geach, by Hawthorne] |
16075 | Denial of absolute identity has drastic implications for logic, semantics and set theory [Wasserman on Geach] |
12152 | Identity is relative. One must not say things are 'the same', but 'the same A as' [Geach] |
16073 | Leibniz's Law is incomplete, since it includes a non-relativized identity predicate [Geach, by Wasserman] |
11910 | Being 'the same' is meaningless, unless we specify 'the same X' [Geach] |
6582 | Conventions can only work if they are based on something non-conventional [Fogelin] |
6576 | My view is 'circumspect rationalism' - that only our intellect can comprehend the world [Fogelin] |
6589 | Knowledge is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated [Fogelin] |
6596 | For coherentists, circularity is acceptable if the circle is large, rich and coherent [Fogelin] |
6597 | A rule of justification might be: don't raise the level of scrutiny without a good reason [Fogelin] |
6588 | Scepticism is cartesian (sceptical scenarios), or Humean (future), or Pyrrhonian (suspend belief) [Fogelin] |
6590 | Scepticism deals in remote possibilities that are ineliminable and set the standard very high [Fogelin] |
6583 | Radical perspectivism replaces Kant's necessary scheme with many different schemes [Fogelin] |
8775 | A big flea is a small animal, so 'big' and 'small' cannot be acquired by abstraction [Geach] |
8776 | We cannot learn relations by abstraction, because their converse must be learned too [Geach] |
10732 | If concepts are just recognitional, then general judgements would be impossible [Geach] |
2567 | You can't define real mental states in terms of behaviour that never happens [Geach] |
2568 | Beliefs aren't tied to particular behaviours [Geach] |
6555 | We are also irrational, with a unique ability to believe in bizarre self-created fictions [Fogelin] |
8781 | The mind does not lift concepts from experience; it creates them, and then applies them [Geach] |
10731 | For abstractionists, concepts are capacities to recognise recurrent features of the world [Geach] |
8769 | If someone has aphasia but can still play chess, they clearly have concepts [Geach] |
8770 | 'Abstractionism' is acquiring a concept by picking out one experience amongst a group [Geach] |
8771 | 'Or' and 'not' are not to be found in the sensible world, or even in the world of inner experience [Geach] |
8772 | We can't acquire number-concepts by extracting the number from the things being counted [Geach] |
8773 | Abstractionists can't explain counting, because it must precede experience of objects [Geach] |
8774 | The numbers don't exist in nature, so they cannot have been abstracted from there into our languages [Geach] |
8778 | Blind people can use colour words like 'red' perfectly intelligently [Geach] |
8777 | If 'black' and 'cat' can be used in the absence of such objects, how can such usage be abstracted? [Geach] |
8779 | We can form two different abstract concepts that apply to a single unified experience [Geach] |
10733 | The abstractionist cannot explain 'some' and 'not' [Geach] |
10734 | Only a judgement can distinguish 'striking' from 'being struck' [Geach] |
6605 | Critics must be causally entangled with their subject matter [Fogelin] |
6607 | The word 'beautiful', when deprived of context, is nearly contentless [Fogelin] |
6604 | Saying 'It's all a matter to taste' ignores the properties of the object discussed [Fogelin] |
6586 | Cynics are committed to morality, but disappointed or disgusted by human failings [Fogelin] |
22489 | 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot] |
6572 | Deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation and retribution can come into conflict in punishments [Fogelin] |
6573 | Retributivists say a crime can be 'paid for'; deterrentists still worry about potential victims [Fogelin] |
1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |