55 ideas
15169 | Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle] |
15164 | We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle] |
15682 | Even fairly simple animals make judgements based on categories [Gelman] |
15691 | Children accept real stable categories, with nonobvious potential that gives causal explanations [Gelman] |
15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
12887 | A whole must have one characteristic, an internal relation, and a structure [Rescher/Oppenheim] |
15700 | In India, upper-castes essentialize caste more than lower-castes do [Gelman] |
15685 | Essentialism is either natural to us, or an accident of our culture, or a necessary result of language [Gelman] |
15684 | Children's concepts include nonobvious features, like internal parts, functions and causes [Gelman] |
15184 | Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle] |
15681 | Essentialism: real or representational? sortal, causal or ideal? real particulars, or placeholders? [Gelman] |
15678 | Essentialism says categories have a true hidden nature which gives an object its identity [Gelman] |
15683 | Sortals are needed for determining essence - the thing must be categorised first [Gelman] |
15697 | Kind (unlike individual) essentialism assumes preexisting natural categories [Gelman] |
15172 | Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle] |
15687 | Kinship is essence that comes in degrees, and age groups are essences that change over time [Gelman] |
15181 | Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle] |
15679 | Essentialism comes from the cognitive need to categorise [Gelman] |
15698 | We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children [Gelman] |
15173 | That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle] |
15709 | Essentialism is useful for predictions, but it is not the actual structure of reality [Gelman] |
15696 | Peope favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is [Gelman] |
15185 | We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle] |
15175 | Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle] |
15032 | Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider] |
15179 | To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle] |
15171 | The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle] |
15167 | Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle] |
15177 | Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle] |
15176 | The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle] |
15174 | A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle] |
15183 | 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle] |
15707 | There is intentional, mechanical, teleological, essentialist, vitalist and deontological understanding [Gelman] |
15165 | A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle] |
15703 | Memories often conform to a theory, rather than being neutral [Gelman] |
15708 | Inductive success is rewarded with more induction [Gelman] |
15694 | Children overestimate the power of a single example [Gelman] |
15695 | Children make errors in induction by focusing too much on categories [Gelman] |
15692 | People tend to be satisfied with shallow explanations [Gelman] |
15680 | Folk essentialism rests on belief in natural kinds, in hidden properties, and on words indicating structures [Gelman] |
15168 | That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle] |
15686 | Labels may indicate categories which embody an essence [Gelman] |
15690 | Causal properties are seen as more central to category concepts [Gelman] |
15688 | Categories are characterized by distance from a prototype [Gelman] |
15689 | Theory-based concepts use rich models to show which similarities really matter [Gelman] |
15699 | Prelinguistic infants acquire and use many categories [Gelman] |
15166 | Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle] |
15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
15693 | One sample of gold is enough, but one tree doesn't give the height of trees [Gelman] |
15701 | Nouns seem to invoke stable kinds more than predicates do [Gelman] |
15705 | Essentialism encourages us to think about the world scientifically [Gelman] |
15702 | Essentialism doesn't mean we know the essences [Gelman] |
15704 | Essentialism starts from richly structured categories, leading to a search for underlying properties [Gelman] |
15178 | Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle] |
15706 | A major objection to real essences is the essentialising of social categories like race, caste and occupation [Gelman] |