Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Stilpo, Terence Horgan and Richard Cartwright

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26 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy
Philosophers working like teams of scientists is absurd, yet isolation is hard [Cartwright,R]
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence
A false proposition isn't truer because it is part of a coherent system [Cartwright,R]
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 5. Truth Bearers
Are the truth-bearers sentences, utterances, ideas, beliefs, judgements, propositions or statements? [Cartwright,R]
Logicians take sentences to be truth-bearers for rigour, rather than for philosophical reasons [Cartwright,R]
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / b. Types of supervenience
'Superdupervenience' is supervenience that has a robustly materialistic explanation [Horgan,T]
'Global' supervenience is facts tracking varying physical facts in every possible world [Horgan,T]
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience
Don't just observe supervenience - explain it! [Horgan,T]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 6. Physicalism
Physicalism needs more than global supervenience on the physical [Horgan,T]
Materialism requires that physics be causally complete [Horgan,T]
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 11. Properties as Sets
While no two classes coincide in membership, there are distinct but coextensive attributes [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / a. Scattered objects
Clearly a pipe can survive being taken apart [Cartwright,R]
Bodies don't becomes scattered by losing small or minor parts [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences
The difficulty in essentialism is deciding the grounds for rating an attribute as essential [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 3. Relative Identity
An act of ostension doesn't seem to need a 'sort' of thing, even of a very broad kind [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 4. Type Identity
A token isn't a unique occurrence, as the case of a word or a number shows [Cartwright,R]
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 3. Instrumentalism
Instrumentalism normally says some discourse is useful, but not genuinely true [Horgan,T]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 1. Meaning
For any statement, there is no one meaning which any sentence asserting it must have [Cartwright,R]
People don't assert the meaning of the words they utter [Cartwright,R]
19. Language / D. Propositions / 1. Propositions
We can pull apart assertion from utterance, and the action, the event and the subject-matter for each [Cartwright,R]
'It's raining' makes a different assertion on different occasions, but its meaning remains the same [Cartwright,R]
19. Language / D. Propositions / 4. Mental Propositions
We can attribute 'true' and 'false' to whatever it was that was said [Cartwright,R]
To assert that p, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to utter some particular words [Cartwright,R]
19. Language / F. Communication / 2. Assertion
Assertions, unlike sentence meanings, can be accurate, probable, exaggerated, false.... [Cartwright,R]
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism
Stilpo said if Athena is a daughter of Zeus, then a statue is only the child of a sculptor, and so is not a god [Stilpo, by Diog. Laertius]