40 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 11147 | Naturalistic philosophers oppose analysis, preferring explanation to a priori intuition [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 12442 | 'Mickey Mouse is a fictional mouse' is true without a truthmaker [Azzouni] |
| 12439 | Truth is dispensable, by replacing truth claims with the sentence itself [Azzouni] |
| 12437 | Truth lets us assent to sentences we can't explicitly exhibit [Azzouni] |
| 12446 | Names function the same way, even if there is no object [Azzouni] |
| 12447 | That all existents have causal powers is unknowable; the claim is simply an epistemic one [Azzouni] |
| 12445 | If fictional objects really don't exist, then they aren't abstract objects [Azzouni] |
| 12449 | Modern metaphysics often derives ontology from the logical forms of sentences [Azzouni] |
| 12440 | If objectual quantifiers ontologically commit, so does the metalanguage for its semantics [Azzouni] |
| 12438 | In the vernacular there is no unequivocal ontological commitment [Azzouni] |
| 12441 | We only get ontology from semantics if we have already smuggled it in [Azzouni] |
| 12448 | Things that don't exist don't have any properties [Azzouni] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 11141 | Modern empiricism tends to emphasise psychological connections, not semantic relations [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11142 | Body-type seems to affect a mind's cognition and conceptual scheme [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11121 | Language of thought has subject/predicate form and includes logical devices [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11120 | Concepts are either representations, or abilities, or Fregean senses [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11122 | A computer may have propositional attitudes without representations [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11124 | Do mental representations just lead to a vicious regress of explanations [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11123 | Maybe the concept CAT is just the ability to discriminate and infer about cats [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11125 | The abilities view cannot explain the productivity of thought, or mental processes [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11140 | Concept-structure explains typicality, categories, development, reference and composition [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11128 | Classically, concepts give necessary and sufficient conditions for falling under them [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11130 | Typicality challenges the classical view; we see better fruit-prototypes in apples than in plums [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11129 | The classical theory explains acquisition, categorization and reference [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11131 | It may be that our concepts (such as 'knowledge') have no definitional structure [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11132 | The prototype theory is probabilistic, picking something out if it has sufficient of the properties [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11133 | Prototype theory categorises by computing the number of shared constituents [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11134 | People don't just categorise by apparent similarities [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11135 | Complex concepts have emergent properties not in the ingredient prototypes [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11136 | Many complex concepts obviously have no prototype [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11137 | The theory theory of concepts says they are parts of theories, defined by their roles [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11138 | The theory theory is holistic, so how can people have identical concepts? [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11139 | Maybe concepts have no structure, and determined by relations to the world, not to other concepts [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 11146 | People can formulate new concepts which are only named later [Margolis/Laurence] |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 12450 | The periodic table not only defines the elements, but also excludes other possible elements [Azzouni] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |