green numbers give full details | back to texts | expand these ideas
| 4194 | Metaphysics is concerned with the fundamental structure of reality as a whole |
| 4214 | Maybe such concepts as causation, identity and existence are primitive and irreducible |
| 4222 | If all that exists is what is being measured, what about the people and instruments doing the measuring? |
| 4217 | It is more extravagant, in general, to revise one's logic than to augment one's ontology |
| 4229 | An infinite series of tasks can't be completed because it has no last member |
| 4240 | It might be argued that mathematics does not, or should not, aim at truth |
| 4241 | If there are infinite numbers and finite concrete objects, this implies that numbers are abstract objects |
| 4239 | Nominalists deny abstract objects, because we can have no reason to believe in their existence |
| 4201 | Four theories of qualitative change are 'a is F now', or 'a is F-at-t', or 'a-at-t is F', or 'a is-at-t F' [PG] |
| 4202 | Change can be of composition (the component parts), or quality (properties), or substance |
| 4219 | Numerically distinct events of the same kind (like two battles) can coincide in space and time |
| 4221 | Maybe modern physics requires an event-ontology, rather than a thing-ontology |
| 4220 | Maybe an event is the exemplification of a property at a time |
| 4225 | Events are changes in the properties of or relations between things |
| 4196 | The main categories of existence are either universal and particular, or abstract and concrete |
| 4234 | Trope theory says blueness is a real feature of objects, but not the same as an identical blue found elsewhere |
| 4235 | Maybe a cushion is just a bundle of tropes, such as roundness, blueness and softness |
| 4236 | Tropes seem to be abstract entities, because they can't exist alone, but must come in bundles |
| 4197 | The category of universals can be sub-divided into properties and relations |
| 4232 | Nominalists believe that only particulars exist |
| 4205 | 'Is non-self-exemplifying' is a predicate which cannot denote a property (as it would be a contradiction) |
| 4233 | If 'blueness' is a set of particulars, there is danger of circularity, or using universals, in identifying the set |
| 4206 | Conventionalists see the world as an amorphous lump without identities, but are we part of the lump? |
| 4204 | Statues can't survive much change to their shape, unlike lumps of bronze, which must retain material |
| 4198 | If 5% replacement preserves a ship, we can replace 4% and 4% again, and still retain the ship |
| 4199 | A renovation or a reconstruction of an original ship would be accepted, as long as the other one didn't exist |
| 4200 | If old parts are stored and then appropriated, they are no longer part of the original (which is the renovated ship). |
| 4203 | Identity of Indiscernibles (same properties, same thing) ) is not Leibniz's Law (same thing, same properties) |
| 4195 | It is impossible to reach a valid false conclusion from true premises, so reason itself depends on possibility |
| 4207 | We might eliminate 'possible' and 'necessary' in favour of quantification over possible worlds |
| 4223 | Unfalsifiability may be a failure in an empirical theory, but it is a virtue in metaphysics |
| 4193 | The behaviour of persons and social groups seems to need rational rather than causal explanation |
| 4237 | Concrete and abstract objects are distinct because the former have causal powers and relations |
| 4238 | The centre of mass of the solar system is a non-causal abstract object, despite having a location |
| 4210 | If the concept of a cause says it precedes its effect, that rules out backward causation by definition |
| 4209 | The theories of fact causation and event causation are both worth serious consideration |
| 4215 | It seems proper to say that only substances (rather than events) have causal powers |
| 4211 | Causal overdetermination is either actual overdetermination, or pre-emption, or the fail-safe case |
| 4213 | Causation may be instances of laws (seen either as constant conjunctions, or as necessities) |
| 4212 | Hume showed that causation could at most be natural necessity, never metaphysical necessity |
| 14581 | The normative view says laws show the natural behaviour of natural kind members [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 4208 | 'If he wasn't born he wouldn't have died' doesn't mean birth causes death, so causation isn't counterfactual |
| 4224 | If motion is change of distance between objects, it involves no intrinsic change in the objects |
| 4227 | Surfaces, lines and points are not, strictly speaking, parts of space, but 'limits', which are abstract |
| 4228 | If space is entirely relational, what makes a boundary, or a place unoccupied by physical objects? |