70 ideas
| 6979 | Serious metaphysics cares about entailment between sentences [Jackson] |
| 6983 | Intuitions about possibilities are basic to conceptual analysis [Jackson] |
| 6980 | Conceptual analysis studies whether one story is made true by another story [Jackson] |
| 14707 | Conceptual analysis is needed to establish that metaphysical reductions respect original meanings [Jackson, by Schroeter] |
| 5486 | Essentialism says metaphysics can't be done by analysing unreliable language [Ellis] |
| 7005 | Something can only have a place in a preferred account of things if it is entailed by the account [Jackson] |
| 6994 | Truth supervenes on being [Jackson] |
| 6984 | Smooth reductions preserve high-level laws in the lower level [Jackson] |
| 6978 | Baldness is just hair distribution, but the former is indeterminate, unlike the latter [Jackson] |
| 6993 | Redness is a property, but only as a presentation to normal humans [Jackson] |
| 5468 | Properties are 'dispositional', or 'categorical' (the latter as 'block' or 'intrinsic' structures) [Ellis, by PG] |
| 5469 | The passive view of nature says categorical properties are basic, but others say dispositions [Ellis] |
| 5456 | Redness is not a property as it is not mind-independent [Ellis] |
| 5481 | Properties have powers; they aren't just ways for logicians to classify objects [Ellis] |
| 5458 | Nearly all fundamental properties of physics are dispositional [Ellis] |
| 5443 | Kripke and others have made essentialism once again respectable [Ellis] |
| 5444 | 'Individual essences' fix a particular individual, and 'kind essences' fix the kind it belongs to [Ellis] |
| 5462 | Essential properties are usually quantitatively determinate [Ellis] |
| 5448 | 'Real essence' makes it what it is; 'nominal essence' makes us categorise it a certain way [Ellis] |
| 5477 | One thing can look like something else, without being the something else [Ellis] |
| 6987 | We should not multiply senses of necessity beyond necessity [Jackson] |
| 5479 | Scientific essentialists say science should define the limits of the possible [Ellis] |
| 5483 | Essentialists deny possible worlds, and say possibilities are what is compatible with the actual world [Ellis] |
| 5447 | Metaphysical necessities are true in virtue of the essences of things [Ellis] |
| 5476 | Essentialists say natural laws are in a new category: necessary a posteriori [Ellis] |
| 5478 | Imagination tests what is possible for all we know, not true possibility [Ellis] |
| 5482 | Possible worlds realism is only needed to give truth conditions for modals and conditionals [Ellis] |
| 6988 | Mathematical sentences are a problem in a possible-worlds framework [Jackson] |
| 6975 | Possible worlds could be concrete, abstract, universals, sentences, or properties [Jackson] |
| 6982 | Long arithmetic calculations show the a priori can be fallible [Jackson] |
| 6991 | We examine objects to determine colour; we do not introspect [Jackson] |
| 5453 | Essentialists mostly accept the primary/secondary qualities distinction [Ellis] |
| 5466 | Primary qualities are number, figure, size, texture, motion, configuration, impenetrability and (?) mass [Ellis] |
| 5485 | Emeralds are naturally green, and only an external force could turn them blue [Ellis] |
| 5484 | Essentialists don't infer from some to all, but from essences to necessary behaviour [Ellis] |
| 6976 | In physicalism, the psychological depends on the physical, not the other way around [Jackson] |
| 6986 | Is the dependence of the psychological on the physical a priori or a posteriori? [Jackson] |
| 6992 | If different states can fulfil the same role, the converse must also be possible [Jackson] |
| 6996 | Folk psychology covers input, internal role, and output [Jackson] |
| 6977 | Egocentric or de se content seems to be irreducibly so [Jackson] |
| 6990 | Keep distinct the essential properties of water, and application conditions for the word 'water' [Jackson] |
| 6985 | Analysis is finding necessary and sufficient conditions by studying possible cases [Jackson] |
| 5457 | Predicates assert properties, values, denials, relations, conventions, existence and fabrications [Ellis, by PG] |
| 6995 | Successful predication supervenes on nature [Jackson] |
| 6989 | I can understand "He has a beard", without identifying 'he', and hence the truth conditions [Jackson] |
| 5488 | Regularity theories of causation cannot give an account of human agency [Ellis] |
| 5489 | Humans have variable dispositions, and also power to change their dispositions [Ellis] |
| 6998 | Folk morality does not clearly distinguish between doing and allowing [Jackson] |
| 6997 | Moral functionalism says moral terms get their meaning from their role in folk morality [Jackson] |
| 7000 | Which are prior - thin concepts like right, good, ought; or thick concepts like kindness, equity etc.? [Jackson] |
| 5490 | Essentialism fits in with Darwinism, but not with extreme politics of left or right [Ellis] |
| 6999 | It is hard to justify the huge difference in our judgements of abortion and infanticide [Jackson] |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 5472 | Natural kinds are of objects/substances, or events/processes, or intrinsic natures [Ellis] |
| 5471 | Essentialism says natural kinds are fundamental to nature, and determine the laws [Ellis] |
| 5446 | For essentialists two members of a natural kind must be identical [Ellis] |
| 5480 | The whole of our world is a natural kind, so all worlds like it necessarily have the same laws [Ellis] |
| 5445 | Essentialists regard inanimate objects as genuine causal agents [Ellis] |
| 5463 | Essentialists believe causation is necessary, resulting from dispositions and circumstances [Ellis] |
| 5491 | A general theory of causation is only possible in an area if natural kinds are involved [Ellis] |
| 5442 | For 'passivists' behaviour is imposed on things from outside [Ellis] |
| 5473 | The laws of nature imitate the hierarchy of natural kinds [Ellis] |
| 5474 | Laws of nature tend to describe ideal things, or ideal circumstances [Ellis] |
| 5475 | We must explain the necessity, idealisation, ontology and structure of natural laws [Ellis] |
| 5460 | Causal relations cannot be reduced to regularities, as they could occur just once [Ellis] |
| 5459 | Essentialists say dispositions are basic, rather than supervenient on matter and natural laws [Ellis] |
| 5461 | The essence of uranium is its atomic number and its electron shell [Ellis] |
| 5464 | For essentialists, laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, being based on essences of natural kinds [Ellis] |
| 5487 | Essentialism requires a clear separation of semantics, epistemology and ontology [Ellis] |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |