57 ideas
| 2352 | The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions [Putnam] |
| 8605 | In addition to analysis of a concept, one can deny it, or accept it as primitive [Lewis] |
| 2345 | Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation [Putnam] |
| 2347 | Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam] |
| 8607 | Supervenience is reduction without existence denials, ontological priorities, or translatability [Lewis] |
| 8606 | A supervenience thesis is a denial of independent variation [Lewis] |
| 2349 | Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique [Putnam] |
| 8580 | Materialism is (roughly) that two worlds cannot differ without differing physically [Lewis] |
| 8571 | Universals are wholly present in their instances, whereas properties are spread around [Lewis] |
| 10717 | Natural properties figure in the analysis of similarity in intrinsic respects [Lewis, by Oliver] |
| 16217 | Lewisian natural properties fix reference of predicates, through a principle of charity [Lewis, by Hawley] |
| 8585 | Reference partly concerns thought and language, partly eligibility of referent by natural properties [Lewis] |
| 8613 | Objects are demarcated by density and chemistry, and natural properties belong in what is well demarcated [Lewis] |
| 8586 | Natural properties tend to belong to well-demarcated things, typically loci of causal chains [Lewis] |
| 8589 | For us, a property being natural is just an aspect of its featuring in the contents of our attitudes [Lewis] |
| 15460 | All perfectly natural properties are intrinsic [Lewis, by Lewis] |
| 15726 | Natural properties fix resemblance and powers, and are picked out by universals [Lewis] |
| 7031 | Lewis says properties are sets of actual and possible objects [Lewis, by Heil] |
| 8572 | Any class of things is a property, no matter how whimsical or irrelevant [Lewis] |
| 18433 | There are far more properties than any brain could ever encodify [Lewis] |
| 8604 | We need properties as semantic values for linguistic expressions [Lewis] |
| 14499 | Properties are classes of possible and actual concrete particulars [Lewis, by Koslicki] |
| 15120 | Lewisian properties have powers because of their relationships to other properties [Lewis, by Hawthorne] |
| 8573 | Most properties are causally irrelevant, and we can't spot the relevant ones. [Lewis] |
| 8569 | I suspend judgements about universals, but their work must be done [Lewis] |
| 21961 | Physics aims to discover which universals actually exist [Lewis, by Moore,AW] |
| 8576 | The One over Many problem (in predication terms) deserves to be neglected (by ostriches) [Lewis] |
| 8570 | To have a property is to be a member of a class, usually a class of things [Lewis] |
| 8574 | Class Nominalism and Resemblance Nominalism are pretty much the same [Lewis] |
| 2351 | Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved [Putnam] |
| 2331 | Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam] |
| 2348 | Is there just one computational state for each specific belief? [Putnam] |
| 2332 | Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic [Putnam] |
| 2071 | If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology [Putnam] |
| 8579 | Psychophysical identity implies the possibility of idealism or panpsychism [Lewis] |
| 2344 | If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam] |
| 2074 | Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam] |
| 2343 | Reference may be different while mental representation is the same [Putnam] |
| 2346 | Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam] |
| 2354 | "Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam] |
| 2336 | Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam] |
| 2334 | Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam] |
| 2335 | Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam] |
| 2340 | We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam] |
| 2341 | Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam] |
| 2339 | Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam] |
| 2338 | Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam] |
| 8615 | We need natural properties in order to motivate the principle of charity [Lewis] |
| 8614 | A sophisticated principle of charity sometimes imputes error as well as truth [Lewis] |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 2342 | "Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description [Putnam] |
| 8608 | Counterfactuals 'backtrack' if a different present implies a different past [Lewis] |
| 8584 | Causal counterfactuals must avoid backtracking, to avoid epiphenomena and preemption [Lewis] |
| 15727 | Physics aims for a list of natural properties [Lewis] |
| 8581 | Physics discovers laws and causal explanations, and also the natural properties required [Lewis] |
| 8611 | A law of nature is any regularity that earns inclusion in the ideal system [Lewis] |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |