46 ideas
| 6891 | Quine's naturalistic and empirical view is based entirely on first-order logic and set theory [Quine, by Mautner] |
| 6310 | Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine] |
| 12798 | Plurals can in principle be paraphrased away altogether [Quine] |
| 17905 | Any progression will do nicely for numbers; they can all then be used to measure multiplicity [Quine] |
| 16014 | It is controversial whether only 'numerical identity' allows two things to be counted as one [Noonan] |
| 9556 | Nearly all of mathematics has to quantify over abstract objects [Quine] |
| 16462 | The quest for ultimate categories is the quest for a simple clear pattern of notation [Quine] |
| 15723 | Either dispositions rest on structures, or we keep saying 'all things being equal' [Quine] |
| 15490 | Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB] |
| 8504 | Quine aims to deal with properties by the use of eternal open sentences, or classes [Quine, by Devitt] |
| 8464 | Physical objects in space-time are just events or processes, no matter how disconnected [Quine] |
| 7924 | The notion of a physical object is by far the most useful one for science [Quine] |
| 8482 | Mathematicians must be rational but not two-legged, cyclists the opposite. So a mathematical cyclist? [Quine] |
| 12136 | Cyclist are not actually essentially two-legged [Brody on Quine] |
| 16024 | I could have died at five, but the summation of my adult stages could not [Noonan] |
| 16023 | Stage theorists accept four-dimensionalism, but call each stage a whole object [Noonan] |
| 17594 | We can paraphrase 'x=y' as a sequence of the form 'if Fx then Fy' [Quine] |
| 16015 | Problems about identity can't even be formulated without the concept of identity [Noonan] |
| 16017 | Identity is usually defined as the equivalence relation satisfying Leibniz's Law [Noonan] |
| 16016 | Identity definitions (such as self-identity, or the smallest equivalence relation) are usually circular [Noonan] |
| 16020 | Identity can only be characterised in a second-order language [Noonan] |
| 16018 | Indiscernibility is basic to our understanding of identity and distinctness [Noonan] |
| 16019 | Leibniz's Law must be kept separate from the substitutivity principle [Noonan] |
| 15725 | Normal conditionals have a truth-value gap when the antecedent is false. [Quine] |
| 15722 | Conditionals are pointless if the truth value of the antecedent is known [Quine] |
| 15719 | We feign belief in counterfactual antecedents, and assess how convincing the consequent is [Quine] |
| 15721 | Counterfactuals are plausible when dispositions are involved, as they imply structures [Quine] |
| 15724 | Counterfactuals have no place in a strict account of science [Quine] |
| 15720 | What stays the same in assessing a counterfactual antecedent depends on context [Quine] |
| 22167 | Our images of bodies are not produced by the bodies, but by our own minds [Augustine, by Aquinas] |
| 22117 | Our minds grasp reality by direct illumination (rather than abstraction from experience) [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 4630 | Two theories can be internally consistent and match all the facts, yet be inconsistent with one another [Quine, by Baggini /Fosl] |
| 3131 | Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism [Quine, by Rey] |
| 3988 | Indeterminacy of translation also implies indeterminacy in interpreting people's mental states [Dennett on Quine] |
| 6311 | The firmer the links between sentences and stimuli, the less translations can diverge [Quine] |
| 6312 | We can never precisely pin down how to translate the native word 'Gavagai' [Quine] |
| 6313 | Stimulus synonymy of 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not even guarantee they are coextensive [Quine] |
| 6317 | Dispositions to speech behaviour, and actual speech, are never enough to fix any one translation [Quine] |
| 6315 | We should be suspicious of a translation which implies that a people have very strange beliefs [Quine] |
| 6314 | Weird translations are always possible, but they improve if we impose our own logic on them [Quine] |
| 22118 | Augustine created the modern concept of the will [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 4348 | Love, and do what you will [Augustine] |
| 7821 | Pagans produced three hundred definitions of the highest good [Augustine, by Grayling] |
| 22119 | Augustine said (unusually) that 'ought' does not imply 'can' [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 22116 | Augustine identified Donatism, Pelagianism and Manicheism as the main heresies [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 19338 | Augustine said evil does not really exist, and evil is a limitation in goodness [Augustine, by Perkins] |