12 ideas
| 18933 | Not-Being obviously doesn't exist, and the five modes of Being are all impossible [Gorgias, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 14633 | How do we tell a table's being contingently plastic from its being essentially plastic? [Jackson] |
| 14635 | An x is essentially F if it is F in every possible world in which it appears [Jackson] |
| 14632 | Quine may have conflated de re and de dicto essentialism, but there is a real epistemological problem [Jackson] |
| 14631 | How can you show the necessity of an a posteriori necessity, if it might turn out to be false? [Jackson] |
| 9866 | Gorgias says rhetoric is the best of arts, because it enslaves without using force [Gorgias, by Plato] |
| 5864 | Destroy seriousness with laughter, and laughter with seriousness [Gorgias] |
| 6613 | The natural kinds are objects, processes and properties/relations [Ellis] |
| 6616 | Least action is not a causal law, but a 'global law', describing a global essence [Ellis] |
| 6615 | A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis] |
| 6614 | A hierarchy of natural kinds is elaborate ontology, but needed to explain natural laws [Ellis] |
| 6612 | Without general principles, we couldn't predict the behaviour of dispositional properties [Ellis] |