220 ideas
| 16281 | Honesty requires philosophical theories we can commit to with our ordinary commonsense [Lewis] |
| 16395 | Kripke separated semantics from metaphysics, rather than linking them, making the latter independent [Kripke, by Stalnaker] |
| 16288 | Analysis reduces primitives and makes understanding explicit (without adding new knowledge) [Lewis] |
| 17034 | Analyses of concepts using entirely different terms are very inclined to fail [Kripke] |
| 224 | When questions are doubtful we should concentrate not on objects but on ideas of the intellect [Plato] |
| 232 | Opposites are as unlike as possible [Plato] |
| 8937 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic [Hegel on Plato] |
| 4955 | Some definitions aim to fix a reference rather than give a meaning [Kripke] |
| 9651 | Verisimilitude might be explained as being close to the possible world where the truth is exact [Lewis] |
| 10559 | Kripke's modal semantics presupposes certain facts about possible worlds [Kripke, by Zalta] |
| 10437 | Names are rigid, making them unlike definite descriptions [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| 4949 | Names are rigid designators, which designate the same object in all possible worlds [Kripke] |
| 4951 | A bundle of qualities is a collection of abstractions, so it can't be a particular [Kripke] |
| 17031 | A name can still refer even if it satisfies none of its well-known descriptions [Kripke] |
| 8957 | Some references, such as 'Neptune', have to be fixed by description rather than baptism [Kripke, by Szabó] |
| 10428 | Proper names must have referents, because they are not descriptive [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| 4959 | A name's reference is not fixed by any marks or properties of the referent [Kripke] |
| 15731 | Quantification sometimes commits to 'sets', but sometimes just to pluralities (or 'classes') [Lewis] |
| 13986 | Plato found antinomies in ideas, Kant in space and time, and Bradley in relations [Plato, by Ryle] |
| 14150 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made [Russell on Plato] |
| 16150 | One is, so numbers exist, so endless numbers exist, and each one must partake of being [Plato] |
| 10470 | There are only two kinds: sets, and possibilia (actual and possible particulars) [Lewis, by Oliver] |
| 229 | The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato] |
| 21821 | Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus] |
| 9650 | Supervenience concerns whether things could differ, so it is a modal notion [Lewis] |
| 14896 | Kripke's metaphysics (essences, kinds, rigidity) blocks the slide into sociology [Kripke, by Ladyman/Ross] |
| 221 | Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato] |
| 8909 | Abstractions may well be verbal fictions, in which we ignore some features of an object [Lewis] |
| 9057 | Vagueness is semantic indecision: we haven't settled quite what our words are meant to express [Lewis] |
| 9671 | Whether or not France is hexagonal depends on your standards of precision [Lewis] |
| 15751 | Surely 'slept in by Washington' is a property of some bed? [Lewis] |
| 15735 | Properties don't have degree; they are determinate, and things have varying relations to them [Lewis] |
| 9656 | The 'abundant' properties are just any bizarre property you fancy [Lewis] |
| 15737 | To be a 'property' is to suit a theoretical role [Lewis] |
| 15742 | A disjunctive property can be unnatural, but intrinsic if its disjuncts are intrinsic [Lewis] |
| 15397 | If a global intrinsic never varies between possible duplicates, all necessary properties are intrinsic [Cameron on Lewis] |
| 15398 | Global intrinsic may make necessarily coextensive properties both intrinsic or both extrinsic [Cameron on Lewis] |
| 15741 | All of the natural properties are included among the intrinsic properties [Lewis] |
| 15752 | We might try defining the natural properties by a short list of them [Lewis] |
| 14996 | Natural properties give similarity, joint carving, intrinsicness, specificity, homogeneity... [Lewis] |
| 15743 | Defining natural properties by means of laws of nature is potentially circular [Lewis] |
| 15744 | We can't define natural properties by resemblance, if they are used to explain resemblance [Lewis] |
| 15740 | I don't take 'natural' properties to be fixed by the nature of one possible world [Lewis] |
| 16262 | Sparse properties rest either on universals, or on tropes, or on primitive naturalness [Lewis, by Maudlin] |
| 15739 | There is the property of belonging to a set, so abundant properties are as numerous as the sets [Lewis] |
| 10723 | A property is the set of its actual and possible instances [Lewis, by Oliver] |
| 9653 | It would be easiest to take a property as the set of its instances [Lewis] |
| 15399 | The property of being F is identical with the set of objects, in all possible worlds, which are F [Lewis, by Cameron] |
| 15733 | Accidentally coextensive properties come apart when we include their possible instances [Lewis] |
| 15732 | Properties don't seem to be sets, because different properties can have the same set [Lewis] |
| 15734 | If a property is relative, such as being a father or son, then set membership seems relative too [Lewis] |
| 9655 | Trilateral and triangular seem to be coextensive sets in all possible worlds [Lewis] |
| 16290 | I believe in properties, which are sets of possible individuals [Lewis] |
| 9657 | You must accept primitive similarity to like tropes, but tropes give a good account of it [Lewis] |
| 15748 | Trope theory needs a primitive notion for what unites some tropes [Lewis] |
| 15749 | Trope theory (unlike universals) needs a primitive notion of being duplicates [Lewis] |
| 15750 | Tropes need a similarity primitive, so they cannot be used to explain similarity [Lewis] |
| 15745 | Universals recur, are multiply located, wholly present, make things overlap, and are held in common [Lewis] |
| 15746 | If particles were just made of universals, similar particles would be the same particle [Lewis] |
| 223 | If you deny that each thing always stays the same, you destroy the possibility of discussion [Plato] |
| 227 | You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name [Plato] |
| 15747 | Universals aren't parts of things, because that relationship is transitive, and universals need not be [Lewis] |
| 211 | If admirable things have Forms, maybe everything else does as well [Plato] |
| 219 | If absolute ideas existed in us, they would cease to be absolute [Plato] |
| 16151 | Plato moves from Forms to a theory of genera and principles in his later work [Plato, by Frede,M] |
| 210 | It would be absurd to think there were abstract Forms for vile things like hair, mud and dirt [Plato] |
| 220 | The concept of a master includes the concept of a slave [Plato] |
| 228 | Greatness and smallness must exist, to be opposed to one another, and come into being in things [Plato] |
| 215 | If things partake of ideas, this implies either that everything thinks, or that everything actually is thought [Plato] |
| 218 | Participation is not by means of similarity, so we are looking for some other method of participation [Plato] |
| 212 | The whole idea of each Form must be found in each thing which participates in it [Plato] |
| 216 | If things are made alike by participating in something, that thing will be the absolute idea [Plato] |
| 213 | Each idea is in all its participants at once, just as daytime is a unity but in many separate places at once [Plato] |
| 214 | If absolute greatness and great things are seen as the same, another thing appears which makes them seem great [Plato] |
| 217 | Nothing can be like an absolute idea, because a third idea intervenes to make them alike (leading to a regress) [Plato] |
| 17647 | Kripke individuates objects by essential modal properties (and presupposes essentialism) [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| 15851 | Parts must belong to a created thing with a distinct form [Plato] |
| 15846 | In Parmenides, if composition is identity, a whole is nothing more than its parts [Plato, by Harte,V] |
| 16995 | Given that a table is made of molecules, could it not be molecular and still be this table? [Kripke] |
| 17047 | If we imagine this table made of ice or different wood, we are imagining a different table [Kripke] |
| 15849 | Plato says only a one has parts, and a many does not [Plato, by Harte,V] |
| 15850 | Anything which has parts must be one thing, and parts are of a one, not of a many [Plato] |
| 13259 | It seems that the One must be composed of parts, which contradicts its being one [Plato] |
| 9667 | Mereological composition is unrestricted: any class of things has a mereological sum [Lewis] |
| 13268 | There are no restrictions on composition, because they would be vague, and composition can't be vague [Lewis, by Sider] |
| 5450 | For Kripke, essence is origin; for Putnam, essence is properties; for Wiggins, essence is membership of a kind [Kripke, by Mautner] |
| 17055 | Atomic number 79 is part of the nature of the gold we know [Kripke] |
| 16997 | An essential property is true of an object in any case where it would have existed [Kripke] |
| 17045 | De re modality is an object having essential properties [Kripke] |
| 13793 | An essential property is one possessed by all counterparts [Lewis, by Elder] |
| 17030 | Important properties of an object need not be essential to it [Kripke] |
| 16955 | Kripke says internal structure fixes species; I say it is genetic affinity and a common descent [Kripke, by Dummett] |
| 16996 | Given that Nixon is indeed a human being, that he might not have been does not concern knowledge [Kripke] |
| 13971 | Kripke claims that some properties, only knowable posteriori, are known a priori to be essential [Kripke, by Soames] |
| 12100 | An essence is the necessary properties, derived from an intuitive identity, in origin, type and material [Kripke, by Witt] |
| 16991 | No one seems to know the identity conditions for a material object (or for people) over time [Kripke] |
| 9663 | A thing 'perdures' if it has separate temporal parts, and 'endures' if it is wholly present at different times [Lewis] |
| 14737 | Properties cannot be relations to times, if there are temporary properties which are intrinsic [Lewis, by Sider] |
| 9664 | Endurance is the wrong account, because things change intrinsic properties like shape [Lewis] |
| 9665 | There are three responses to the problem that intrinsic shapes do not endure [Lewis] |
| 11867 | If we lose track of origin, how do we show we are maintaining a reference? [Kripke, by Wiggins] |
| 12018 | Kripke argues, of the Queen, that parents of an organism are essentially so [Kripke, by Forbes,G] |
| 17046 | Could the actual Queen have been born of different parents? [Kripke] |
| 8274 | Socrates can't have a necessary origin, because he might have had no 'origin' [Lowe on Kripke] |
| 19280 | I can ask questions which create a context in which origin ceases to be essential [Lewis] |
| 15968 | Identity is simple - absolutely everything is self-identical, and nothing is identical to another thing [Lewis] |
| 15847 | Two things relate either as same or different, or part of a whole, or the whole of the part [Plato] |
| 17038 | If Hesperus and Phosophorus are the same, they can't possibly be different [Kripke] |
| 15969 | Two things can never be identical, so there is no problem [Lewis] |
| 17036 | Identity statements can be contingent if they rely on descriptions [Kripke] |
| 11880 | Kripke says his necessary a posteriori examples are known a priori to be necessary [Kripke, by Mackie,P] |
| 4797 | Instead of being regularities, maybe natural laws are the weak a posteriori necessities of Kripke [Kripke, by Psillos] |
| 17037 | Physical necessity may be necessity in the highest degree [Kripke] |
| 4728 | Kripke separates necessary and a priori, proposing necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori examples [Kripke, by O'Grady] |
| 16990 | A priori = Necessary because we imagine all worlds, and we know without looking at actuality? [Kripke] |
| 9386 | The meter is defined necessarily, but the stick being one meter long is contingent a priori [Kripke] |
| 2408 | Kripke has demonstrated that some necessary truths are only knowable a posteriori [Kripke, by Chalmers] |
| 4960 | "'Hesperus' is 'Phosphorus'" is necessarily true, if it is true, but not known a priori [Kripke] |
| 4966 | Theoretical identities are between rigid designators, and so are necessary a posteriori [Kripke] |
| 13967 | Kripke's essentialist necessary a posteriori opened the gap between conceivable and really possible [Soames on Kripke] |
| 13970 | Kripke gets to the necessary a posteriori by only allowing conceivability when combined with actuality [Kripke, by Soames] |
| 9660 | The impossible can be imagined as long as it is a bit vague [Lewis] |
| 9669 | There are no free-floating possibilia; they have mates in a world, giving them extrinsic properties [Lewis] |
| 16132 | On mountains or in worlds, reporting contradictions is contradictory, so no such truths can be reported [Lewis] |
| 16133 | Possible worlds can contain contradictions if such worlds are seen as fictions [Lewis] |
| 12255 | For Lewis there is no real possibility, since all possibilities are actual [Oderberg on Lewis] |
| 9219 | Lewis posits possible worlds just as Quine says that physics needs numbers and sets [Lewis, by Sider] |
| 16283 | For me, all worlds are equal, with each being actual relative to itself [Lewis] |
| 15022 | If possible worlds really exist, then they are part of actuality [Sider on Lewis] |
| 10469 | A world is a maximal mereological sum of spatiotemporally interrelated things [Lewis] |
| 16441 | Lewis rejects actualism because he identifies properties with sets [Lewis, by Stalnaker] |
| 16282 | Ersatzers say we have one world, and abstract representations of how it might have been [Lewis] |
| 16284 | Ersatz worlds represent either through language, or by models, or magically [Lewis] |
| 16992 | Possible worlds aren't puzzling places to learn about, but places we ourselves describe [Kripke] |
| 16286 | Linguistic possible worlds need a complete supply of unique names for each thing [Lewis] |
| 16287 | Maximal consistency for a world seems a modal distinction, concerning what could be true together [Lewis] |
| 9662 | Linguistic possible worlds have problems of inconsistencies, no indiscernibles, and vocabulary [Lewis] |
| 7690 | If sets exist, then defining worlds as proposition sets implies an odd distinction between existing and actual [Jacquette on Lewis] |
| 16993 | If we discuss what might have happened to Nixon, we stipulate that it is about Nixon [Kripke] |
| 16998 | Transworld identification is unproblematic, because we stipulate that we rigidly refer to something [Kripke] |
| 17001 | A table in some possible world should not even be identified by its essential properties [Kripke] |
| 4952 | Identification across possible worlds does not need properties, even essential ones [Kripke] |
| 7761 | Test for rigidity by inserting into the sentence 'N might not have been N' [Kripke, by Lycan] |
| 7693 | Kripke avoids difficulties of transworld identity by saying it is a decision, not a discovery [Kripke, by Jacquette] |
| 5821 | Saying that natural kinds are 'rigid designators' is the same as saying they are 'indexical' [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| 14068 | If Kripke names must still denote a thing in a non-actual situation, the statue isn't its clay [Gibbard on Kripke] |
| 10436 | A rigid expression may refer at a world to an object not existing in that world [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| 4953 | We do not begin with possible worlds and place objects in them; we begin with objects in the real world [Kripke] |
| 4961 | It is a necessary truth that Elizabeth II was the child of two particular parents [Kripke] |
| 14404 | The counterpart relation is sortal-relative, so objects need not be a certain way [Lewis, by Merricks] |
| 5441 | Why should statements about what my 'counterpart' could have done interest me? [Mautner on Lewis] |
| 5440 | A counterpart in a possible world is sufficiently similar, and more similar than anything else [Lewis, by Mautner] |
| 16291 | In counterpart theory 'Humphrey' doesn't name one being, but a mereological sum of many beings [Lewis] |
| 11903 | Extreme haecceitists could say I might have been a poached egg, but it is too remote to consider [Lewis, by Mackie,P] |
| 15129 | Haecceitism implies de re differences but qualitative identity [Lewis] |
| 9670 | Extreme haecceitism says you might possibly be a poached egg [Lewis] |
| 16986 | That there might have been unicorns is false; we don't know the circumstances for unicorns [Kripke] |
| 8259 | Kripke has breathed new life into the a priori/a posteriori distinction [Kripke, by Lowe] |
| 16989 | Rather than 'a priori truth', it is best to stick to whether some person knows it on a priori evidence [Kripke] |
| 4947 | A priori truths can be known independently of experience - but they don't have to be [Kripke] |
| 13975 | Kripke was more successful in illuminating necessity than a priority (and their relations to analyticity) [Kripke, by Soames] |
| 17048 | Analytic judgements are a priori, even when their content is empirical [Kripke] |
| 4948 | Intuition is the strongest possible evidence one can have about anything [Kripke] |
| 16279 | General causal theories of knowledge are refuted by mathematics [Lewis] |
| 4958 | Identities like 'heat is molecule motion' are necessary (in the highest degree), not contingent [Kripke] |
| 9661 | Induction is just reasonable methods of inferring the unobserved from the observed [Lewis] |
| 9652 | To just expect unexamined emeralds to be grue would be totally unreasonable [Lewis] |
| 9658 | An explanation tells us how an event was caused [Lewis] |
| 16280 | Often explanaton seeks fundamental laws, rather than causal histories [Lewis] |
| 16274 | If the well-ordering of a pack of cards was by shuffling, the explanation would make it more surprising [Lewis] |
| 4967 | It seems logically possible to have the pain brain state without the actual pain [Kripke] |
| 7430 | Kripke assumes that mind-brain identity designates rigidly, which it doesn't [Armstrong on Kripke] |
| 7867 | If consciousness could separate from brain, then it cannot be identical with brain [Kripke, by Papineau] |
| 3228 | Kripke says pain is necessarily pain, but a brain state isn't necessarily painful [Kripke, by Rey] |
| 5832 | Identity must be necessary, but pain isn't necessarily a brain state, so they aren't identical [Kripke, by Schwartz,SP] |
| 4968 | Identity theorists seem committed to no-brain-event-no-pain, and vice versa, which seems wrong [Kripke] |
| 8901 | Abstraction is usually explained either by example, or conflation, or abstraction, or negatively [Lewis] |
| 8904 | The Way of Abstraction says an incomplete description of a concrete entity is the complete abstraction [Lewis] |
| 8938 | The Way of Example compares donkeys and numbers, but what is the difference, and what are numbers? [Lewis] |
| 8903 | Abstracta can be causal: sets can be causes or effects; there can be universal effects; events may be sets [Lewis] |
| 8902 | If abstractions are non-spatial, then both sets and universals seem to have locations [Lewis] |
| 8906 | If we can abstract the extrinsic relations and features of objects, abstraction isn't universals or tropes [Lewis] |
| 8905 | If universals or tropes are parts of things, then abstraction picks out those parts [Lewis] |
| 8908 | For most sets, the concept of equivalence is too artificial to explain abstraction [Lewis] |
| 8907 | The abstract direction of a line is the equivalence class of it and all lines parallel to it [Lewis] |
| 16289 | We can't account for an abstraction as 'from' something if the something doesn't exist [Lewis] |
| 16278 | A particular functional role is what gives content to a thought [Lewis] |
| 16394 | Kripke derives accounts of reference and proper names from assumptions about worlds and essences [Stalnaker on Kripke] |
| 17874 | Kripke has a definitional account of kinds, but not of naming [Almog on Kripke] |
| 5822 | The important cause is not between dubbing and current use, but between the item and the speaker's information [Evans on Kripke] |
| 17033 | We may refer through a causal chain, but still change what is referred to [Kripke] |
| 4689 | Kripke makes reference a largely social matter, external to the mind of the speaker [Kripke, by McGinn] |
| 17504 | Kripke's theory is important because it gives a collective account of reference [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| 17035 | We refer through the community, going back to the original referent [Kripke] |
| 16988 | Descriptive reference shows how to refer, how to identify two things, and how to challenge existence [Kripke, by PG] |
| 17029 | It can't be necessary that Aristotle had the properties commonly attributed to him [Kripke] |
| 14893 | Rigid designation creates a puzzle - why do some necessary truths appear to be contingent? [Kripke, by Macià/Garcia-Carpentiro] |
| 9654 | A proposition is a set of entire possible worlds which instantiate a particular property [Lewis] |
| 15736 | A proposition is the property of being a possible world where it holds true [Lewis] |
| 15738 | Propositions can't have syntactic structure if they are just sets of worlds [Lewis] |
| 222 | Only a great person can understand the essence of things, and an even greater person can teach it [Plato] |
| 225 | The unlimited has no shape and is endless [Plato] |
| 231 | Everything partakes of the One in some way [Plato] |
| 2062 | The only movement possible for the One is in space or in alteration [Plato] |
| 233 | Some things do not partake of the One [Plato] |
| 17056 | Terms for natural kinds are very close to proper names [Kripke] |
| 4963 | The properties that fix reference are contingent, the properties involving meaning are necessary [Kripke] |
| 17053 | Gold's atomic number might not be 79, but if it is, could non-79 stuff be gold? [Kripke] |
| 4964 | 'Cats are animals' has turned out to be a necessary truth [Kripke] |
| 6765 | Nominal essence may well be neither necessary nor sufficient for a natural kind [Kripke, by Bird] |
| 9659 | Causation is when at the closest world without the cause, there is no effect either [Lewis] |
| 9387 | The scientific discovery (if correct) that gold has atomic number 79 is a necessary truth [Kripke] |
| 17054 | Scientific discoveries about gold are necessary truths [Kripke] |
| 17057 | Once we've found that heat is molecular motion, then that's what it is, in all possible worlds [Kripke] |
| 4965 | Science searches basic structures in search of essences [Kripke] |
| 9666 | It is quite implausible that the future is unreal, as that would terminate everything [Lewis] |
| 17050 | Tigers may lack all the properties we originally used to identify them [Kripke] |
| 17049 | 'Tiger' designates a species, and merely looking like the species is not enough [Kripke] |
| 17051 | The original concept of 'cat' comes from paradigmatic instances [Kripke] |
| 234 | We couldn't discuss the non-existence of the One without knowledge of it [Plato] |