18 ideas
1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
21642 | If quantification is all substitutional, there is no ontology [Quine] |
1633 | Absolute ontological questions are meaningless, because the answers are circular definitions [Quine] |
10502 | We can rise by degrees through abstraction, with higher levels representing more things [Arnauld,A/Nicole,P] |
18964 | Ontology is relative to both a background theory and a translation manual [Quine] |
18965 | We know what things are by distinguishing them, so identity is part of ontology [Quine] |
3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
18258 | We can only know the exterior world via our ideas [Arnauld,A/Nicole,P] |
1634 | Two things are relative - the background theory, and translating the object theory into the background theory [Quine] |
16784 | Forms make things distinct and explain the properties, by pure form, or arrangement of parts [Arnauld,A/Nicole,P] |
10499 | We know by abstraction because we only understand composite things a part at a time [Arnauld,A/Nicole,P] |
10501 | A triangle diagram is about all triangles, if some features are ignored [Arnauld,A/Nicole,P] |
10500 | No one denies that a line has width, but we can just attend to its length [Arnauld,A/Nicole,P] |
8470 | Reference is inscrutable, because we cannot choose between theories of numbers [Quine, by Orenstein] |
18963 | Indeterminacy translating 'rabbit' depends on translating individuation terms [Quine] |
1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |