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The basic idea is that truthbearers (like beliefs, sentences or propositions) are not intrinsically true or false but that their truth depends on something else. For example, the belief that water freezes at 0 °C is true in virtue of the fact that water freezes at 0 °C. In this example, the freezing-fact is the truthmaker of the freezing-belief.
For instance, for any two sentences A, B, the sentence A & B is satisfied if and only if A and B are satisfied (where '&' stands for conjunction), for any sentence A, ~A is satisfied if and only if A fails to be satisfied, and for any open sentence A where x is free in A, (x)A is satisfied if and only if for every substitution of an item of the ...
For example, if the sentence "some electrons are bonded to protons" is true then it can be used to justify that electrons and protons exist. [115] Quine used this insight to argue that one can learn about metaphysics by closely analyzing [n] scientific claims to understand what kind of metaphysical picture of the world they presuppose. [117]
Other metaphysical theories may use the terminology of universals to describe physical entities. Plato's examples of what we might today call universals included mathematical and geometrical ideas such as a circle and natural numbers as universals. Plato's views on universals did, however, vary across several different discussions.
Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their metaphysical status has been a subject of controversy in philosophy , with modal realists such as David Lewis arguing that they are literally existing alternate realities, and others ...
The metaphysical considerations proceed from God to the substantial world and back to the spiritual realm. The starting point for the work is the conception of God as an absolutely perfect being (I), that God is good but goodness exists independently of God (a rejection of divine command theory) (II), and that God has created the world in an ordered and perfect fashion (III–VII).
For example, the class of philosophers is nothing but the sum of all concrete, individual philosophers. The principle of extensionality in set theory assures us that any matching pair of curly braces enclosing one or more instances of the same individuals denote the same set.
Many of Aristotle's works are extremely compressed, and many scholars believe that in their current form, they are likely lecture notes. [2] Subsequent to the arrangement of Aristotle's works by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century BC, a number of his treatises were referred to as the writings "after ("meta") the Physics" [b], the origin of the current title for the collection Metaphysics.