display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
6 ideas
19695 | The devil was wise as an angel, and lost no knowledge when he rebelled [Whitcomb] |
Full Idea: The devil is evil but nonetheless wise; he was a wise angel, and through no loss of knowledge, but, rather, through some sort of affective restructuring tried and failed to take over the throne. | |
From: Dennis Whitcomb (Wisdom [2011], 'Argument') | |
A reaction: ['affective restructuring' indeed! philosophers- don't you love 'em?] To fail at something you try to do suggests a flaw in the wisdom. And the new regime the devil wished to introduce doesn't look like a wise regime. Not convinced. |
3859 | We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain [Newton-Smith] |
Full Idea: We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain. | |
From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], II.3) |
3870 | The real problem of science is how to choose between possible explanations [Newton-Smith] |
Full Idea: Once we move beyond investigating correlations between observables the question of what does or should guide our choice between alternative explanatory accounts becomes problematic. | |
From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], IX.2) |
3853 | For science to be rational, we must explain scientific change rationally [Newton-Smith] |
Full Idea: We are only justified in regarding scientific practice as the very paradigm of rationality if we can justify the claim that scientific change is rationally explicable. | |
From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.2) |
3855 | Critics attack positivist division between theory and observation [Newton-Smith] |
Full Idea: The critics of positivism attacked the conception of a dichotomy between theory and observation. | |
From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.4) |
3854 | Positivists hold that theoretical terms change, but observation terms don't [Newton-Smith] |
Full Idea: For positivists it was taken that while theory change meant change in the meaning of theoretical terms, the meaning of observational terms was invariant under theory change. | |
From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.4) |