display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
4 ideas
| 6515 | An explanation presupposes something that is improbable unless it is explained [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Any search for an explanation presupposes that there is something in need of an explanation - that is, something which is improbable unless explained. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: Elementary enough, but it underlines the human perspective of all explanations. I may need an explanation of baseball, where you don't. |
| 6517 | If all possibilities are equal, order seems (a priori) to need an explanation - or does it? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The fact that order requires an explanation seems to be an a priori principle; ..we assume all possibilities are equally likely, and so no striking regularities should emerge; the sceptic replies that a highly ordered sequence is as likely as any other. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: An independent notion of 'order' is required. If I write down '14356', and then throw 1 4 3 5 6 on a die, the match is the order; instrinsically 14356 is nothing special. If you threw the die a million times, a run of six sixes seems quite likely. |
| 5363 | If the cat reappears in a new position, presumably it has passed through the intermediate positions [Russell] |
| Full Idea: If the cat appears at one moment in one part of the room, and at another in another part, it is natural to suppose that it has moved from the one to the other, passing over a series of intermediate positions. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: This example seems perfect as an illustration of inference to the best explanation (now called 'abduction'), and that seems to me the absolute key to human knowledge. The cat example is what made me a devotee of Bertrand Russell. |
| 5367 | Belief in real objects makes our account of experience simpler and more systematic [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The belief that there are objects corresponding to our sense-data tends to simplify and systematize our account of our experiences, so there seems no good reason for rejecting it. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: This hardly counts as a good argument against the logical possibility of global scepticism, but it is a nice statement of the concept of 'best explanation', which obviously requires some sort of rational criteria if it is to provide a theory of knowledge. |