41 ideas
13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
13054 | Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon] |
13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
13055 | Good induction needs 'total evidence' - the absence at the time of any undermining evidence [Salmon] |
13046 | Scientific explanation is not reducing the unfamiliar to the familiar [Salmon] |
13058 | Why-questions can seek evidence as well as explanation [Salmon] |
14366 | An explanation is a table of statistical information [Salmon, by Strevens] |
13064 | The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon] |
13050 | The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon] |
13059 | Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [Salmon] |
13049 | We must distinguish true laws because they (unlike accidental generalizations) explain things [Salmon] |
13051 | Deductive-nomological explanations will predict, and their predictions will explain [Salmon] |
13053 | A law is not enough for explanation - we need information about what makes a difference [Salmon] |
13061 | Flagpoles explain shadows, and not vice versa, because of temporal ordering [Salmon] |
17093 | Causation produces productive mechanisms; to understand the world, understand these mechanisms [Salmon] |
17492 | Salmon's interaction mechanisms needn't be regular, or involving any systems [Glennan on Salmon] |
13045 | Explanation at the quantum level will probably be by entirely new mechanisms [Salmon] |
13062 | Does an item have a function the first time it occurs? [Salmon] |
13063 | Explanations reveal the mechanisms which produce the facts [Salmon] |
16557 | Salmon's mechanisms are processes and interactions, involving marks, or conserved quantities [Salmon, by Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
13060 | Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? [Salmon] |
13056 | Statistical explanation needs relevance, not high probability [Salmon] |
13057 | Think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies [Salmon] |
8388 | Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism [Tooley] |
8389 | Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable [Tooley] |
8412 | A causal interaction is when two processes intersect, and correlated modifications persist afterwards [Salmon] |
8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
8413 | Cause must come first in propagations of causal interactions, but interactions are simultaneous [Salmon] |
8393 | We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter [Tooley] |
8390 | Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action [Tooley] |
8411 | Instead of localised events, I take enduring and extended processes as basic to causation [Salmon] |
4784 | Salmon says processes rather than events should be basic in a theory of physical causation [Salmon, by Psillos] |
8409 | Probabilistic causal concepts are widely used in everyday life and in science [Salmon] |
8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |
8392 | Probabilist laws are compatible with effects always or never happening [Tooley] |
8399 | The actual cause may not be the most efficacious one [Tooley] |
8391 | In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality [Tooley] |
8394 | Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation [Tooley] |
8398 | Causation is a concept of a relation the same in all worlds, so it can't be a physical process [Tooley] |