57 ideas
17713 | After 1903, Husserl avoids metaphysical commitments [Mares] |
18781 | Inconsistency doesn't prevent us reasoning about some system [Mares] |
18789 | Intuitionist logic looks best as natural deduction [Mares] |
18790 | Intuitionism as natural deduction has no rule for negation [Mares] |
18787 | Three-valued logic is useful for a theory of presupposition [Mares] |
18793 | Material implication (and classical logic) considers nothing but truth values for implications [Mares] |
18784 | In classical logic the connectives can be related elegantly, as in De Morgan's laws [Mares] |
18786 | Excluded middle standardly implies bivalence; attacks use non-contradiction, De M 3, or double negation [Mares] |
18780 | Standard disjunction and negation force us to accept the principle of bivalence [Mares] |
18782 | The connectives are studied either through model theory or through proof theory [Mares] |
18783 | Many-valued logics lack a natural deduction system [Mares] |
18792 | Situation semantics for logics: not possible worlds, but information in situations [Mares] |
18785 | Consistency is semantic, but non-contradiction is syntactic [Mares] |
13007 | Archimedes defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points [Archimedes, by Leibniz] |
17715 | The truth of the axioms doesn't matter for pure mathematics, but it does for applied [Mares] |
17716 | Mathematics is relations between properties we abstract from experience [Mares] |
18788 | For intuitionists there are not numbers and sets, but processes of counting and collecting [Mares] |
17703 | Light in straight lines is contingent a priori; stipulated as straight, because they happen to be so [Mares] |
13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
17714 | Aristotelians dislike the idea of a priori judgements from pure reason [Mares] |
17705 | Empiricists say rationalists mistake imaginative powers for modal insights [Mares] |
17700 | The most popular view is that coherent beliefs explain one another [Mares] |
13054 | Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon] |
13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
17704 | Operationalism defines concepts by our ways of measuring them [Mares] |
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] |
17710 | Aristotelian justification uses concepts abstracted from experience [Mares] |
17706 | The essence of a concept is either its definition or its conceptual relations? [Mares] |
18791 | In 'situation semantics' our main concepts are abstracted from situations [Mares] |
17701 | Possible worlds semantics has a nice compositional account of modal statements [Mares] |
17702 | Unstructured propositions are sets of possible worlds; structured ones have components [Mares] |
8412 | A causal interaction is when two processes intersect, and correlated modifications persist afterwards [Salmon] |
8413 | Cause must come first in propagations of causal interactions, but interactions are simultaneous [Salmon] |
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] |
17708 | Maybe space has points, but processes always need regions with a size [Mares] |