36 ideas
| 23728 | Analysis aims to express the full set of platitudes surrounding a given concept [Smith,M] |
| 20768 | Like spiderswebs, dialectical arguments are clever but useless [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 23744 | Defining a set of things by paradigms doesn't pin them down enough [Smith,M] |
| 16554 | Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16556 | Penicillin causes nothing; the cause is what penicillin does [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16562 | We understand something by presenting its low-level entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16563 | The explanation is not the regularity, but the activity sustaining it [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16555 | Functions are not properties of objects, they are activities contributing to mechanisms [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16528 | Mechanisms are not just push-pull systems [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16529 | Mechanisms are systems organised to produce regular change [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16530 | A mechanism explains a phenomenon by showing how it was produced [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16553 | Our account of mechanism combines both entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16559 | Descriptions of explanatory mechanisms have a bottom level, where going further is irrelevant [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16564 | There are four types of bottom-level activities which will explain phenomena [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16561 | We can abstract by taking an exemplary case and ignoring the detail [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 23743 | Capturing all the common sense facts about rationality is almost impossible [Smith,M] |
| 23739 | Goals need desires, and so only desires can motivate us [Smith,M] |
| 23742 | If first- and second-order desires conflict, harmony does not require the second-order to win [Smith,M] |
| 23746 | Objective reasons to act might be the systematic desires of a fully rational person [Smith,M] |
| 23723 | In the Humean account, desires are not true/false, or subject to any rational criticism [Smith,M] |
| 23724 | A pure desire could be criticised if it were based on a false belief [Smith,M] |
| 23736 | A person can have a desire without feeling it [Smith,M] |
| 23735 | Subjects may be fallible about the desires which explain their actions [Smith,M] |
| 23738 | Humeans (unlike their opponents) say that desires and judgements can separate [Smith,M] |
| 23733 | Motivating reasons are psychological, while normative reasons are external [Smith,M] |
| 23740 | Humeans take maximising desire satisfaction as the normative reasons for actions [Smith,M] |
| 23745 | We cannot expect even fully rational people to converge on having the same desires for action [Smith,M] |
| 23731 | 'Externalists' say moral judgements are not reasons, and maybe not even motives [Smith,M] |
| 23732 | A person could make a moral judgement without being in any way motivated by it [Smith,M] |
| 23729 | Moral internalism says a judgement of rightness is thereby motivating [Smith,M] |
| 23730 | 'Rationalism' says the rightness of an action is a reason to perform it [Smith,M] |
| 23727 | Expressivists count attitudes as 'moral' if they concern features of things, rather than their mere existence [Smith,M] |
| 23741 | Is valuing something a matter of believing or a matter of desiring? [Smith,M] |
| 3049 | The chief good is indifference to what lies midway between virtue and vice [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 3549 | Ariston says rules are useless for the virtuous and the non-virtuous [Ariston, by Annas] |
| 16558 | Laws of nature have very little application in biology [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |