81 ideas
| 19023 | Slippery slope arguments are challenges to show where a non-arbitrary boundary lies [Vetter] |
| 19033 | Deontic modalities are 'ought-to-be', for sentences, and 'ought-to-do' for predicates [Vetter] |
| 19032 | S5 is undesirable, as it prevents necessities from having contingent grounds [Vetter] |
| 19036 | The Barcan formula endorses either merely possible things, or makes the unactualised impossible [Vetter] |
| 19034 | The world is either a whole made of its parts, or a container which contains its parts [Vetter] |
| 19015 | Grounding can be between objects ('relational'), or between sentences ('operational') [Vetter] |
| 19012 | The Humean supervenience base entirely excludes modality [Vetter] |
| 19024 | A determinate property must be a unique instance of the determinable class [Vetter] |
| 17954 | Essence is a thing's necessities, but what about its possibilities (which may not be realised)? [Vetter] |
| 19021 | I have an 'iterated ability' to learn the violin - that is, the ability to acquire that ability [Vetter] |
| 19016 | We should think of dispositions as 'to do' something, not as 'to do something, if ....' [Vetter] |
| 19017 | Nomological dispositions (unlike ordinary ones) have to be continually realised [Vetter] |
| 19014 | How can spatiotemporal relations be understood in dispositional terms? [Vetter] |
| 17953 | Real definition fits abstracta, but not individual concrete objects like Socrates [Vetter] |
| 17952 | Modal accounts make essence less mysterious, by basing them on the clearer necessity [Vetter] |
| 19030 | Why does origin matter more than development; why are some features of origin more important? [Vetter] |
| 19040 | We take origin to be necessary because we see possibilities as branches from actuality [Vetter] |
| 19008 | The modern revival of necessity and possibility treated them as special cases of quantification [Vetter] |
| 19029 | It is necessary that p means that nothing has the potentiality for not-p [Vetter] |
| 17959 | Metaphysical necessity is even more deeply empirical than Kripke has argued [Vetter] |
| 17957 | Maybe possibility is constituted by potentiality [Vetter] |
| 17955 | Possible worlds allow us to talk about degrees of possibility [Vetter] |
| 19028 | Possibilities are potentialities of actual things, but abstracted from their location [Vetter] |
| 19010 | All possibility is anchored in the potentiality of individual objects [Vetter] |
| 19013 | Possibility is a generalised abstraction from the potentiality of its bearer [Vetter] |
| 19019 | Potentiality is the common genus of dispositions, abilities, and similar properties [Vetter] |
| 19022 | Water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break (by freezing) [Vetter] |
| 23705 | A potentiality may not be a disposition, but dispositions are strong potentialities [Vetter, by Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 19009 | Potentiality does the explaining in metaphysics; we don't explain it away or reduce it [Vetter] |
| 19027 | Potentiality logic is modal system T. Stronger systems collapse iterations, and necessitate potentials [Vetter] |
| 19025 | Potentialities may be too weak to count as 'dispositions' [Vetter] |
| 19031 | There are potentialities 'to ...', but possibilities are 'that ....'. [Vetter] |
| 17958 | The apparently metaphysically possible may only be epistemically possible [Vetter] |
| 17956 | Closeness of worlds should be determined by the intrinsic nature of relevant objects [Vetter] |
| 19011 | If worlds are sets of propositions, how do we know which propositions are genuinely possible? [Vetter] |
| 19037 | Are there possible objects which nothing has ever had the potentiality to produce? [Vetter] |
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| 13054 | Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon] |
| 22189 | Why abandon a theory if you don't have a better one? [Gorham] |
| 22190 | If a theory is more informative it is less probable [Gorham] |
| 22192 | Is Newton simpler with universal simultaneity, or Einstein simpler without absolute time? [Gorham] |
| 22194 | Structural Realism says mathematical structures persist after theory rejection [Gorham] |
| 22195 | Structural Realists must show the mathematics is both crucial and separate [Gorham] |
| 13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
| 22197 | Theories aren't just for organising present experience if they concern the past or future [Gorham] |
| 22196 | For most scientists their concepts are not just useful, but are meant to be true and accurate [Gorham] |
| 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] |
| 19018 | Explanations by disposition are more stable and reliable than those be external circumstances [Vetter] |
| 19020 | Grounding is a kind of explanation, suited to metaphysics [Vetter] |
| 22193 | Consilience makes the component sciences more likely [Gorham] |
| 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] |
| 22198 | Aristotelian physics has circular celestial motion and linear earthly motion [Gorham] |
| 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] |
| 19039 | The view that laws are grounded in substance plus external necessity doesn't suit dispositionalism [Vetter] |
| 19038 | Dispositional essentialism allows laws to be different, but only if the supporting properties differ [Vetter] |
| 17993 | Laws are relations of kinds, quantities and qualities, supervening on the essences of a domain [Vetter] |
| 19026 | If time is symmetrical between past and future, why do they look so different? [Vetter] |
| 19041 | Presentists explain cross-temporal relations using surrogate descriptions [Vetter] |