51 ideas
| 19504 | My modus ponens might be your modus tollens [Pritchard,D] |
| 19503 | An improbable lottery win can occur in a nearby possible world [Pritchard,D] |
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| 19505 | Moore begs the question, or just offers another view, or uses 'know' wrongly [Pritchard,D, by PG] |
| 19499 | We can have evidence for seeing a zebra, but no evidence for what is entailed by that [Pritchard,D] |
| 19500 | Favouring: an entailment will give better support for the first belief than reason to deny the second [Pritchard,D] |
| 19502 | Maybe knowledge just needs relevant discriminations among contrasting cases [Pritchard,D] |
| 19498 | Epistemic internalism usually says justification must be accessible by reflection [Pritchard,D] |
| 19506 | Externalism is better than internalism in dealing with radical scepticism [Pritchard,D] |
| 19496 | Disjunctivism says perceptual justification must be both factual and known by the agent [Pritchard,D] |
| 19497 | Metaphysical disjunctivism says normal perceptions and hallucinations are different experiences [Pritchard,D] |
| 19495 | Epistemic externalism struggles to capture the idea of epistemic responsibility [Pritchard,D] |
| 19501 | We assess error against background knowledge, but that is just what radical scepticism challenges [Pritchard,D] |
| 19507 | Radical scepticism is merely raised, and is not a response to worrying evidence [Pritchard,D] |
| 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] |
| 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] |