31 ideas
| 19090 | If we can't check our language against experience, philosophy is just comparing beliefs and words [Rorty] |
| 2557 | Analytical philosophy seems to have little interest in how to tell a good analysis from a bad one [Rorty] |
| 2556 | Rational certainty may be victory in argument rather than knowledge of facts [Rorty] |
| 4726 | Rorty seems to view truth as simply being able to hold one's view against all comers [Rorty, by O'Grady] |
| 2549 | For James truth is "what it is better for us to believe" rather than a correct picture of reality [Rorty] |
| 2548 | If knowledge is merely justified belief, justification is social [Rorty] |
| 6599 | Knowing has no definable essence, but is a social right, found in the context of conversations [Rorty] |
| 2566 | You can't debate about whether to have higher standards for the application of words [Rorty] |
| 2553 | The mind is a property, or it is baffling [Rorty] |
| 2550 | Pain lacks intentionality; beliefs lack qualia [Rorty] |
| 2554 | Is intentionality a special sort of function? [Rorty] |
| 2565 | Nature has no preferred way of being represented [Rorty] |
| 2560 | Can meanings remain the same when beliefs change? [Rorty] |
| 2562 | A theory of reference seems needed to pick out objects without ghostly inner states [Rorty] |
| 2559 | Davidson's theory of meaning focuses not on terms, but on relations between sentences [Rorty] |
| 2558 | Since Hegel we have tended to see a human as merely animal if it is outside a society [Rorty] |
| 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] |
| 8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 17402 | Mendeleev saw three principles in nature: matter, force and spirit (where the latter seems to be essence) [Mendeleev, by Scerri] |
| 17399 | Elements don't survive in compounds, but the 'substance' of the element does [Mendeleev] |
| 17400 | Mendeleev focused on abstract elements, not simple substances, so he got to their essence [Mendeleev, by Scerri] |
| 17401 | Mendeleev had a view of elements which allowed him to overlook some conflicting observations [Mendeleev] |