61 ideas
5750 | Consistency is modal, saying propositions are consistent if they could be true together [Melia] |
22353 | One view says objectivity is making a successful claim which captures the facts [Reiss/Sprenger] |
22356 | An absolute scientific picture of reality must not involve sense experience, which is perspectival [Reiss/Sprenger] |
22359 | Topic and application involve values, but can evidence and theory choice avoid them? [Reiss/Sprenger] |
22360 | The Value-Free Ideal in science avoids contextual values, but embraces epistemic values [Reiss/Sprenger] |
22362 | Value-free science needs impartial evaluation, theories asserting facts, and right motivation [Reiss/Sprenger] |
22364 | Thermometers depend on the substance used, and none of them are perfect [Reiss/Sprenger] |
23000 | Vicious regresses force you to another level; non-vicious imply another level [Baron/Miller] |
5737 | Predicate logic has connectives, quantifiers, variables, predicates, equality, names and brackets [Melia] |
5744 | First-order predicate calculus is extensional logic, but quantified modal logic is intensional (hence dubious) [Melia] |
5740 | Second-order logic needs second-order variables and quantification into predicate position [Melia] |
5741 | If every model that makes premises true also makes conclusion true, the argument is valid [Melia] |
23024 | A traveller takes a copy of a picture into the past, gives it the artist, who then creates the original! [Baron/Miller] |
23008 | Grounding is intended as a relation that fits dependences between things [Baron/Miller] |
5736 | No sort of plain language or levels of logic can express modal facts properly [Melia] |
5735 | Maybe names and predicates can capture any fact [Melia] |
23018 | How does a changing object retain identity or have incompatible properties over time? [Baron/Miller] |
5746 | The Identity of Indiscernibles is contentious for qualities, and trivial for non-qualities [Melia] |
5738 | We may be sure that P is necessary, but is it necessarily necessary? [Melia] |
5732 | 'De re' modality is about things themselves, 'de dicto' modality is about propositions [Melia] |
5739 | Sometimes we want to specify in what ways a thing is possible [Melia] |
5734 | Possible worlds make it possible to define necessity and counterfactuals without new primitives [Melia] |
5742 | In possible worlds semantics the modal operators are treated as quantifiers [Melia] |
5743 | If possible worlds semantics is not realist about possible worlds, logic becomes merely formal [Melia] |
5749 | Possible worlds could be real as mathematics, propositions, properties, or like books [Melia] |
5751 | The truth of propositions at possible worlds are implied by the world, just as in books [Melia] |
22357 | The 'experimenter's regress' says success needs reliability, which is only tested by success [Reiss/Sprenger] |
22365 | The Bayesian approach is explicitly subjective about probabilities [Reiss/Sprenger] |
5748 | We accept unverifiable propositions because of simplicity, utility, explanation and plausibility [Melia] |
23011 | Modern accounts of causation involve either processes or counterfactuals [Baron/Miller] |
23013 | The main process theory of causation says it is transference of mass, energy, momentum or charge [Baron/Miller] |
23014 | If causes are processes, what is causation by omission? (Distinguish legal from scientific causes?) [Baron/Miller] |
23015 | The counterfactual theory of causation handles the problem no matter what causes actually are [Baron/Miller] |
23016 | Counterfactual theories struggle with pre-emption by a causal back-up system [Baron/Miller] |
23009 | There is no second 'law' of thermodynamics; it just reflects probabilities of certain microstates [Baron/Miller] |
23002 | In relativity space and time depend on one's motion, but spacetime gives an invariant metric [Baron/Miller] |
22988 | The block universe theory says entities of all times exist, and time is the B-series [Baron/Miller] |
22991 | How can we know this is the present moment, if other times are real? [Baron/Miller] |
22992 | If we are actually in the past then we shouldn't experience time passing [Baron/Miller] |
22994 | Erzatz Presentism allows the existence of other times, with only the present 'actualised' [Baron/Miller] |
22998 | How do presentists explain relations between things existing at different times? [Baron/Miller] |
23017 | Presentism needs endurantism, because other theories imply most of the object doesn't exist [Baron/Miller] |
23023 | How can presentists move to the next future moment, if that doesn't exist? [Baron/Miller] |
22995 | Most of the sciences depend on the concept of time [Baron/Miller] |
22993 | For abstractionists past times might still exist, althought their objects don't [Baron/Miller] |
23001 | The error theory of time's passage says it is either a misdescription or a false inference [Baron/Miller] |
22999 | It is meaningless to measure the rate of time using time itself, and without a rate there is no flow [Baron/Miller] |
22986 | The C-series rejects A and B, and just sees times as order by betweenness, without direction [Baron/Miller] |
22996 | The A-series has to treat being past, present or future as properties [Baron/Miller] |
23007 | The B-series can have a direction, as long as it does not arise from temporal flow [Baron/Miller] |
23003 | Static theories cannot account for time's obvious asymmetry, so time must be dynamic [Baron/Miller] |
23004 | The direction of time is either primitive, or reducible to something else [Baron/Miller] |
23005 | The kaon does not seem to be time-reversal invariant, unlike the rest of nature [Baron/Miller] |
23006 | Maybe the past is just the direction of decreasing entropy [Baron/Miller] |
23010 | We could explain time's direction by causation: past is the direction of causes, future of effects [Baron/Miller] |
22989 | Static time theory presents change as one property at t1, and a different property at t2 [Baron/Miller] |
23020 | If a time traveller kills his youthful grandfather, he both exists and fails to exist [Baron/Miller] |
23022 | Presentism means there no existing past for a time traveller to visit [Baron/Miller] |
22987 | The past (unlike the future) is fixed, along with truths about it, by the existence of past objects [Baron/Miller] |
22990 | The moving spotlight says entities can have properties of being present, past or future [Baron/Miller] |
22997 | The present moment is a matter of existence, not of acquiring a property [Baron/Miller] |