49 ideas
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| 5806 | Belief is the power of metarepresentation [Dretske] |
| 20945 | Belief is no more rational than is tasting and smelling [Hamann] |
| 5801 | A mouse hearing a piano played does not believe it, because it lacks concepts and understanding [Dretske] |
| 6445 | You have knowledge if you can rule out all the relevant alternatives to what you believe [Dretske, by DeRose] |
| 19544 | Closure says if you know P, and also know P implies Q, then you must know Q [Dretske] |
| 19545 | We needn't regret the implications of our regrets; regretting drinking too much implies the past is real [Dretske] |
| 19547 | Reasons for believing P may not transmit to its implication, Q [Dretske] |
| 19546 | Knowing by visual perception is not the same as knowing by implication [Dretske] |
| 19548 | The only way to preserve our homely truths is to abandon closure [Dretske] |
| 19549 | P may imply Q, but evidence for P doesn't imply evidence for Q, so closure fails [Dretske] |
| 19550 | We know past events by memory, but we don't know the past is real (an implication) by memory [Dretske] |
| 13054 | Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon] |
| 13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 5802 | Representations are in the head, but their content is not, as stories don't exist in their books [Dretske] |
| 5809 | Some activities are performed better without consciousness of them [Dretske] |
| 5808 | Qualia are just the properties objects are represented as having [Dretske] |
| 5803 | In a representational theory of mind, introspection is displaced perception [Dretske] |
| 5807 | Introspection is the same as the experience one is introspecting [Dretske] |
| 5805 | Introspection does not involve looking inwards [Dretske] |
| 5804 | A representational theory of the mind is an externalist theory of the mind [Dretske] |
| 5800 | All mental facts are representation, which consists of informational functions [Dretske] |
| 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] |
| 7666 | God is not a mathematician, but a poet [Hamann, by Berlin] |