92 ideas
| 23000 | Vicious regresses force you to another level; non-vicious imply another level [Baron/Miller] |
| 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] |
| 23018 | How does a changing object retain identity or have incompatible properties over time? [Baron/Miller] |
| 2730 | Because 'gold is malleable' is necessary does not mean that it is analytic [Audi,R] |
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| 2715 | Beliefs are based on perception, memory, introspection or reason [Audi,R] |
| 2735 | Could you have a single belief on its own? [Audi,R] |
| 2736 | We can make certain of what we know, so knowing does not entail certainty [Audi,R] |
| 2721 | If you gradually remove a book's sensory properties, what is left at the end? [Audi,R] |
| 2722 | Sense-data theory is indirect realism, but phenomenalism is direct irrealism [Audi,R] |
| 2728 | The concepts needed for a priori thought may come from experience [Audi,R] |
| 2727 | Red and green being exclusive colours seems to be rationally graspable but not analytic [Audi,R] |
| 2716 | To see something as a field, I obviously need the concept of a field [Audi,R] |
| 2717 | How could I see a field and believe nothing regarding it? [Audi,R] |
| 2720 | Sense-data (and the rival 'adverbial' theory) are to explain illusions and hallucinations [Audi,R] |
| 2719 | Sense data imply representative realism, possibly only representing primary qualities [Audi,R] |
| 2718 | Perception is first simple, then objectual (with concepts) and then propositional [Audi,R] |
| 2729 | Virtually all rationalists assert that we can have knowledge of synthetic a priori truths [Audi,R] |
| 2741 | The principles of justification have to be a priori [Audi,R] |
| 2725 | To remember something is to know it [Audi,R] |
| 2724 | I might remember someone I can't recall or image, by recognising them on meeting [Audi,R] |
| 2731 | Justification is either unanchored (infinite or circular), or anchored (in knowledge or non-knowledge) [Audi,R] |
| 2739 | Internalism about justification implies that there is a right to believe something [Audi,R] |
| 2732 | Maths may be consistent with observations, but not coherent [Audi,R] |
| 2733 | It is very hard to show how much coherence is needed for justification [Audi,R] |
| 2734 | A consistent madman could have a very coherent belief system [Audi,R] |
| 2738 | Consistent accurate prediction looks like knowledge without justified belief [Audi,R] |
| 2740 | A reliability theory of knowledge seems to involve truth as correspondence [Audi,R] |
| 2737 | 'Reliable' is a very imprecise term, and may even mean 'justified' [Audi,R] |
| 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] |
| 13050 | The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon] |
| 13064 | The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [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] |
| 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] |
| 17093 | Causation produces productive mechanisms; to understand the world, understand these mechanisms [Salmon] |
| 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] |
| 2726 | We can be ignorant about ourselves, for example, our desires and motives [Audi,R] |
| 20064 | Actions are not mere effects of reasons, but are under their control [Audi,R] |
| 23011 | Modern accounts of causation involve either processes or counterfactuals [Baron/Miller] |
| 8412 | A causal interaction is when two processes intersect, and correlated modifications persist afterwards [Salmon] |
| 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] |
| 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] |
| 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] |