50 ideas
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| 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] |
| 13050 | The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon] |
| 13059 | Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [Salmon] |
| 13064 | The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon] |
| 14366 | An explanation is a table of statistical information [Salmon, by Strevens] |
| 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] |
| 20761 | If existence is absurd it can never have a meaning [Beauvoir] |
| 23125 | Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik] |
| 23126 | Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik] |
| 23132 | Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik] |
| 23128 | The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik] |
| 23142 | People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik] |
| 23143 | Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik] |
| 23141 | Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik] |
| 23124 | Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik] |
| 23127 | Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik] |
| 23138 | Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik] |
| 23129 | Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik] |
| 23133 | Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik] |
| 23139 | Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik] |
| 23135 | Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik] |
| 23140 | Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik] |
| 20746 | One is not born, but rather becomes a woman [Beauvoir] |
| 23130 | Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik] |
| 23131 | Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik] |
| 23136 | Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik] |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |
| 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] |