display all the ideas for this combination of texts
6 ideas
15559 | Does a good explanation produce understanding? That claim is just empty [Lewis] |
Full Idea: It is said that a good explanation ought to produce understanding, ...but this just says that a good explanation produces possession of that which it provide, so this desideratum is empty. It adds nothing to our understanding of explanation. | |
From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], V) | |
A reaction: I am not convinced by this dismissal. If you are looking for a test of whether an explanation is good, the announcement that the participants feel they have achieved a good understanding sounds like success. |
15556 | Science may well pursue generalised explanation, rather than laws [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The pursuit of general explanations may be very much more widespread in science than the pursuit of general laws. | |
From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], IV) | |
A reaction: Nice. I increasingly think that the main target of all enquiry is ever-widening generality, with no need to aspire to universality. |
15558 | A good explanation is supposed to show that the event had to happen [Lewis] |
Full Idea: It is said that a good explanation ought to show that the explanandum event had to happen, given the laws and circumstances. | |
From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], V) | |
A reaction: I cautiously go along with this view. Given that there are necessities in nature (a long story), we should aim to reveal them. There is no higher aspiration open to us than successful explanation. Lewis says good explanations can reveal falsehoods. |
4809 | Lewis endorses the thesis that all explanation of singular events is causal explanation [Lewis, by Psillos] |
Full Idea: Lewis endorses the thesis that all explanation of singular events is causal explanation. | |
From: report of David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation p.237 | |
A reaction: It is hard to challenge this. The assumption is that only nomological and causal explanations are possible, and the former are unobtainable for singular events. |
14321 | To explain an event is to provide some information about its causal history [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Here is my main thesis: to explain an event is to provide some information about its causal history. | |
From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], II) | |
A reaction: The obvious thought is that you might provide some tiny and barely relevant part of that causal history, such as a bird perched on the Titanic's iceberg. So how do we distinguish the 'important' causal information? |
15975 | Can the qualities of a body be split into two groups, where the smaller explains the larger? [Alexander,P] |
Full Idea: Is there any way of separating the qualities that bodies appear to have into two groups, one as small as possible and the other as large as possible, such that the smaller group can plausibly be used to explain the larger? | |
From: Peter Alexander (Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles [1985], 5.02) | |
A reaction: Alexander implies that this is a question Locke asked himself. This is pretty close to what I take to be the main question for essentialism, though I am cautious about couching it in terms of groups of qualities. I think this was Aristotle's question. |