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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Our Knowledge of the External World' and 'A Powerful Particulars View of Causation'

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2 ideas

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism
Indirect realists are cautious about the manifest image, and prefer the scientific image [Ingthorsson]
     Full Idea: The indirect realist regards the manifest image with scepticism and contrasts it to the scientific image.
     From: R.D. Ingthorsson (A Powerful Particulars View of Causation [2021], 8.13)
     A reaction: This is why indirect realism is the best view for a realist who largely accepts the authority of science, Philosophers can wallow in the manifest image all they like (and most of them seem to love it), but truth is in the scientific image.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / d. Negative facts
A positive and negative fact have the same constituents; their difference is primitive [Russell]
     Full Idea: It must not be supposed that a negative fact contains a constituent corresponding to the word 'not'. It contains no more constituents than a positive fact of the correlative positive form. The differenece between the two forms is ultimate and irreducible.
     From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], VIII.279), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 41 'Neg'
     A reaction: ['Harvard Lectures'] The audience disliked this. How does one fact exclude the other fact? Potter asks whether absence is a fact, and whether an absence can be a truthmaker.