42 ideas
| 21959 | Metaphysics is the most general attempt to make sense of things [Moore,AW] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics is the most general attempt to make sense of things. | |
| From: A.W. Moore (The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics [2012], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the first sentence of Moore's book, and a touchstone idea all the way through. It stands up well, because it says enough without committing to too much. I have to agree with it. It implies explanation as the key. I like generality too. |
| 15105 | F(x) walked into a bar. The barman said.. [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: F(x) walked into a bar. The barman said, 'Sorry, we don't cater for functions'. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12408 | Sartre to Waitress: Coffee with no cream, please... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Sartre to Waitress: Coffee with no cream, please. Waitress: Sorry, we're out of cream; would no milk do? | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12397 | Said Plato: 'The things that we feel... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Said Plato: 'The things that we feel/ Are not ontologically real,/ But just the excrescence/ Of numinous essence/ Our senses can never reveal.' [Basil Ransome-Davis] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Understanding is an extremely vague concept. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: True, I suppose, but we usually recognise understanding when we encounter it, and everybody has a pretty clear notion of an 'increase' in understanding. I suspect that the concept is perfectly clear, but we lack any scale for measuring it. |
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge 'that' is descriptive, and knowledge 'why' is explanatory, and it is the latter that provides scientific understanding of our world. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I agree, but of course, knowing 'why' may require a lot of knowing 'that'. People with extensive knowledge 'that' things are so tend to understand why something happens more readily than the rest of us ignoramuses. |
| 12399 | There was a young student called Fred... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: There was a young student called Fred,/ Who was questioned on Descartes and said:/ 'It's perfectly clear/ That I'm not really here,/ For I haven't a thought in my head.' [V.R. Ormerod] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12407 | Barman to Descartes: Would you like another drink?... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Barman to Descartes: Would you like another drink? Descartes: I think not (...and promptly vanishes) | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 20963 | A philosopher and his wife are out for a drive... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: A philosopher and his wife are out for a drive in the country. 'Oh look!' she says, 'Those sheep have been shorn.' 'Yes', says the philosopher, 'on this side'. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 21958 | Appearances are nothing beyond representations, which is transcendental ideality [Moore,AW] |
| Full Idea: Appearances in general are nothing outside our representations, which is just what we mean by transcendental ideality. | |
| From: A.W. Moore (The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics [2012], B535/A507) |
| 12402 | ..But if he's a student of Berkeley... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: (continued from 12401) ..But if he's a student of Berkeley,/ One thing will emerge, rather starkly,/ That he ought to believe/ What his senses perceive,/ No matter how dimly or darkly. [Leslie Johnson] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12404 | Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd.... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: (reply to 12403) Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd:/ I am always about in the Quad./ And that's why the tree/ Will continue to be,/ Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.' [anon] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12409 | The philosopher Berkeley once said.. [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher Berkeley once said/ In the dark to a maid in his bed:/ 'No perception, my dear,/ Means I'm not really here,/ But only a thought in your head.' [P.W.R. Foot] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12403 | There once was a man who said: 'God... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: There once was a man who said: 'God/ Must think it exceedingly odd/ If he finds that this tree/ Continues to be,/ When there's no-one about in the Quad.' [Ronald Knox] (reply in 12404) | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 14694 | "My dog's got synaesthesia." How does he smell? ..... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: "My dog's got synaesthesia." How does he smell? "Purple." | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12401 | A toper who spies in the distance... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: A toper who spies in the distance,/ Striped tigers, will get some assistance/ From reading Descartes,/ Who holds that it's part/ Of his duty to doubt their existence. ... [Leslie Johnson] - (continued in 12402) | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 13054 | Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Various kinds of correlations exist that provide excellent bases for prediction, but because no suitable causal relations exist (or are known), these correlations do not furnish explanation. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: There may be problem cases for the claim that all explanations are causal, but I certainly think that this idea is essentially right. Prediction can come from induction, but inductions may be true and yet baffling. |
| 13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: There is a centuries-old philosophical tradition, sometimes referred to by the name of 'instrumentalism', that has denied the claim that science has explanatory power. For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: [He quotes Coffa] Presumably it is just a matter of matching the world to the readings on the instruments, aiming at van Fraassen's 'empirical adequacy'. If there are no scientific explanations, does that mean that there are no explanations at all? Daft! |
| 13055 | Good induction needs 'total evidence' - the absence at the time of any undermining evidence [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Inductive logicians have a 'requirement of total evidence': induction is strong if 1) it has true premises, 2) it has correct inductive form, and 3) no additional evidence that would change the degree of support is available at the time. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: The evidence might be very close at hand, but not quite 'available' to the person doing the induction. |
| 13046 | Scientific explanation is not reducing the unfamiliar to the familiar [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: I reject the view that scientific explanation involves reduction of the unfamiliar to the familiar. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle sometimes seems to imply this account of explanation, and I would have to agree with Salmon's view of it. Aristotle is also, though, aware of real explanations, definitions and essences. People are 'familiar' with some peculiar things. |
| 13058 | Why-questions can seek evidence as well as explanation [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: There are evidence-seeking why-questions, as well as explanation-seeking why-questions. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Surely we would all prefer an explanation to mere evidence? It seems to me that they are all explanation-seeking, but that we are grateful for some evidence when no full explanation is available. Explanation renders evidence otiose. |
| 13050 | The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The 'inferential' conception of scientific explanation is the thesis that all legitimate scientific explanations are arguments of one sort or another. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that someone has to be persuaded of something, and hence seems a rather too pragmatic view. I presume an explanation might be no more than dumbly pointing at conclusive evidence of a cause. Man with smoking gun. |
| 13059 | Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Proponents of the ontic conception of explanation can say that explanations exist in the world as facts, or that they are reports of such facts (as opposed to the view of explanations as arguments, or as speech acts). | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I am strongly drawn to the ontic approach, but not sure whether we want facts, or reports of them. The facts are the causal nexus, but which parts of the nexus provide the main aspect of explanation? I'll vote for reports, for now. |
| 13064 | The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: There are three basic conceptions of scientific explanation - modal, epistemic, and ontic - which can be discerned in Aristotle, and that have persisted down the ages. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.1) |
| 13051 | Deductive-nomological explanations will predict, and their predictions will explain [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The deductive-nomological view has an explanation/prediction symmetry thesis - that a correct explanation could be a scientific prediction, and that any deductive prediction could serve as a deductive-nomological explanation. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Of course, not all predictions will explain, or vice versa. Weird regularities become predictable but remain baffling. Good explanations may be of unrepeatable events. It is the 'law' in the account that ties the two ends together. |
| 13053 | A law is not enough for explanation - we need information about what makes a difference [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: To provide an adequate explanation of any given fact, we need to provide information that is relevant to the occurrence of that fact - information that makes a difference to its occurrence. It is not enough to subsume it under a general law. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bromberger for this idea] Salmon is identifying this idea as the beginnings of trouble for the covering-law account of explanation, and it sounds exactly right. |
| 13049 | We must distinguish true laws because they (unlike accidental generalizations) explain things [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The problem is to distinguish between laws and accidental generalizations, for laws have explanatory force while accidental generalizations, even if they are true, do not. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [He is discussing Hempel and Oppenheim 1948] This seems obviously right, but I can only make sense of the explanatory power if we have identified the mechanism which requires the generalisation to continue in future cases. |
| 13061 | Flagpoles explain shadows, and not vice versa, because of temporal ordering [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The height of the flagpole explains the length of the shadow because the interaction between the sunlight and the flagpole occurs before the interaction between the sunlight and the ground. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: [Bromberger produced the flagpole example] This seems to be correct, and would apply to all physical cases, but there may still be cases of explanation which are not causal (in mathematics, for example). |
| 13045 | Explanation at the quantum level will probably be by entirely new mechanisms [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: My basic feeling about explanation in the quantum realm is that it will involve mechanisms, but mechanisms that are quite different from those that seem to work in the macrocosm. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Since I take most explanation to be by mechanisms (or some abstraction analogous to mechanisms), then I think this is probably right (rather than being by new 'laws'). |
| 13062 | Does an item have a function the first time it occurs? [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: In functional explanation, there is a disagreement over whether an item has a function the first time it occurs. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: This question arises particularly in evolutionary contexts, and would obviously not generally arise in the case of human artefacts. |
| 13063 | Explanations reveal the mechanisms which produce the facts [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: I favour an ontic conception of explanation, that explanations reveal the mechanisms, causal or other, that produce the facts we are trying to explain. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: [He also cites Coffa and Peter Railton] A structure may explain, and only be supported by causal powers, but it doesn't seem to be the causal powers that do the explaining. Is a peg fitting a hole explained causally? |
| 13060 | Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be one of the reasons why explanation must ultimately reside at the level of individual objects and events, rather than residing with generalisations and laws. |
| 13056 | Statistical explanation needs relevance, not high probability [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Statistical relevance, not high probability, is the key desideratum in statistical explanation. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is because the explanation will not ultimately be probabilistic at all, but mechanical and causal. Hence the link is what counts, which is the relevance. He notes that relevance needs two values instead of one high value. |
| 13057 | Think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps we should think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Coffa 1974 for this] I find this suggestion very appealing, as it connects up with dispositions and powers, which I take to be the building blocks of all explanation. It is, of course, easier to render frequencies numerically. |
| 12410 | There once was a man who said 'Damn!... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: There once was a man who said 'Damn!/ It is borne in upon me I am/ An engine that moves/ In predestinate grooves:/ I'm not even a bus, I'm a tram.' [M.E. Hare] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 9392 | How do behaviourists greet each other? [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: How do behaviourists greet each other? Hi - you're fine, how am I? | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12405 | 'If you're aristocratic,' said Nietzsche... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: 'If you're aristocratic,' said Nietzsche,/ 'It's thumbs up, you're OK. Pleased to mietzsche./ If you're working-class bores,/ It's thumbs down and up yours!/ If you don't know your place, then I'll tietzsche.' [Gerry Hamill] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 9391 | Why do anarchists drink herbal tea? [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Why do anarchists drink herbal tea? Because proper tea is theft. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 12400 | Cries the maid: 'You must marry me Hume!'... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Cries the maid: 'You must marry me Hume!'/ A statement that made David fume./ He said: 'In cause and effect,/ There is a defect;/ That it's mine you can only assume.' [P.W.R. Foot] | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 16527 | Causation - we all thought we knew it/ Till Hume came along and saw through it/…. [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: Causation - we all thought we knew it / Till Hume came along and saw through it / We notice that A / Follows B every day / And frankly that's all there is to it. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 17592 | The barman called 'Time!', and Augustine said..... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: The barman called 'Time!'. Augustine: 'I don't know what you mean, though I did before you said that'. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |
| 15208 | The past, present and future walked into a bar.... [Sommers,W] |
| Full Idea: The past, present and future walked into a bar. It was tense. | |
| From: Will Sommers (talk [2019]) |