13048
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Good explications are exact, fruitful, simple and similar to the explicandum [Carnap, by Salmon]
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Full Idea:
Carnap's four criteria for giving a good explication are similarity to the explicandum, exactness, fruitfulness and simplicity.
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From:
report of Rudolph Carnap (Logical Foundations of Probability [1950], Ch.1) by Wesley Salmon - Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 0.1
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A reaction:
[compressed] Salmon's view is that this represents the old attitude, that the contribution of philosophy to explanation is the clarification of the key concepts. Carnap is, of course, a logical empiricist.
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12737
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Nature can be fully explained by final causes alone, or by efficient causes alone [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
All the phenomena of nature can be explained solely by final causes, exactly as if there were no efficient causes; and all the phenomena of nature can be explained solely by efficient causes, as if there were no final causes.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Definitiones cogitationesque metaphysicae [1678], A6.4.1403), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6
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A reaction:
Somewhat speculative (a virtue!), but it is interesting to see him suggesting that there might be two complete and satisfactory explanations, which never touched one another. I can't see Aristotle agreeing with that.
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