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All the ideas for 'Letters to Edward Stillingfleet', 'Aspects of Scientific Explanation' and 'works'

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8 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 6. Criterion for Existence

3534	To be is to have causal powers [Alexander,S]
	Full Idea: To be is to have causal powers.
	From: Samuel Alexander (works [1927], §4), quoted by Jaegwon Kim - Nonreductivist troubles with ment.causation
	A reaction: This is sometimes called Alexander's Principle. It is first found in Plato, and is popular with physicalists, but there are problem cases... A thing needs to exist in order to have causal powers. To exist is more than to be perceived.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 3. Individual Essences

15990	Every individual thing which exists has an essence, which is its internal constitution [Locke]
	Full Idea: I take essences to be in everything that internal constitution or frame for the modification of substance, which God in his wisdom gives to every particular creature, when he gives it a being; and such essences I grant there are in all things that exist.
	From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 1), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism
	A reaction: This is the clearest statement I have found of Locke's commitment to essences, for all his doubts about whether we can know such things. Alexander says (ch.13) Locke was reacting against scholastic essence, as pertaining to species.

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 1. Certainty

15994	If it is knowledge, it is certain; if it isn't certain, it isn't knowledge [Locke]
	Full Idea: What reaches to knowledge, I think may be called certainty; and what comes short of certainty, I think cannot be knowledge.
	From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 2), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism
	A reaction: I much prefer that fallibilist approach offered by the pragmatists. Knowledge is well-supported belief which seems (and is agreed) to be true, but there is a small shadow of doubt hanging over all of it.

14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 4. Prediction

22179	Explanatory facts also predict, and predictive facts also explain [Hempel, by Okasha]
	Full Idea: Hempel said every scientific explanation is potentially a prediction - it would have predicted the phenomenon in question, had it not already been known. But also the information used to make a prediction is potentially an explanation.
	From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965]) by Samir Okasha - Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) 3
	A reaction: Sounds too neatly glib to be quite true. If you explain a single event there is nothing to predict. You might predict accurately from a repetitive pattern, with no understanding at all of the pattern.

14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / e. Lawlike explanations

6755	For Hempel, explanations are deductive-nomological or probabilistic-statistical [Hempel, by Bird]
	Full Idea: Hempel proposes that explanations involve covering laws and antecedent conditions; this view (the 'covering law' view) has two versions, the deductive-nomological model and the probabilistic-statistical model of explanation.
	From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.2
	A reaction: The obvious problem with this approach, it seem to me, is that the laws themselves need explanation, and I don't see how a law can be foundational unless there is a divine law-giver. Are the laws arbitrary and axiomatic?

17083	The covering-law model is for scientific explanation; historical explanation is quite different [Hempel]
	Full Idea: To put forward the covering-law models of scientific explanation is not to deny that there are other contexts in which we speak of explanation. ….That it does not fit explaining the rules of Hanoverian succession is to miss the intent of our model.
	From: Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965], p. 412-3), quoted by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 1
	A reaction: Important to get that clear. It then requires a clear demarcation between science and the rest, and it had better not rule out biology because it is having a love affair with physics.

14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / g. Causal explanations

13052	Hempel rejects causation as part of explanation [Hempel, by Salmon]
	Full Idea: Hempel explicitly rejects the idea that causality plays any essential explanatory role.
	From: report of Carl Hempel (Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965], p.352) by Wesley Salmon - Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1.1
	A reaction: Hempel champions the 'covering-law' model of explanation. It strikes me that Hempel is so utterly wrong about this that his views aren't even a candidate for correctness, but then for a long time his views were orthodoxy.

17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 6. Epiphenomenalism

3398	Epiphenomenalism makes the mind totally pointless [Alexander,S]
	Full Idea: Epiphenomenalism supposes something to exist in nature which has nothing to do and no purpose to serve.
	From: Samuel Alexander (works [1927]), quoted by Jaegwon Kim - Philosophy of Mind p.129
	A reaction: An objection, but not, I think, a strong one. The fact, for example, that sweat is shiny is the result of good evolutionary reasons, but I cannot think of any purpose which it serves. All events which are purposeful are likely to have side-effects.