Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'On the Moral and Legal State of Abortion', 'Space, Time and Deity (2 vols)' and 'Aspects of Scientific Explanation'

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6 ideas

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.

16. Persons / A. Concept of a Person / 1. Existence of Persons

20618	Persons must be conscious, reasoning, motivated, communicative, self-aware [Warren, by Tuckness/Wolf]
	Full Idea: Suggested characteristics of personhood: consciousness (esp. of pain); reasoning and problem solving; self-motivated activity; varied communication on many topics; self-concepts and self-awareness.
	From: report of Mary Anne Warren (On the Moral and Legal State of Abortion [1973], p.55) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 8 'Standing'
	A reaction: [a 'famous' article] A number of non-human animals come very close to passing these tests. I suspect the complex communication is only in there to disqualify them from getting the full certificate. (But she wrote on animal rights).

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

14494	Epiphenomenalism is like a pointless nobleman, kept for show, but soon to be abolished [Alexander,S]
	Full Idea: Epiphenomenalism supposes something to exist in nature which has nothing to do, no purpose to serve, a species of noblesse which depends on the work of its inferiors, but is kept for show and might as well, and undoubtedly would in time be abolished.
	From: Samuel Alexander (Space, Time and Deity (2 vols) [1927], 2:8), quoted by Jaegwon Kim - Nonreductivist troubles with ment.causation IV
	A reaction: Wonderful! Kim quotes this, and labels the implicit slogan (to be real is to have causal powers) 'Alexander's Dictum'. All the examples given of epiphenomena are only causally inert within a defined system, but they act causally outside the system.