12 ideas
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. |
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. |
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. |
3444 | If actions are not caused by other events, and are not causeless, they must be caused by the person [Chisholm] |
Full Idea: If the action is not caused by some other event, and it is not causeless, this leaves the possibility that it is caused by something else instead, and this something can only be the agent, the man. | |
From: Roderick Chisholm (Human Freedom and the Self [1964], p.28) |
9268 | If free will miraculously interrupts causation, animals might do that; why would we want to do it? [Frankfurt on Chisholm] |
Full Idea: Chisholm holds the quaint doctrine that human freedom entails an absence of causal determination; a free action is a miracle. This gives no basis for doubting that animals have such freedom; and why would we care whether we can interrupt the causal order? | |
From: comment on Roderick Chisholm (Human Freedom and the Self [1964]) by Harry G. Frankfurt - Freedom of the Will and concept of a person §IV | |
A reaction: [compressed] Chisholm is the spokesman for 'agent causation', Frankfurt for freedom as second-level volitions. I'm with Frankfurt. The belief in 'agents' and 'free will' may sound plausible, until the proposal is spelled out in causal terms. |
3446 | For Hobbes (but not for Kant) a person's actions can be deduced from their desires and beliefs [Chisholm] |
Full Idea: According to Hobbes, if we fully know what a man desires and believes, and we know the state of his physical stimuli, we may logically deduce what he will try to do. But Kant says no such statements can ever imply what a man will do. | |
From: Roderick Chisholm (Human Freedom and the Self [1964], p.32) |
3443 | Desires may rule us, but are we responsible for our desires? [Chisholm] |
Full Idea: If a flood of desires causes a weak-willed man to give in to temptation, …the question now becomes, is he responsible for the beliefs and desires he happens to have? | |
From: Roderick Chisholm (Human Freedom and the Self [1964], p.25) |
3442 | Responsibility seems to conflict with events being either caused or not caused [Chisholm] |
Full Idea: The free will problem is that humans seem to be responsible, but this seems to conflict with the idea that every event is caused by some other event, and it also conflicts with the view that the action is not caused at all. | |
From: Roderick Chisholm (Human Freedom and the Self [1964], p.24) |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
3445 | Causation among objects relates either events or states [Chisholm] |
Full Idea: Between natural objects we may say that causation is a relation between events or states of affairs. | |
From: Roderick Chisholm (Human Freedom and the Self [1964], p.28) |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |