6 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. |
| 15998 | Perfect love is not in spite of imperfections; the imperfections must be loved as well [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: To love another in spite of his weaknesses and errors and imperfections is not perfect love. No, to love is to find him lovable in spite of, and together with, his weaknesses and errors and imperfections. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Works of Love [1847], p.158) | |
| A reaction: A true romantic at heart, Kierkegaard ideally posits perfect love as unconditional love, and not just of good attributes, predicates and conditions. However, the real question for both me and Kierkegaard is, is perfect love desirable or even possible?[SY] |
| 16591 | Prime matter is nothing but its parts [Vanini] |
| Full Idea: The whole of prime matter, considered as prime matter, is nothing other than its parts. | |
| From: Julio Cesare Vanini (Amphitheatrum [1615], Ex 5:p.28), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 03.2 | |
| A reaction: This is a late scholastic writer rejecting the traditional (and obscure) prime matter with the new corpuscularian approach. It signals the end of the Greek concept of matter. |