23 ideas
| 1749 | If all laws were abolished, philosophers would still live as they do now [Aristippus elder] |
| 12790 | Generalisations must be invariant to explain anything [Leuridan] |
| 12789 | Biological functions are explained by disposition, or by causal role [Leuridan] |
| 14386 | Mechanisms are ontologically dependent on regularities [Leuridan] |
| 12787 | Mechanisms can't explain on their own, as their models rest on pragmatic regularities [Leuridan] |
| 14384 | We can show that regularities and pragmatic laws are more basic than mechanisms [Leuridan] |
| 14388 | Mechanisms must produce macro-level regularities, but that needs micro-level regularities [Leuridan] |
| 14389 | There is nothing wrong with an infinite regress of mechanisms and regularities [Leuridan] |
| 8353 | Freedom involves acting according to an idea [Anscombe] |
| 8352 | To believe in determinism, one must believe in a system which determines events [Anscombe] |
| 3558 | Only the Cyrenaics reject the idea of a final moral end [Aristippus elder, by Annas] |
| 5835 | The road of freedom is the surest route to happiness [Aristippus elder, by Xenophon] |
| 3018 | People who object to extravagant pleasures just love money [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1751 | Pleasure is the good, because we always seek it, it satisfies us, and its opposite is the most avoidable thing [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 1755 | Errors result from external influence, and should be corrected, not hated [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 14387 | Rather than dispositions, functions may be the element that brought a thing into existence [Leuridan] |
| 8351 | With diseases we easily trace a cause from an effect, but we cannot predict effects [Anscombe] |
| 4777 | The word 'cause' is an abstraction from a group of causal terms in a language (scrape, push..) [Anscombe] |
| 10363 | Causation is relative to how we describe the primary relata [Anscombe, by Schaffer,J] |
| 8350 | Since Mill causation has usually been explained by necessary and sufficient conditions [Anscombe] |
| 14382 | Pragmatic laws allow prediction and explanation, to the extent that reality is stable [Leuridan] |
| 14385 | Strict regularities are rarely discovered in life sciences [Leuridan] |
| 14383 | A 'law of nature' is just a regularity, not some entity that causes the regularity [Leuridan] |