19 ideas
| 12772 | Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise [Fraassen] |
| 12771 | Is it likely that a successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? [Fraassen] |
| 12773 | Analytic philosophy has an exceptional arsenal of critical tools [Fraassen] |
| 12770 | We may end up with a huge theory of carefully constructed falsehoods [Fraassen] |
| 15201 | That Queen Anne is dead is a 'general fact', not a fact about Queen Anne [Prior,AN] |
| 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] |
| 12769 | Inference to best explanation contains all sorts of hidden values [Fraassen] |
| 12768 | We accept many scientific theories without endorsing them as true [Fraassen] |
| 14387 | Rather than dispositions, functions may be the element that brought a thing into existence [Leuridan] |
| 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] |
| 22899 | 'Thank goodness that's over' is not like 'thank goodness that happened on Friday' [Prior,AN] |