Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mind and Its Place in Nature', 'works' and 'Explanation - Opening Address'

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15 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence
Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart]
We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart]
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 6. Inference in Perception
Broad rejects the inferential component of the representative theory [Broad, by Maund]
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 3. Evidentialism / a. Evidence
I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 1. Explanation / c. Direction of explanation
The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart]
Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / c. Explanations by coherence
Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart]
Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart]
Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / d. Consilience
An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / g. Causal explanations
If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / j. Explanations by reduction
Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / a. Preconditions for ethics
Levinas took 'first philosophy' to begin with seeing the vulnerable faces of others [Levinas, by Aho]
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 9. Communism
Levinas says Marxism is the replacement of individualist ethics, by solidarity and sociality [Levinas, by Critchley]
27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 1. Relativity / b. General relativity
Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart]