Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Causation', 'The Epistemology of Essentialist Claims' and 'The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme'

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24 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 12. Rejecting Truthmakers
Saying truths fit experience adds nothing to truth; nothing makes sentences true [Davidson]
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 2. Powers as Basic
If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 3. Individual Essences
Only individuals have essences, so numbers (as a higher type based on classes) lack them [McMichael]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 9. Essence and Properties
Essences are the interesting necessary properties resulting from a thing's own peculiar nature [McMichael]
Maybe essential properties have to be intrinsic, as well as necessary? [McMichael]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
Essentialism is false, because it implies the existence of necessary singular propositions [McMichael]
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 9. Counterfactuals
For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 5. Empiricism Critique
Without the dualism of scheme and content, not much is left of empiricism [Davidson]
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 6. Relativism Critique
Different points of view make sense, but they must be plotted on a common background [Davidson]
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 6. Determinism / a. Determinism
Determinism says there can't be two identical worlds up to a time, with identical laws, which then differ [Lewis]
19. Language / D. Propositions / 2. Abstract Propositions / b. Propositions as possible worlds
A proposition is a set of possible worlds where it is true [Lewis]
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / b. Indeterminate translation
Criteria of translation give us the identity of conceptual schemes [Davidson]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 5. Direction of causation
A theory of causation should explain why cause precedes effect, not take it for granted [Lewis, by Field,H]
I reject making the direction of causation axiomatic, since that takes too much for granted [Lewis]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / d. Selecting the cause
It is just individious discrimination to pick out one cause and label it as 'the' cause [Lewis]
The modern regularity view says a cause is a member of a minimal set of sufficient conditions [Lewis]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 9. General Causation / a. Constant conjunction
Regularity analyses could make c an effect of e, or an epiphenomenon, or inefficacious, or pre-empted [Lewis]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 9. General Causation / c. Counterfactual causation
The counterfactual view says causes are necessary (rather than sufficient) for their effects [Lewis, by Bird]
Lewis has basic causation, counterfactuals, and a general ancestral (thus handling pre-emption) [Lewis, by Bird]
Counterfactual causation implies all laws are causal, which they aren't [Tooley on Lewis]
My counterfactual analysis applies to particular cases, not generalisations [Lewis]
One event causes another iff there is a causal chain from first to second [Lewis]
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 5. Laws from Universals
Individuals enter into laws only through their general qualities and relations [McMichael]
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 9. Counterfactual Claims
Lewis's account of counterfactuals is fine if we know what a law of nature is, but it won't explain the latter [Cohen,LJ on Lewis]