27 ideas
9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
17954 | Essence is a thing's necessities, but what about its possibilities (which may not be realised)? [Vetter] |
12699 | A body would be endless disunited parts, if it did not have a unifying form or soul [Leibniz] |
12700 | Form or soul gives unity and duration; matter gives multiplicity and change [Leibniz] |
17953 | Real definition fits abstracta, but not individual concrete objects like Socrates [Vetter] |
17952 | Modal accounts make essence less mysterious, by basing them on the clearer necessity [Vetter] |
17959 | Metaphysical necessity is even more deeply empirical than Kripke has argued [Vetter] |
17955 | Possible worlds allow us to talk about degrees of possibility [Vetter] |
17957 | Maybe possibility is constituted by potentiality [Vetter] |
8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
12736 | If we understand God and his choices, we have a priori knowledge of contingent truths [Leibniz, by Garber] |
17958 | The apparently metaphysically possible may only be epistemically possible [Vetter] |
17956 | Closeness of worlds should be determined by the intrinsic nature of relevant objects [Vetter] |
8424 | Determinism says there can't be two identical worlds up to a time, with identical laws, which then differ [Lewis] |
12698 | Every body contains a kind of sense and appetite, or a soul [Leibniz] |
8420 | A proposition is a set of possible worlds where it is true [Lewis] |
8405 | A theory of causation should explain why cause precedes effect, not take it for granted [Lewis, by Field,H] |
8427 | I reject making the direction of causation axiomatic, since that takes too much for granted [Lewis] |
10392 | It is just individious discrimination to pick out one cause and label it as 'the' cause [Lewis] |
8419 | The modern regularity view says a cause is a member of a minimal set of sufficient conditions [Lewis] |
8421 | Regularity analyses could make c an effect of e, or an epiphenomenon, or inefficacious, or pre-empted [Lewis] |
17525 | The counterfactual view says causes are necessary (rather than sufficient) for their effects [Lewis, by Bird] |
17524 | Lewis has basic causation, counterfactuals, and a general ancestral (thus handling pre-emption) [Lewis, by Bird] |
8397 | Counterfactual causation implies all laws are causal, which they aren't [Tooley on Lewis] |
8423 | My counterfactual analysis applies to particular cases, not generalisations [Lewis] |
8426 | One event causes another iff there is a causal chain from first to second [Lewis] |
4795 | 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] |