39 ideas
| 19335 | Reasonings have a natural ordering in God's understanding, but only a temporal order in ours [Leibniz] |
| 8368 | A correct definition is what can be substituted without loss of meaning [Ducasse] |
| 9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
| 8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
| 19367 | Saying we must will whatever we decide to will leads to an infinite regress [Leibniz] |
| 8424 | Determinism says there can't be two identical worlds up to a time, with identical laws, which then differ [Lewis] |
| 19351 | Perfections of soul subordinate the body, but imperfections of soul submit to the body [Leibniz] |
| 8420 | A proposition is a set of possible worlds where it is true [Lewis] |
| 19331 | Will is an inclination to pursue something good [Leibniz] |
| 19346 | Most people facing death would happily re-live a similar life, with just a bit of variety [Leibniz] |
| 19340 | Metaphysical evil is imperfection; physical evil is suffering; moral evil is sin [Leibniz] |
| 19366 | You can't assess moral actions without referring to the qualities of character that produce them [Leibniz] |
| 8367 | Causation is defined in terms of a single sequence, and constant conjunction is no part of it [Ducasse] |
| 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] |
| 8372 | We see what is in common between causes to assign names to them, not to perceive them [Ducasse] |
| 8369 | Causes are either sufficient, or necessary, or necessitated, or contingent upon [Ducasse] |
| 8373 | When a brick and a canary-song hit a window, we ignore the canary if we are interested in the breakage [Ducasse] |
| 8370 | A cause is a change which occurs close to the effect and just before it [Ducasse] |
| 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] |
| 8371 | Recurrence is only relevant to the meaning of law, not to the meaning of cause [Ducasse] |
| 8421 | Regularity analyses could make c an effect of e, or an epiphenomenon, or inefficacious, or pre-empted [Lewis] |
| 8374 | We are interested in generalising about causes and effects purely for practical purposes [Ducasse] |
| 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] |
| 19326 | God must be intelligible, to select the actual world from the possibilities [Leibniz] |
| 19327 | The intelligent cause must be unique and all-perfect, to handle all the interconnected possibilities [Leibniz] |
| 19344 | God prefers men to lions, but might not exterminate lions to save one man [Leibniz] |
| 19330 | If justice is arbitrary, or fixed but not observed, or not human justice, this undermines God [Leibniz] |
| 19325 | God is the first reason of things; our experiences are contingent, and contain no necessity [Leibniz] |
| 19329 | The laws of physics are wonderful evidence of an intelligent and free being [Leibniz] |
| 19437 | Prayers are useful, because God foresaw them in his great plan [Leibniz] |
| 19337 | How can an all-good, wise and powerful being allow evil, sin and apparent injustice? [Leibniz] |
| 19345 | Being confident of God's goodness, we disregard the apparent local evils in the visible world [Leibniz] |