48 ideas
19504 | My modus ponens might be your modus tollens [Pritchard,D] |
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] |
19503 | An improbable lottery win can occur in a nearby possible world [Pritchard,D] |
13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
19505 | Moore begs the question, or just offers another view, or uses 'know' wrongly [Pritchard,D, by PG] |
19499 | We can have evidence for seeing a zebra, but no evidence for what is entailed by that [Pritchard,D] |
19500 | Favouring: an entailment will give better support for the first belief than reason to deny the second [Pritchard,D] |
19502 | Maybe knowledge just needs relevant discriminations among contrasting cases [Pritchard,D] |
19498 | Epistemic internalism usually says justification must be accessible by reflection [Pritchard,D] |
19506 | Externalism is better than internalism in dealing with radical scepticism [Pritchard,D] |
19496 | Disjunctivism says perceptual justification must be both factual and known by the agent [Pritchard,D] |
19497 | Metaphysical disjunctivism says normal perceptions and hallucinations are different experiences [Pritchard,D] |
19495 | Epistemic externalism struggles to capture the idea of epistemic responsibility [Pritchard,D] |
19501 | We assess error against background knowledge, but that is just what radical scepticism challenges [Pritchard,D] |
19507 | Radical scepticism is merely raised, and is not a response to worrying evidence [Pritchard,D] |
13054 | Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon] |
13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
13055 | Good induction needs 'total evidence' - the absence at the time of any undermining evidence [Salmon] |
13046 | Scientific explanation is not reducing the unfamiliar to the familiar [Salmon] |
13058 | Why-questions can seek evidence as well as explanation [Salmon] |
13064 | The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon] |
13050 | The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon] |
13059 | Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [Salmon] |
13049 | We must distinguish true laws because they (unlike accidental generalizations) explain things [Salmon] |
13051 | Deductive-nomological explanations will predict, and their predictions will explain [Salmon] |
13053 | A law is not enough for explanation - we need information about what makes a difference [Salmon] |
13061 | Flagpoles explain shadows, and not vice versa, because of temporal ordering [Salmon] |
13045 | Explanation at the quantum level will probably be by entirely new mechanisms [Salmon] |
13062 | Does an item have a function the first time it occurs? [Salmon] |
13063 | Explanations reveal the mechanisms which produce the facts [Salmon] |
13060 | Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? [Salmon] |
13056 | Statistical explanation needs relevance, not high probability [Salmon] |
13057 | Think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies [Salmon] |
8424 | Determinism says there can't be two identical worlds up to a time, with identical laws, which then differ [Lewis] |
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] |