33 ideas
| 7454 | Gassendi is the first great empiricist philosopher [Hacking] |
| 9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
| 7447 | Probability was fully explained between 1654 and 1812 [Hacking] |
| 7448 | Probability is statistical (behaviour of chance devices) or epistemological (belief based on evidence) [Hacking] |
| 7449 | Epistemological probability based either on logical implications or coherent judgments [Hacking] |
| 8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
| 7450 | In the medieval view, only deduction counted as true evidence [Hacking] |
| 7451 | Formerly evidence came from people; the new idea was that things provided evidence [Hacking] |
| 7452 | An experiment is a test, or an adventure, or a diagnosis, or a dissection [Hacking, by PG] |
| 7459 | Follow maths for necessary truths, and jurisprudence for contingent truths [Hacking] |
| 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] |
| 8239 | If the King likes music then there is hope for the state [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 23398 | Human nature is naturally compassionate and good (as a 'sprout'), but people may not be good [Mengzi (Mencius), by Norden] |
| 23400 | Righteousness is extending the unthinkable, to reveal what must be done [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 23399 | Each correct feeling relies on an underlying virtue [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 8235 | Should a coward who ran fifty paces from a battle laugh at another who ran a hundred? [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 8240 | A true king shares his pleasure with the people [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 8237 | Extend the treatment of the old and young in your family to the rest of society [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 8241 | Only put someone to death if the whole population believes it is deserved [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 8238 | Seeking peace through war is like looking for fish up a tree [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 8236 | Avoid the animals you are going to eat, as it is hard once you have got to know them [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 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] |