38 ideas
15200 | How could change consist of a conjunction of changeless facts? [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |
14761 | Change is not just having two different qualities at different points in some series [McTaggart] |
16554 | Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16556 | Penicillin causes nothing; the cause is what penicillin does [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
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] |
16562 | We understand something by presenting its low-level entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16563 | The explanation is not the regularity, but the activity sustaining it [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16555 | Functions are not properties of objects, they are activities contributing to mechanisms [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16528 | Mechanisms are not just push-pull systems [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16529 | Mechanisms are systems organised to produce regular change [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16530 | A mechanism explains a phenomenon by showing how it was produced [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16553 | Our account of mechanism combines both entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16559 | Descriptions of explanatory mechanisms have a bottom level, where going further is irrelevant [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16564 | There are four types of bottom-level activities which will explain phenomena [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
16561 | We can abstract by taking an exemplary case and ignoring the detail [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
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] |
16558 | Laws of nature have very little application in biology [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
2608 | For McTaggart time is seen either as fixed, or as relative to events [McTaggart, by Ayer] |
22936 | A-series time positions are contradictory, and yet all events occupy all of them! [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |
4231 | Time involves change, only the A-series explains change, but it involves contradictions, so time is unreal [McTaggart, by Lowe] |
8591 | There could be no time if nothing changed [McTaggart] |
22935 | The B-series can be inferred from the A-series, but not the other way round [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |
7802 | A-series uses past, present and future; B-series uses 'before' and 'after' [McTaggart, by Girle] |
4230 | A-series expressions place things in time, and their truth varies; B-series is relative, and always true [McTaggart, by Lowe] |
15199 | The B-series must depend on the A-series, because change must be explained [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |