27 ideas
| 17486 | Supervenience is simply modally robust property co-variance [Hendry] |
| 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] |
| 17481 | Nuclear charge (plus laws) explains electron structure and spectrum, but not vice versa [Hendry] |
| 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] |
| 20930 | The existence of law is one thing, its merits and demerits another [Austin,J] |
| 17478 | Maybe two kinds are the same if there is no change of entropy on isothermal mixing [Hendry] |
| 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] |
| 17479 | The nature of an element must survive chemical change, so it is the nucleus, not the electrons [Hendry] |
| 17484 | Maybe the nature of water is macroscopic, and not in the microstructure [Hendry] |
| 17485 | Maybe water is the smallest part of it that still counts as water (which is H2O molecules) [Hendry] |
| 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] |
| 17483 | Water continuously changes, with new groupings of molecules [Hendry] |
| 17482 | Compounds can differ with the same collection of atoms, so structure matters too [Hendry] |
| 17476 | Elements survive chemical change, and are tracked to explain direction and properties [Hendry] |
| 17477 | Defining elements by atomic number allowed atoms of an element to have different masses [Hendry] |
| 17480 | Generally it is nuclear charge (not nuclear mass) which determines behaviour [Hendry] |