28 ideas
| 15842 | An ad hominem refutation is reasonable, if it uses the opponent's assumptions [Harte,V] |
| 15841 | Mereology began as a nominalist revolt against the commitments of set theory [Harte,V] |
| 15858 | Traditionally, the four elements are just what persists through change [Harte,V] |
| 9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
| 15959 | If the substantial form of brass implies its stability, how can it melt and remain brass? [Alexander,P] |
| 15956 | The peripatetics treated forms and real qualities as independent of matter, and non-material [Alexander,P] |
| 15848 | Mereology treats constitution as a criterion of identity, as shown in the axiom of extensionality [Harte,V] |
| 15837 | What exactly is a 'sum', and what exactly is 'composition'? [Harte,V] |
| 15839 | If something is 'more than' the sum of its parts, is the extra thing another part, or not? [Harte,V] |
| 15838 | The problem with the term 'sum' is that it is singular [Harte,V] |
| 8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
| 15975 | Can the qualities of a body be split into two groups, where the smaller explains the larger? [Alexander,P] |
| 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] |
| 15963 | Science has been partly motivated by the belief that the universe is run by God's laws [Alexander,P] |
| 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] |
| 15951 | Alchemists tried to separate out essences, which influenced later chemistry [Alexander,P] |
| 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] |
| 15981 | Absolute space either provides locations, or exists but lacks 'marks' for locations [Alexander,P] |