23 ideas
5437 | The claim of hermeneutics to give knowledge through understanding is challenged by positivism [Mautner on Dilthey] |
9476 | If dispositions are more fundamental than causes, then they won't conceptually reduce to them [Bird on Lewis] |
12312 | The real essence of a thing is its powers, or 'dispositional properties' [Copi] |
10937 | Essential properties are the 'deepest' ones which explain the others [Copi, by Rami] |
12308 | In modern science, nominal essence is intended to be real essence [Copi] |
12303 | Within the four types of change, essential attributes are those whose loss means destruction [Copi] |
8425 | For true counterfactuals, both antecedent and consequent true is closest to actuality [Lewis] |
5436 | Natural science seeks explanation; human sciences seek understanding [Dilthey, by Mautner] |
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] |
12307 | Modern science seeks essences, and is getting closer to them [Copi] |
12310 | Real essences are scientifically knowable, but so are non-essential properties [Copi] |
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] |