Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Causal Explanation', 'Whitehead and the Rise of Modern Logic' and 'Truth Rehabilitated'

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23 ideas

3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 3. Value of Truth
23291 Without truth, both language and thought are impossible [Davidson]
23284 Plato's Forms confused truth with the most eminent truths, so only Truth itself is completely true [Davidson]
23286 Truth can't be a goal, because we can neither recognise it nor confim it [Davidson]
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 6. Verisimilitude
15557 Verisimilitude has proved hard to analyse, and seems to have several components [Lewis]
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 1. Correspondence Truth
23292 Correspondence can't be defined, but it shows how truth depends on the world [Davidson]
3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 1. Tarski's Truth / c. Meta-language for truth
23288 When Tarski defines truth for different languages, how do we know it is a single concept? [Davidson]
3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 2. Deflationary Truth
23287 Disquotation only accounts for truth if the metalanguage contains the object language [Davidson]
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 7. Second-Order Logic
13639 Quine says higher-order items are intensional, and lack a clearly defined identity relation [Quine, by Shapiro]
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 6. Logicism / b. Type theory
21557 Russell confused use and mention, and reduced classes to properties, not to language [Quine, by Lackey]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / e. Facts rejected
23285 If we try to identify facts precisely, they all melt into one (as the Slingshot Argument proves) [Davidson]
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 3. Powers as Derived
15554 A disposition needs a causal basis, a property in a certain causal role. Could the disposition be the property? [Lewis]
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 7. Chance
15560 We can explain a chance event, but can never show why some other outcome did not occur [Lewis]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 1. Explanation / b. Aims of explanation
15559 Does a good explanation produce understanding? That claim is just empty [Lewis]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / e. Lawlike explanations
15556 Science may well pursue generalised explanation, rather than laws [Lewis]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / f. Necessity in explanations
15558 A good explanation is supposed to show that the event had to happen [Lewis]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / g. Causal explanations
4809 Lewis endorses the thesis that all explanation of singular events is causal explanation [Lewis, by Psillos]
14321 To explain an event is to provide some information about its causal history [Lewis]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
23289 Knowing the potential truth conditions of a sentence is necessary and sufficient for understanding [Davidson]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
23290 It could be that the use of a sentence is explained by its truth conditions [Davidson]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 2. Types of cause
15555 Explaining match lighting in general is like explaining one lighting of a match [Lewis]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / d. Selecting the cause
15551 Ways of carving causes may be natural, but never 'right' [Lewis]
15552 We only pick 'the' cause for the purposes of some particular enquiry. [Lewis]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 9. General Causation / c. Counterfactual causation
15553 Causal dependence is counterfactual dependence between events [Lewis]