91 ideas
| 16512 | Semantic facts are preferable to transcendental philosophical fiction [Wiggins] |
| 6779 | Instrumentalists say distinctions between observation and theory vanish with ostensive definition [Bird] |
| 17529 | Maybe the concept needed under which things coincide must also yield a principle of counting [Wiggins] |
| 17530 | The sortal needed for identities may not always be sufficient to support counting [Wiggins] |
| 16523 | Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts [Wiggins] |
| 16524 | Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality [Wiggins] |
| 6780 | Anti-realism is more plausible about laws than about entities and theories [Bird] |
| 21598 | Austin revealed many meanings for 'vague': rough, ambiguous, general, incomplete... [Austin,JL, by Williamson] |
| 16526 | Animal classifications: the Emperor's, fabulous, innumerable, like flies, stray dogs, embalmed…. [Wiggins] |
| 16492 | Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out [Wiggins] |
| 16493 | Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers [Wiggins] |
| 16496 | Singling out extends back and forward in time [Wiggins] |
| 16495 | The only singling out is singling out 'as' something [Wiggins] |
| 16501 | In Aristotle's sense, saying x falls under f is to say what x is [Wiggins] |
| 16506 | Every determinate thing falls under a sortal, which fixes its persistence [Wiggins] |
| 16509 | Natural kinds are well suited to be the sortals which fix substances [Wiggins] |
| 16514 | Artefacts are individuated by some matter having a certain function [Wiggins] |
| 16510 | Nominal essences don't fix membership, ignore evolution, and aren't contextual [Wiggins] |
| 16503 | 'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing [Wiggins] |
| 16499 | A restored church is the same 'church', but not the same 'building' or 'brickwork' [Wiggins] |
| 16515 | A thing begins only once; for a clock, it is when its making is first completed [Wiggins] |
| 16517 | Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction [Wiggins] |
| 16498 | Identity cannot be defined, because definitions are identities [Wiggins] |
| 16497 | Leibniz's Law (not transitivity, symmetry, reflexivity) marks what is peculiar to identity [Wiggins] |
| 16502 | Identity is primitive [Wiggins] |
| 16521 | A is necessarily A, so if B is A, then B is also necessarily A [Wiggins] |
| 16505 | By the principle of Indiscernibility, a symmetrical object could only be half of itself! [Wiggins] |
| 16494 | We want to explain sameness as coincidence of substance, not as anything qualitative [Wiggins] |
| 6796 | Subjective probability measures personal beliefs; objective probability measures the chance of an event happening [Bird] |
| 6797 | Objective probability of tails measures the bias of the coin, not our beliefs about it [Bird] |
| 16522 | It is hard or impossible to think of Caesar as not human [Wiggins] |
| 6800 | Many philosophers rate justification as a more important concept than knowledge [Bird] |
| 6786 | As science investigates more phenomena, the theories it needs decreases [Bird] |
| 16525 | Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience [Wiggins] |
| 6792 | If theories need observation, and observations need theories, how do we start? [Bird] |
| 6757 | Explanation predicts after the event; prediction explains before the event [Bird] |
| 6777 | Realists say their theories involve truth and the existence of their phenomena [Bird] |
| 6804 | There is no agreement on scientific method - because there is no such thing [Bird] |
| 6805 | Relativity ousted Newtonian mechanics despite a loss of simplicity [Bird] |
| 6778 | Instrumentalists regard theories as tools for prediction, with truth being irrelevant [Bird] |
| 6775 | Induction is inference to the best explanation, where the explanation is a law [Bird] |
| 6791 | If Hume is right about induction, there is no scientific knowledge [Bird] |
| 6790 | Anything justifying inferences from observed to unobserved must itself do that [Bird] |
| 6738 | Any conclusion can be drawn from an induction, if we use grue-like predicates [Bird] |
| 6739 | Several months of observing beech trees supports the deciduous and evergreen hypotheses [Bird] |
| 6799 | We normally learn natural kinds from laws, but Goodman shows laws require prior natural kinds [Bird] |
| 6798 | Bayesianism claims to find rationality and truth in induction, and show how science works [Bird] |
| 6752 | The objective component of explanations is the things that must exist for the explanation [Bird] |
| 6754 | We talk both of 'people' explaining things, and of 'facts' explaining things [Bird] |
| 6750 | Explanations are causal, nomic, psychological, psychoanalytic, Darwinian or functional [Bird] |
| 6761 | Contrastive explanations say why one thing happened but not another [Bird] |
| 6758 | 'Covering law' explanations only work if no other explanations are to be found [Bird] |
| 6759 | Livers always accompany hearts, but they don't explain hearts [Bird] |
| 6756 | Probabilistic-statistical explanations don't entail the explanandum, but makes it more likely [Bird] |
| 6760 | An operation might reduce the probability of death, yet explain a death [Bird] |
| 6785 | Inference to the Best Explanation is done with facts, so it has to be realist [Bird] |
| 6788 | Maybe bad explanations are the true ones, in this messy world [Bird] |
| 6787 | Which explanation is 'best' is bound to be subjective, and no guide to truth [Bird] |
| 6751 | Maybe explanation is so subjective that it cannot be a part of science [Bird] |
| 16518 | We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us [Wiggins] |
| 16511 | A 'conception' of a horse is a full theory of what it is (and not just the 'concept') [Wiggins] |
| 6776 | Natural kinds are those that we use in induction [Bird] |
| 6767 | Rubies and sapphires are both corundum, with traces of metals varying their colours [Bird] |
| 6768 | Tin is not one natural kind, but appears to be 21, depending on isotope [Bird] |
| 6770 | Membership of a purely random collection cannot be used as an explanation [Bird] |
| 6771 | Natural kinds may overlap, or be sub-kinds of one another [Bird] |
| 6773 | If F is a universal appearing in a natural law, then Fs form a natural kind [Bird] |
| 6769 | In the Kripke-Putnam view only nuclear physicists can know natural kinds [Bird] |
| 6774 | Darwinism suggests that we should have a native ability to detect natural kinds [Bird] |
| 6764 | Nominal essence of a natural kind is the features that make it fit its name [Bird] |
| 6766 | Jadeite and nephrite are superficially identical, but have different composition [Bird] |
| 6808 | Reference to scientific terms is by explanatory role, not by descriptions [Bird] |
| 6753 | Laws are more fundamental in science than causes, and laws will explain causes [Bird] |
| 6762 | Newton's laws cannot be confirmed individually, but only in combinations [Bird] |
| 6763 | Parapsychology is mere speculation, because it offers no mechanisms for its working [Bird] |
| 6772 | Existence requires laws, as inertia or gravity are needed for mass or matter [Bird] |
| 6740 | 'All uranium lumps are small' is a law, but 'all gold lumps are small' is not [Bird] |
| 6741 | There can be remarkable uniformities in nature that are purely coincidental [Bird] |
| 6742 | A law might have no instances, if it was about things that only exist momentarily [Bird] |
| 6743 | If laws are just instances, the law should either have gaps, or join the instances arbitrarily [Bird] |
| 6744 | Where is the regularity in a law predicting nuclear decay? [Bird] |
| 6747 | Laws cannot explain instances if they are regularities, as something can't explain itself [Bird] |
| 6746 | There may be many laws, each with only a few instances [Bird] |
| 6748 | Similar appearance of siblings is a regularity, but shared parents is what links them [Bird] |
| 6749 | We can only infer a true regularity if something binds the instances together [Bird] |
| 6803 | If we only infer laws from regularities among observations, we can't infer unobservable entities. [Bird] |
| 6801 | Accidental regularities are not laws, and an apparent regularity may not be actual [Bird] |
| 6745 | A regularity is only a law if it is part of a complete system which is simple and strong [Bird] |
| 6802 | With strange enough predicates, anything could be made out to be a regularity [Bird] |
| 6789 | If flame colour is characteristic of a metal, that is an empirical claim needing justification [Bird] |
| 6807 | In Newton mass is conserved, but in Einstein it can convert into energy [Bird] |