Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Wisdom', 'Causation in a Physical World' and 'Human Knowledge: its scope and limits'

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10 ideas

1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 3. Wisdom Deflated
The devil was wise as an angel, and lost no knowledge when he rebelled [Whitcomb]
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / c. not
Is it possible to state every possible truth about the whole course of nature without using 'not'? [Russell]
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 6. Logical Necessity
Some facts about experience feel like logical necessities [Russell]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 5. Empiricism Critique
It is hard to explain how a sentence like 'it is not raining' can be found true by observation [Russell]
19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial
If we define 'this is not blue' as disbelief in 'this is blue', we eliminate 'not' as an ingredient of facts [Russell]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 1. Causation
Explain single events by general rules, or vice versa, or probability explains both, or they are unconnected [Field,H]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 5. Direction of causation
Physical laws are largely time-symmetric, so they make a poor basis for directional causation [Field,H]
Identifying cause and effect is not just conventional; we explain later events by earlier ones [Field,H]
The only reason for adding the notion of 'cause' to fundamental physics is directionality [Field,H]
27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / a. Explaining movement
Russell's 'at-at' theory says motion is to be at the intervening points at the intervening instants [Russell, by Psillos]