23 ideas
12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
15557 | Verisimilitude has proved hard to analyse, and seems to have several components [Lewis] |
9545 | Late in life Frege abandoned logicism, and saw the source of arithmetic as geometrical [Frege, by Chihara] |
15554 | A disposition needs a causal basis, a property in a certain causal role. Could the disposition be the property? [Lewis] |
15560 | We can explain a chance event, but can never show why some other outcome did not occur [Lewis] |
12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
15559 | Does a good explanation produce understanding? That claim is just empty [Lewis] |
15556 | Science may well pursue generalised explanation, rather than laws [Lewis] |
15558 | A good explanation is supposed to show that the event had to happen [Lewis] |
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] |
12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
15555 | Explaining match lighting in general is like explaining one lighting of a match [Lewis] |
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] |
15553 | Causal dependence is counterfactual dependence between events [Lewis] |
12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |