Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Aristotle and Descartes on Matter', 'Some Remarks on Essentialism' and 'How the Laws of Physics Lie'

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22 ideas

7. Existence / E. Categories / 4. Category Realism
16185 Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
13952 Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences
13954 The difficulty in essentialism is deciding the grounds for rating an attribute as essential [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
13955 Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic [Cartwright,R]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 3. Relative Identity
13953 An act of ostension doesn't seem to need a 'sort' of thing, even of a very broad kind [Cartwright,R]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / a. Types of explanation
16182 Two main types of explanation are by causes, or by citing a theoretical framework [Cartwright,N]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / c. Explanations by coherence
16184 An explanation is a model that fits a theory and predicts the phenomenological laws [Cartwright,N]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / e. Lawlike explanations
16167 Laws get the facts wrong, and explanation rests on improvements and qualifications of laws [Cartwright,N]
16169 Laws apply to separate domains, but real explanations apply to intersecting domains [Cartwright,N]
16171 The covering law view assumes that each phenomenon has a 'right' explanation [Cartwright,N]
16176 Covering-law explanation lets us explain storms by falling barometers [Cartwright,N]
16177 I disagree with the covering-law view that there is a law to cover every single case [Cartwright,N]
16180 You can't explain one quail's behaviour by just saying that all quails do it [Cartwright,N]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 3. Best Explanation / c. Against best explanation
16183 In science, best explanations have regularly turned out to be false [Cartwright,N]
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 6. Early Matter Theories / b. Prime matter
19399 Prime matter is nothing when it is at rest [Leibniz]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / e. Probabilistic causation
16175 A cause won't increase the effect frequency if other causes keep interfering [Cartwright,N]
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 2. Types of Laws
6781 There are fundamental explanatory laws (false!), and phenomenological laws (regularities) [Cartwright,N, by Bird]
16166 Laws of appearances are 'phenomenological'; laws of reality are 'theoretical' [Cartwright,N]
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 4. Regularities / b. Best system theory
16179 Good organisation may not be true, and the truth may not organise very much [Cartwright,N]
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 11. Against Laws of Nature
16178 There are few laws for when one theory meets another [Cartwright,N]
16170 To get from facts to equations, we need a prepared descriptions suited to mathematics [Cartwright,N]
16181 Simple laws have quite different outcomes when they act in combinations [Cartwright,N]