35 ideas
12249 | 'Animal' is a genus and 'rational' is a specific difference [Oderberg] |
12242 | Definition distinguishes one kind from another, and individuation picks out members of the kind [Oderberg] |
15557 | Verisimilitude has proved hard to analyse, and seems to have several components [Lewis] |
12238 | The Aristotelian view is that numbers depend on (and are abstracted from) other things [Oderberg] |
12254 | Being is substantial/accidental, complete/incomplete, necessary/contingent, possible, relative, intrinsic.. [Oderberg] |
12253 | If tropes are in space and time, in what sense are they abstract? [Oderberg] |
15554 | A disposition needs a causal basis, a property in a certain causal role. Could the disposition be the property? [Lewis] |
12256 | We need to distinguish the essential from the non-essential powers [Oderberg] |
12252 | Empiricists gave up 'substance', as unknowable substratum, or reducible to a bundle [Oderberg] |
12241 | Essences are real, about being, knowable, definable and classifiable [Oderberg, by PG] |
12244 | Nominalism is consistent with individual but not with universal essences [Oderberg] |
12240 | Essentialism is the main account of the unity of objects [Oderberg] |
12247 | Essence is not explanatory but constitutive [Oderberg] |
12258 | Properties are not part of an essence, but they flow from it [Oderberg] |
12257 | Could we replace essence with collections of powers? [Oderberg] |
12236 | Leibniz's Law is an essentialist truth [Oderberg] |
12250 | Bodies have act and potency, the latter explaining new kinds of existence [Oderberg] |
15560 | We can explain a chance event, but can never show why some other outcome did not occur [Lewis] |
12234 | Realism about possible worlds is circular, since it needs a criterion of 'possible' [Oderberg] |
12235 | Necessity of identity seems trivial, because it leaves out the real essence [Oderberg] |
12237 | Rigid designation has at least three essentialist presuppositions [Oderberg] |
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] |
12245 | Essence is the source of a thing's characteristic behaviour [Oderberg] |
12246 | What makes Parmenidean reality a One rather than a Many? [Oderberg] |
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] |
12239 | The real essentialist is not merely a scientist [Oderberg] |
12243 | The reductionism found in scientific essentialism is mistaken [Oderberg] |
20713 | God must be fit for worship, but worship abandons morally autonomy, but there is no God [Rachels, by Davies,B] |