53 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] |
| 2463 | A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor] |
| 2435 | Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor] |
| 2442 | Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor] |
| 16554 | Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16556 | Penicillin causes nothing; the cause is what penicillin does [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16562 | We understand something by presenting its low-level entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
| 2462 | Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor] |
| 2461 | An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor] |
| 2460 | Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor] |
| 12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
| 2454 | We can deliberately cause ourselves to have true thoughts - hence the value of experiments [Fodor] |
| 2455 | Interrogation and experiment submit us to having beliefs caused [Fodor] |
| 2458 | Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| 12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
| 16563 | The explanation is not the regularity, but the activity sustaining it [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16555 | Functions are not properties of objects, they are activities contributing to mechanisms [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16529 | Mechanisms are systems organised to produce regular change [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16530 | A mechanism explains a phenomenon by showing how it was produced [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16553 | Our account of mechanism combines both entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16559 | Descriptions of explanatory mechanisms have a bottom level, where going further is irrelevant [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16528 | Mechanisms are not just push-pull systems [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16564 | There are four types of bottom-level activities which will explain phenomena [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 2443 | I say psychology is intentional, semantics is informational, and thinking is computation [Fodor] |
| 2453 | We are probably the only creatures that can think about our own thoughts [Fodor] |
| 16561 | We can abstract by taking an exemplary case and ignoring the detail [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
| 2445 | Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [Fodor] |
| 2446 | Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor] |
| 2464 | Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor] |
| 2447 | Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor] |
| 2440 | Propositional attitudes are propositions presented in a certain way [Fodor] |
| 2450 | Rationality has mental properties - autonomy, productivity, experiment [Fodor] |
| 2437 | XYZ (Twin Earth 'water') is an impossibility [Fodor] |
| 2441 | Truth conditions require a broad concept of content [Fodor] |
| 3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
| 2452 | Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor] |
| 2432 | Is content basically information, fixed externally? [Fodor] |
| 2438 | In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor] |
| 2439 | Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor] |
| 2457 | If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| 2451 | To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor] |
| 2433 | For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor] |
| 2436 | It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor] |
| 2434 | Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor] |
| 2459 | Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor] |
| 12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
| 12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |
| 16558 | Laws of nature have very little application in biology [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |