26 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] |
8463 | Maths can be reduced to logic and set theory [Quine] |
16554 | Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
8461 | The category of objects incorporates the old distinction of substances and their modes [Quine] |
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] |
12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
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] |
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] |
8462 | A hallucination can, like an ague, be identified with its host; the ontology is physical, the idiom mental [Quine] |
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] |