23 ideas
17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
4483 | If abstract terms are sets of tropes, 'being a unicorn' and 'being a griffin' turn out identical [Loux] |
4481 | Austere nominalists insist that the realist's universals lack the requisite independent identifiability [Loux] |
4477 | Universals come in hierarchies of generality [Loux] |
4482 | Austere nominalism has to take a host of things (like being red, or human) as primitive [Loux] |
4478 | Nominalism needs to account for abstract singular terms like 'circularity'. [Loux] |
4480 | Times and places are identified by objects, so cannot be used in a theory of object-identity [Loux] |
17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
17077 | The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart] |
17078 | Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart] |
17074 | Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart] |
17076 | Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart] |
17061 | Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart] |
17071 | An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart] |
17062 | If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart] |
17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
22808 | Liberalism is minimal government, or individual rights, or equality [Avineri/De-Shalit] |
22803 | Can individualist theories justify an obligation to fight in a war? [Avineri/De-Shalit] |
22804 | Autonomy is better achieved within a community [Avineri/De-Shalit] |
22806 | Communitarians avoid oppression for the common good, by means of small mediating communities [Avineri/De-Shalit] |
22807 | If our values are given to us by society then we have no grounds to criticise them [Avineri/De-Shalit] |
17063 | Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart] |