36 ideas
6675 | The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing [Pascal] |
16185 | Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N] |
11993 | Jones may cease to exist without some simple property, but that doesn't make it essential [Kung] |
11997 | A property may belong essentially to one thing and contingently to another [Kung] |
11992 | Aristotelian essences underlie a thing's existence, explain it, and must belong to it [Kung] |
22011 | The first principles of truth are not rational, but are known by the heart [Pascal] |
16182 | Two main types of explanation are by causes, or by citing a theoretical framework [Cartwright,N] |
16184 | An explanation is a model that fits a theory and predicts the phenomenological laws [Cartwright,N] |
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] |
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] |
16171 | The covering law view assumes that each phenomenon has a 'right' explanation [Cartwright,N] |
11995 | Some peripheral properties are explained by essential ones, but don't themselves explain properties [Kung] |
11996 | Some non-essential properties may explain more than essential-but-peripheral ones do [Kung] |
16183 | In science, best explanations have regularly turned out to be false [Cartwright,N] |
6681 | We only want to know things so that we can talk about them [Pascal] |
6676 | Painting makes us admire things of which we do not admire the originals [Pascal] |
6680 | It is a funny sort of justice whose limits are marked by a river [Pascal] |
6677 | Imagination creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the supreme good [Pascal] |
6678 | We live for the past or future, and so are never happy in the present [Pascal] |
20732 | If man considers himself as lost and imprisoned in the universe, he will be terrified [Pascal] |
6682 | Majority opinion is visible and authoritative, although not very clever [Pascal] |
6679 | It is not good to be too free [Pascal] |
16175 | A cause won't increase the effect frequency if other causes keep interfering [Cartwright,N] |
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] |
16179 | Good organisation may not be true, and the truth may not organise very much [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] |
16178 | There are few laws for when one theory meets another [Cartwright,N] |
7455 | Pascal knows you can't force belief, but you can make it much more probable [Pascal, by Hacking] |
7457 | Pascal is right, but relies on the unsupported claim of a half as the chance of God's existence [Hacking on Pascal] |
7456 | The libertine would lose a life of enjoyable sin if he chose the cloisters [Hacking on Pascal] |
6684 | If you win the wager on God's existence you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing [Pascal] |