28 ideas
| 13931 | By using aporiai as his start, Aristotle can defer to the wise, as well as to the many [Haslanger] |
| 19400 | Possibles demand existence, so as many of them as possible must actually exist [Leibniz] |
| 19401 | God's sufficient reason for choosing reality is in the fitness or perfection of possibilities [Leibniz] |
| 13925 | Ontology disputes rest on more basic explanation disputes [Haslanger] |
| 16185 | Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N] |
| 13924 | The persistence of objects seems to be needed if the past is to explain the present [Haslanger] |
| 13930 | Persistence makes change and its products intelligible [Haslanger] |
| 13927 | We must explain change amongst 'momentary entities', or else the world is inexplicable [Haslanger] |
| 13928 | If the things which exist prior to now are totally distinct, they need not have existed [Haslanger] |
| 19402 | The actual universe is the richest composite of what is possible [Leibniz] |
| 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] |
| 16171 | The covering law view assumes that each phenomenon has a 'right' explanation [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] |
| 13929 | Natural explanations give the causal interconnections [Haslanger] |
| 13926 | Best explanations, especially natural ones, need grounding, notably by persistent objects [Haslanger] |
| 16183 | In science, best explanations have regularly turned out to be false [Cartwright,N] |
| 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] |
| 16178 | There are few laws for when one theory meets another [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] |