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All the ideas for 'Db (chronology)', 'Four Decades of Scientific Explanation' and 'New work for a theory of universals'

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171 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 2. Ancient Philosophy / a. Ancient chronology
323 (roughly): Euclid wrote 'Elements', summarising all of geometry [PG]
1000 (roughly): Upanishads written (in Sanskrit); religious and philosophical texts [PG]
750 (roughly): the Book of Genesis written by Hebrew writers [PG]
586: eclipse of the sun on the coast of modern Turkey was predicted by Thales of Miletus [PG]
570: Anaximander flourished in Miletus [PG]
563: the Buddha born in northern India [PG]
540: Lao Tzu wrote 'Tao Te Ching', the basis of Taoism [PG]
529: Pythagoras created his secretive community at Croton in Sicily [PG]
500: Heraclitus flourishes at Ephesus, in modern Turkey [PG]
496: Confucius travels widely, persuading rulers to be more moral [PG]
472: Empedocles persuades his city (Acragas in Sicily) to become a democracy [PG]
450 (roughly): Parmenides and Zeno visit Athens from Italy [PG]
445: Protagoras helps write laws for the new colony of Thurii [PG]
436 (roughly): Anaxagoras is tried for impiety, and expelled from Athens [PG]
170 (roughly): Marcus Aurelius wrote his private stoic meditations [PG]
-200 (roughly): Sextus Empiricus wrote a series of books on scepticism [PG]
263: Porphyry began to study with Plotinus in Rome [PG]
310: Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire [PG]
387: Ambrose converts Augustine to Christianity [PG]
523: Boethius imprisoned at Pavia, and begins to write [PG]
529: the emperor Justinian closes all the philosophy schools in Athens [PG]
427: Gorgias visited Athens as ambassador for Leontini [PG]
399: Socrates executed (with Plato absent through ill health) [PG]
387 (roughly): Plato returned to Athens, and founded the Academy [PG]
387 (roughly): Aristippus the Elder founder a hedonist school at Cyrene [PG]
367: the teenaged Aristotle came to study at the Academy [PG]
360 (roughly): Diogenes of Sinope lives in a barrel in central Athens [PG]
347: death of Plato [PG]
343: Aristotle becomes tutor to 13 year old Alexander (the Great) [PG]
335: Arisotle founded his school at the Lyceum in Athens [PG]
330 (roughly): Chuang Tzu wrote his Taoist book [PG]
322: Aristotle retired to Chalcis, and died there [PG]
307 (roughly): Epicurus founded his school at the Garden in Athens [PG]
301 (roughly): Zeno of Citium founded Stoicism at the Stoa Poikile in Athens [PG]
261: Cleanthes replaced Zeno as head of the Stoa [PG]
229 (roughly): Chrysippus replaced Cleanthes has head of the Stoa [PG]
157 (roughly): Carneades became head of the Academy [PG]
85: most philosophical activity moves to Alexandria [PG]
78: Cicero visited the stoic school on Rhodes [PG]
60 (roughly): Lucretius wrote his Latin poem on epicureanism [PG]
65: Seneca forced to commit suicide by Nero [PG]
80: the discourses of the stoic Epictetus are written down [PG]
1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 3. Earlier European Philosophy / a. Earlier European chronology
1090: Anselm publishes his proof of the existence of God [PG]
622 (roughly): Mohammed writes the Koran [PG]
642: Arabs close the philosophy schools in Alexandria [PG]
910 (roughly): Al-Farabi wrote Arabic commentaries on Aristotle [PG]
1015 (roughly): Ibn Sina (Avicenna) writes a book on Aristotle [PG]
1115: Abelard is the chief logic teacher in Paris [PG]
1166: Ibn Rushd (Averroes) wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle [PG]
1266: Aquinas began writing 'Summa Theologica' [PG]
1280: after his death, the teaching of Aquinas becomes official Dominican doctrine [PG]
1328: William of Ockham decides the Pope is a heretic, and moves to Munich [PG]
1347: the Church persecutes philosophical heresies [PG]
1470: Marsilio Ficino founds a Platonic Academy in Florence [PG]
1513: Machiavelli wrote 'The Prince' [PG]
1543: Copernicus publishes his heliocentric view of the solar system [PG]
1580: Montaigne publishes his essays [PG]
1600: Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome [PG]
1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 4. Later European Philosophy / a. Later European chronology
1619: Descartes's famous day of meditation inside a stove [PG]
1620: Bacon publishes 'Novum Organum' [PG]
1633: Galileo convicted of heresy by the Inquisition [PG]
1641: Descartes publishes his 'Meditations' [PG]
1650: death of Descartes, in Stockholm [PG]
1651: Hobbes publishes 'Leviathan' [PG]
1662: the Port Royal Logic is published [PG]
1665: Spinoza writes his 'Ethics' [PG]
1676: Leibniz settled as librarian to the Duke of Brunswick [PG]
1687: Newton publishes his 'Principia Mathematica' [PG]
1690: Locke publishes his 'Essay' [PG]
1697: Bayle publishes his 'Dictionary' [PG]
1713: Berkeley publishes his 'Three Dialogues' [PG]
1734: Voltaire publishes his 'Philosophical Letters' [PG]
1739: Hume publishes his 'Treatise' [PG]
1762: Rousseau publishes his 'Social Contract' [PG]
1781: Kant publishes his 'Critique of Pure Reason' [PG]
1785: Reid publishes his essays defending common sense [PG]
1798: the French Revolution [PG]
1807: Hegel publishes his 'Phenomenology of Spirit' [PG]
1818: Schopenhauer publishes his 'World as Will and Idea' [PG]
1840: Kierkegaard is writing extensively in Copenhagen [PG]
1843: Mill publishes his 'System of Logic' [PG]
1848: Marx and Engels publis the Communist Manifesto [PG]
1859: Darwin publishes his 'Origin of the Species' [PG]
1861: Mill publishes 'Utilitarianism' [PG]
1867: Marx begins publishing 'Das Kapital' [PG]
1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 5. Modern Philosophy / a. Modern philosophy chronology
1879: Peirce taught for five years at Johns Hopkins University [PG]
1879: Frege invents predicate logic [PG]
1892: Frege's essay 'Sense and Reference' [PG]
1884: Frege publishes his 'Foundations of Arithmetic' [PG]
1885: Nietzsche completed 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' [PG]
1888: Dedekind publishes axioms for arithmetic [PG]
1890: James published 'Principles of Psychology' [PG]
1895 (roughly): Freud developed theories of the unconscious [PG]
1900: Husserl began developing Phenomenology [PG]
1953: Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' [PG]
1956: Place proposed mind-brain identity [PG]
1962: Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions' [PG]
1967: Putnam proposed functionalism of the mind [PG]
1971: Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice' [PG]
1972: Kripke publishes 'Naming and Necessity' [PG]
1975: Singer publishes 'Animal Rights' [PG]
1975: Putnam published his Twin Earth example [PG]
1986: David Lewis publishes 'On the Plurality of Worlds' [PG]
1903: Moore published 'Principia Ethica' [PG]
1904: Dewey became professor at Columbia University [PG]
1908: Zermelo publishes axioms for set theory [PG]
1910: Russell and Whitehead begin publishing 'Principia Mathematica' [PG]
1912: Russell meets Wittgenstein in Cambridge [PG]
1921: Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' published [PG]
1927: Heidegger's 'Being and Time' published [PG]
1930: Frank Ramsey dies at 27 [PG]
1931: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems [PG]
1933: Tarski's theory of truth [PG]
1942: Camus published 'The Myth of Sisyphus' [PG]
1943: Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' [PG]
1945: Merleau-Ponty's 'Phenomenology of Perception' [PG]
1947: Carnap published 'Meaning and Necessity' [PG]
1950: Quine's essay 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' [PG]
1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 4. Conceptual Analysis
In addition to analysis of a concept, one can deny it, or accept it as primitive [Lewis]
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 2. Reduction
Supervenience is reduction without existence denials, ontological priorities, or translatability [Lewis]
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience
A supervenience thesis is a denial of independent variation [Lewis]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 6. Physicalism
Materialism is (roughly) that two worlds cannot differ without differing physically [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 1. Nature of Properties
Universals are wholly present in their instances, whereas properties are spread around [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 5. Natural Properties
Natural properties figure in the analysis of similarity in intrinsic respects [Lewis, by Oliver]
Lewisian natural properties fix reference of predicates, through a principle of charity [Lewis, by Hawley]
Reference partly concerns thought and language, partly eligibility of referent by natural properties [Lewis]
Objects are demarcated by density and chemistry, and natural properties belong in what is well demarcated [Lewis]
Natural properties tend to belong to well-demarcated things, typically loci of causal chains [Lewis]
For us, a property being natural is just an aspect of its featuring in the contents of our attitudes [Lewis]
All perfectly natural properties are intrinsic [Lewis, by Lewis]
Natural properties fix resemblance and powers, and are picked out by universals [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 6. Categorical Properties
Lewis says properties are sets of actual and possible objects [Lewis, by Heil]
Any class of things is a property, no matter how whimsical or irrelevant [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 10. Properties as Predicates
There are far more properties than any brain could ever encodify [Lewis]
We need properties as semantic values for linguistic expressions [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 11. Properties as Sets
Properties are classes of possible and actual concrete particulars [Lewis, by Koslicki]
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 3. Powers as Derived
Lewisian properties have powers because of their relationships to other properties [Lewis, by Hawthorne]
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 7. Against Powers
Most properties are causally irrelevant, and we can't spot the relevant ones. [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 1. Universals
I suspend judgements about universals, but their work must be done [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 2. Need for Universals
Physics aims to discover which universals actually exist [Lewis, by Moore,AW]
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 1. Nominalism / b. Nominalism about universals
The One over Many problem (in predication terms) deserves to be neglected (by ostriches) [Lewis]
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 5. Class Nominalism
To have a property is to be a member of a class, usually a class of things [Lewis]
Class Nominalism and Resemblance Nominalism are pretty much the same [Lewis]
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding
It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon]
Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon]
14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 4. Prediction
Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon]
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 3. Instrumentalism
For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon]
14. Science / C. Induction / 4. Reason in Induction
Good induction needs 'total evidence' - the absence at the time of any undermining evidence [Salmon]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 1. Explanation / b. Aims of explanation
Scientific explanation is not reducing the unfamiliar to the familiar [Salmon]
Why-questions can seek evidence as well as explanation [Salmon]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / a. Types of explanation
The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon]
Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [Salmon]
The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / e. Lawlike explanations
We must distinguish true laws because they (unlike accidental generalizations) explain things [Salmon]
Deductive-nomological explanations will predict, and their predictions will explain [Salmon]
A law is not enough for explanation - we need information about what makes a difference [Salmon]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / g. Causal explanations
Flagpoles explain shadows, and not vice versa, because of temporal ordering [Salmon]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / i. Explanations by mechanism
Explanation at the quantum level will probably be by entirely new mechanisms [Salmon]
Does an item have a function the first time it occurs? [Salmon]
Explanations reveal the mechanisms which produce the facts [Salmon]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / l. Probabilistic explanations
Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? [Salmon]
Statistical explanation needs relevance, not high probability [Salmon]
Think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies [Salmon]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 1. Physical Mind
Psychophysical identity implies the possibility of idealism or panpsychism [Lewis]
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / c. Principle of charity
We need natural properties in order to motivate the principle of charity [Lewis]
A sophisticated principle of charity sometimes imputes error as well as truth [Lewis]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 9. General Causation / c. Counterfactual causation
Counterfactuals 'backtrack' if a different present implies a different past [Lewis]
Causal counterfactuals must avoid backtracking, to avoid epiphenomena and preemption [Lewis]
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 1. Laws of Nature
Physics aims for a list of natural properties [Lewis]
Physics discovers laws and causal explanations, and also the natural properties required [Lewis]
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 4. Regularities / b. Best system theory
A law of nature is any regularity that earns inclusion in the ideal system [Lewis]