37 ideas
| 16477 | Asserting not-p is saying p is false [Russell] |
| 16484 | There are four experiences that lead us to talk of 'some' things [Russell] |
| 16486 | The physical world doesn't need logic, but the mental world does [Russell] |
| 2947 | Questions wouldn't lead anywhere without the law of excluded middle [Russell] |
| 16480 | A disjunction expresses indecision [Russell] |
| 16479 | 'Or' expresses hesitation, in a dog at a crossroads, or birds risking grabbing crumbs [Russell] |
| 16481 | 'Or' expresses a mental state, not something about the world [Russell] |
| 16487 | Maybe the 'or' used to describe mental states is not the 'or' of logic [Russell] |
| 16483 | Disjunction may also arise in practice if there is imperfect memory. [Russell] |
| 16475 | A 'heterological' predicate can't be predicated of itself; so is 'heterological' heterological? Yes=no! [Russell] |
| 16482 | All our knowledge (if verbal) is general, because all sentences contain general words [Russell] |
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| 4758 | Naïve realism leads to physics, but physics then shows that naïve realism is false [Russell] |
| 16476 | For simple words, a single experience can show that they are true [Russell] |
| 16485 | Perception can't prove universal generalisations, so abandon them, or abandon empiricism? [Russell] |
| 13054 | Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon] |
| 13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
| 13055 | Good induction needs 'total evidence' - the absence at the time of any undermining evidence [Salmon] |
| 13046 | Scientific explanation is not reducing the unfamiliar to the familiar [Salmon] |
| 13058 | Why-questions can seek evidence as well as explanation [Salmon] |
| 13064 | The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon] |
| 13050 | The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon] |
| 13059 | Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [Salmon] |
| 13049 | We must distinguish true laws because they (unlike accidental generalizations) explain things [Salmon] |
| 13051 | Deductive-nomological explanations will predict, and their predictions will explain [Salmon] |
| 13053 | A law is not enough for explanation - we need information about what makes a difference [Salmon] |
| 13061 | Flagpoles explain shadows, and not vice versa, because of temporal ordering [Salmon] |
| 13045 | Explanation at the quantum level will probably be by entirely new mechanisms [Salmon] |
| 13062 | Does an item have a function the first time it occurs? [Salmon] |
| 13063 | Explanations reveal the mechanisms which produce the facts [Salmon] |
| 13060 | Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? [Salmon] |
| 13056 | Statistical explanation needs relevance, not high probability [Salmon] |
| 13057 | Think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies [Salmon] |
| 16478 | A mother cat is paralysed if equidistant between two needy kittens [Russell] |
| 16713 | Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics [Tertullian] |
| 6610 | I believe because it is absurd [Tertullian] |