Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Necessary Existents', 'The Communist Manifesto' and 'Four Decades of Scientific Explanation'

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29 ideas

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]
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 4. Cultural relativism
For the proletariate, law, morality and religion are just expressions of bourgeois interests [Marx/Engels]
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 three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon]
The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon]
Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [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]
19. Language / D. Propositions / 3. Concrete Propositions
Propositions (such as 'that dog is barking') only exist if their items exist [Williamson]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention
Bourgeois interests create our morality, law and religion [Marx/Engels]
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 9. Communism
Modern governments are just bourgeois management committees [Marx/Engels]
Communism aims to abolish not all property, but bourgeois property [Marx/Engels]
Many of the bourgeois rights grievances are a form of self-defence [Marx/Engels]
25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 5. Freedom of lifestyle
The free development of each should be the condition for the free development of all [Marx/Engels]
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
Communists want to rescue education from the ruling class [Marx/Engels]
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / d. Study of history
The history of all existing society is the history of class struggles [Marx/Engels]