30 ideas
| 10653 | Maybe set theory need not be well-founded [Varzi] |
| 10648 | Mereology need not be nominalist, though it is often taken to be so [Varzi] |
| 10655 | Are there mereological atoms, and are all objects made of them? [Varzi] |
| 10659 | There is something of which everything is part, but no null-thing which is part of everything [Varzi] |
| 16185 | Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N] |
| 10661 | 'Composition is identity' says multitudes are the reality, loosely composing single things [Varzi] |
| 10647 | Parts may or may not be attached, demarcated, arbitrary, material, extended, spatial or temporal [Varzi] |
| 10651 | If 'part' is reflexive, then identity is a limit case of parthood [Varzi] |
| 10649 | 'Part' stands for a reflexive, antisymmetric and transitive relation [Varzi] |
| 10654 | The parthood relation will help to define at least seven basic predicates [Varzi] |
| 10658 | Sameness of parts won't guarantee identity if their arrangement matters [Varzi] |
| 10652 | Conceivability may indicate possibility, but literary fantasy does not [Varzi] |
| 17503 | Theories can never represent accurately, because their components are abstract [Cartwright,N, by Portides] |
| 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] |
| 16183 | In science, best explanations have regularly turned out to be false [Cartwright,N] |
| 20239 | Unlike us, the early Greeks thought envy was a good thing, and hope a bad thing [Hesiod, by Nietzsche] |
| 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] |