97 ideas
| 22355 | In the realist view, the real external world explains how it (and perceptions of it) are possible [Williams,B] |
| 23283 | Necessity implies possibility, but in experience it matters which comes first [Williams,B] |
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| 4243 | Our ability to react to an alien culture shows that ethical thought extends beyond cultural boundaries [Williams,B] |
| 4244 | It is very confused to deduce a nonrelativist morality of universal toleration from relativism [Williams,B] |
| 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] |
| 13050 | The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon] |
| 13059 | Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [Salmon] |
| 13064 | The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon] |
| 14366 | An explanation is a table of statistical information [Salmon, by Strevens] |
| 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] |
| 17093 | Causation produces productive mechanisms; to understand the world, understand these mechanisms [Salmon] |
| 17492 | Salmon's interaction mechanisms needn't be regular, or involving any systems [Glennan on 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] |
| 16557 | Salmon's mechanisms are processes and interactions, involving marks, or conserved quantities [Salmon, by Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 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] |
| 3238 | 'Dead person' isn't a contradiction, so 'person' is somewhat vague [Williams,B] |
| 3239 | You can only really love a person as a token, not as a type [Williams,B] |
| 7946 | The memory criterion has a problem when one thing branches into two things [Williams,B, by Macdonald,C] |
| 2176 | There is only a problem of free will if you think the notion of 'voluntary' can be metaphysically deepened [Williams,B] |
| 2181 | It is an absurd Kantian idea that at the limit rationality and freedom coincide [Williams,B] |
| 24008 | Reference to a person's emotions is often essential to understanding their actions [Williams,B] |
| 24009 | Moral education must involve learning about various types of feeling towards things [Williams,B] |
| 4317 | We judge weakness of will by an assessment after the event is concluded [Williams,B, by Cottingham] |
| 9284 | Reasons are 'internal' if they give a person a motive to act, but 'external' otherwise [Williams,B] |
| 2174 | Responsibility involves cause, intention, state of mind, and response after the event [Williams,B] |
| 22455 | Many ethical theories neglect the power of regretting the ought not acted upon [Williams,B] |
| 4114 | Philosophers try to produce ethical theories because they falsely assume that ethics can be simple [Williams,B] |
| 22453 | Moral conflicts have a different feeling and structure from belief conflicts [Williams,B, by Foot] |
| 22454 | We tolerate inconsistency in ethics but not in other beliefs (which reflect an independent order) [Williams,B, by Foot] |
| 22450 | If moral systems can't judge other moral systems, then moral relativism is true [Williams,B, by Foot] |
| 2178 | In bad actions, guilt points towards victims, and shame to the agent [Williams,B] |
| 20168 | Blame usually has no effect if the recipient thinks it unjustified [Williams,B] |
| 20167 | Blame partly rests on the fiction that blamed agents always know their obligations [Williams,B] |
| 4128 | Intuitionism has been demolished by critics, and no longer looks interesting [Williams,B] |
| 4366 | We can't accept Aristotle's naturalism about persons, because it is normative and unscientific [Williams,B, by Hursthouse] |
| 4132 | The category of person is a weak basis for ethics, because it is not fixed but comes in degrees [Williams,B] |
| 24007 | Emotivism saw morality as expressing emotions, and influencing others' emotions [Williams,B] |
| 4134 | The weakness of prescriptivism is shown by "I simply don't like staying at good hotels" [Williams,B] |
| 4135 | Some ethical ideas, such as 'treachery' and 'promise', seem to express a union of facts and values [Williams,B] |
| 22410 | Maybe the unthinkable is a moral category, and considering some options is dishonourable or absurd [Williams,B] |
| 22408 | Consequentialism assumes that situations can be compared [Williams,B] |
| 22411 | For a consequentialist massacring 7 million must be better than massacring 7 million and one [Williams,B] |
| 4120 | It is an error of consequentialism to think we just aim at certain states of affairs; we also want to act [Williams,B] |
| 23282 | If all that matters in morality is motive and intention, that makes moral luck irrelevant [Williams,B] |
| 4252 | Promise keeping increases reliability, by making deliberation focus on something which would be overlooked [Williams,B] |
| 4116 | A weakness of contractual theories is the position of a person of superior ability and power [Williams,B] |
| 2169 | Greek moral progress came when 'virtue' was freed from social status [Williams,B] |
| 4112 | A crucial feature of moral thought is second-order desire - the desire to have certain desires [Williams,B] |
| 24010 | An admirable human being should have certain kinds of emotional responses [Williams,B] |
| 23279 | It is important that a person can change their character, and not just be successive 'selves' [Williams,B] |
| 23280 | Kantians have an poor account of individuals, and insist on impartiality, because they ignore character [Williams,B] |
| 3236 | Equality of opportunity without equality of respect would create a very inhuman society [Williams,B] |
| 4113 | 'Deon' in Greek means what one must do; there was no word meaning 'duty' [Williams,B] |
| 4110 | Obligation and duty look backwards (because of a promise or job), although the acts are in the future [Williams,B] |
| 4249 | "Ought implies can" is a famous formula in connection with moral obligation [Williams,B] |
| 2172 | The modern idea of duty is unknown in archaic Greece [Williams,B] |
| 4248 | Not all moral deliberations lead to obligations; some merely reveal what 'may' be done [Williams,B] |
| 4250 | The concept of a 'duty to myself' is fraudulent [Williams,B] |
| 4121 | Why should I think of myself as both the legislator and the citizen who follows the laws? [Williams,B] |
| 22409 | We don't have a duty to ensure that others do their duty [Williams,B] |
| 4122 | If the self becomes completely impartial, it no longer has enough identity to worry about its interests [Williams,B] |
| 2179 | If the moral self is seen as characterless, then other people have a very limited role in our moral lives [Williams,B] |
| 2180 | If reason cannot lead people to good, we must hope they have an internal voice [Williams,B] |
| 24012 | Kant's love of consistency is too rigid, and it even overrides normal fairness [Williams,B] |
| 23278 | For utilitarians states of affairs are what have value, not matter who produced them [Williams,B] |
| 22407 | Utilitarianism cannot make any serious sense of integrity [Williams,B] |
| 4124 | Utilitarian benevolence involves no particular attachments, and is immune to the inverse square law [Williams,B] |
| 4245 | Ethical conviction must be to some extent passive, and can't just depend on the will and decisions [Williams,B] |
| 4246 | Taking responsibility won't cure ethical uncertainty by; we are uncertain what to decide [Williams,B] |
| 7346 | Jeremiah implied a link between weakness and goodness, and the evil of the state [Jeremiah, by Johnson,P] |
| 3233 | Equality implies that people are alike in potential as well as in needs [Williams,B] |
| 3234 | Equality seems to require that each person be acknowledged as having a significant point of view [Williams,B] |
| 3235 | It is a mark of extreme exploitation that the sufferers do not realise their plight [Williams,B] |
| 4247 | It is a mark of our having ethical values that we aim to reproduce them in our children [Williams,B] |
| 4131 | Most women see an early miscarriage and a late stillbirth as being very different in character [Williams,B] |
| 4133 | Speciesism isn't like racism, because the former implies a viewpoint which belongs to no one [Williams,B] |
| 8412 | A causal interaction is when two processes intersect, and correlated modifications persist afterwards [Salmon] |
| 8413 | Cause must come first in propagations of causal interactions, but interactions are simultaneous [Salmon] |
| 8411 | Instead of localised events, I take enduring and extended processes as basic to causation [Salmon] |
| 4784 | Salmon says processes rather than events should be basic in a theory of physical causation [Salmon, by Psillos] |
| 8409 | Probabilistic causal concepts are widely used in everyday life and in science [Salmon] |
| 22920 | Do I not fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord [Jeremiah] |
| 22089 | Am I a God afar off, and not a God close at hand? [Jeremiah] |
| 2175 | There is a problem of evil only if you expect the world to be good [Williams,B] |