90 ideas
| 5333 | Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be [Flanagan] |
| 5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
| 16841 | Good inference has mechanism, precision, scope, simplicity, fertility and background fit [Lipton] |
| 16854 | Contrary pairs entail contradictions; one member entails negation of the other [Lipton] |
| 16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| 16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| 16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| 16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| 16814 | Understanding is not mysterious - it is just more knowledge, of causes [Lipton] |
| 16825 | How do we distinguish negative from irrelevant evidence, if both match the hypothesis? [Lipton] |
| 16851 | The inference to observables and unobservables is almost the same, so why distinguish them? [Lipton] |
| 16798 | We infer from evidence by working out what would explain that evidence [Lipton] |
| 16799 | Inductive inference is not proof, but weighing evidence and probability [Lipton] |
| 5340 | Explanation does not entail prediction [Flanagan] |
| 16856 | It is more impressive that relativity predicted Mercury's orbit than if it had accommodated it [Lipton] |
| 16857 | Predictions are best for finding explanations, because mere accommodations can be fudged [Lipton] |
| 16827 | If we make a hypothesis about data, then a deduction, where does the hypothesis come from? [Lipton] |
| 16804 | Induction is repetition, instances, deduction, probability or causation [Lipton] |
| 16823 | Standard induction does not allow for vertical inferences, to some unobservable lower level [Lipton] |
| 16858 | We can argue to support our beliefs, so induction will support induction, for believers in induction [Lipton] |
| 16800 | An inductive inference is underdetermined, by definition [Lipton] |
| 16832 | If something in ravens makes them black, it may be essential (definitive of ravens) [Lipton] |
| 16836 | My shoes are not white because they lack some black essence of ravens [Lipton] |
| 16831 | A theory may explain the blackness of a raven, but say nothing about the whiteness of shoes [Lipton] |
| 16833 | We can't turn non-black non-ravens into ravens, to test the theory [Lipton] |
| 16834 | To pick a suitable contrast to ravens, we need a hypothesis about their genes [Lipton] |
| 16801 | A hypothesis is confirmed if an unlikely prediction comes true [Lipton] |
| 16802 | Bayes seems to rule out prior evidence, since that has a probability of one [Lipton] |
| 16803 | Bayes is too liberal, since any logical consequence of a hypothesis confirms it [Lipton] |
| 16837 | Bayes involves 'prior' probabilities, 'likelihood', 'posterior' probability, and 'conditionalising' [Lipton] |
| 16839 | Explanation may be an important part of implementing Bayes's Theorem [Lipton] |
| 16850 | Explanation may describe induction, but may not show how it justifies, or leads to truth [Lipton] |
| 16807 | An explanation gives the reason the phenomenon occurred [Lipton] |
| 16808 | An explanation is what makes the unfamiliar familiar to us [Lipton] |
| 16806 | An explanation is what is added to knowledge to yield understanding [Lipton] |
| 16822 | Seaching for explanations is a good way to discover the structure of the world [Lipton] |
| 16816 | In 'contrastive' explanation there is a fact and a foil - why that fact, rather than this foil? [Lipton] |
| 16826 | With too many causes, find a suitable 'foil' for contrast, and the field narrows right down [Lipton] |
| 16811 | An explanation unifies a phenomenon with our account of other phenomena [Lipton] |
| 16810 | Deduction explanation is too easy; any law at all will imply the facts - together with the facts! [Lipton] |
| 16829 | We reject deductive explanations if they don't explain, not if the deduction is bad [Lipton] |
| 16809 | Good explanations may involve no laws and no deductions [Lipton] |
| 16812 | An explanation shows why it was necessary that the effect occurred [Lipton] |
| 16813 | To explain is to give either the causal history, or the causal mechanism [Lipton] |
| 16815 | Mathematical and philosophical explanations are not causal [Lipton] |
| 16846 | A cause may not be an explanation [Lipton] |
| 16849 | Explanations may be easier to find than causes [Lipton] |
| 16848 | Causal inferences are clearest when we can manipulate things [Lipton] |
| 16842 | We want to know not just the cause, but how the cause operated [Lipton] |
| 16840 | To maximise probability, don't go beyond your data [Lipton] |
| 16824 | Is Inference to the Best Explanation nothing more than inferring the likeliest cause? [Lipton] |
| 16817 | Best Explanation as a guide to inference is preferable to best standard explanations [Lipton] |
| 16818 | The 'likeliest' explanation is the best supported; the 'loveliest' gives the most understanding [Lipton] |
| 16820 | Finding the 'loveliest' potential explanation links truth to understanding [Lipton] |
| 16819 | IBE is inferring that the best potential explanation is the actual explanation [Lipton] |
| 16828 | IBE is not passive treatment of data, but involves feedback between theory and data search [Lipton] |
| 16844 | A contrasting difference is the cause if it offers the best explanation [Lipton] |
| 16853 | We select possible explanations for explanatory reasons, as well as choosing among them [Lipton] |
| 16821 | Must we only have one explanation, and must all the data be made relevant? [Lipton] |
| 16838 | Bayesians say best explanations build up an incoherent overall position [Lipton] |
| 16855 | The best theory is boring: compare 'all planets move elliptically' with 'most of them do' [Lipton] |
| 16852 | Best explanation can't be a guide to truth, because the truth must precede explanation [Lipton] |
| 5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
| 21833 | Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan] |
| 5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
| 5351 | We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan] |
| 5353 | The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography [Flanagan] |
| 5354 | We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living [Flanagan] |
| 5349 | For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion [Flanagan] |
| 5338 | Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling [Flanagan] |
| 5344 | Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living [Flanagan] |
| 5332 | People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this [Flanagan] |
| 5345 | We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way [Flanagan] |
| 5343 | People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free [Flanagan] |
| 5347 | Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation [Flanagan] |
| 5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
| 21834 | Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan] |
| 5342 | Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser [Flanagan] |
| 5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
| 5348 | Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character' [Flanagan] |
| 5355 | Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason [Flanagan] |
| 21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
| 5336 | Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing [Flanagan] |
| 21830 | For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan] |
| 21835 | We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan] |
| 21831 | Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan] |
| 16847 | Counterfactual causation makes causes necessary but not sufficient [Lipton] |
| 5350 | The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE [Flanagan] |
| 21832 | Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan] |
| 5352 | The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds' [Flanagan] |