26 ideas
14611 | Metaphysics should avoid talk of past, present or future [Smart] |
17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
14025 | The weaker version of Truthmaker: 'truth supervenes on being' [Crisp,TM] |
14023 | The Truthmaker thesis spells trouble for presentists [Crisp,TM] |
14024 | Truthmaker has problems with generalisation, non-existence claims, and property instantiations [Crisp,TM] |
12887 | A whole must have one characteristic, an internal relation, and a structure [Rescher/Oppenheim] |
14021 | Worm Perdurantism has a fusion of all the parts; Stage Perdurantism has one part at a time [Crisp,TM] |
17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
17077 | The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart] |
17078 | Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart] |
17061 | Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart] |
17074 | Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart] |
17076 | Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart] |
17071 | An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart] |
17062 | If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart] |
17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
22405 | Negative utilitarianism implies that the world should be destroyed, to avoid future misery [Smart] |
22404 | Any group interested in ethics must surely have a sentiment of generalised benevolence [Smart] |
14613 | Special relativity won't determine a preferred frame, but we can pick one externally [Smart] |
17063 | Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart] |
14020 | 'Eternalism' is the thesis that reality includes past, present and future entities [Crisp,TM] |
14026 | Presentists can talk of 'times', with no more commitment than modalists have to possible worlds [Crisp,TM] |
14615 | If time flows, then 'how fast does it flow?' is a tricky question [Smart] |
14022 | The only three theories are Presentism, Dynamic (A-series) Eternalism and Static (B-series) Eternalism [Crisp,TM] |
14614 | The past, present, future and tenses of A-theory are too weird, and should be analysed indexically [Smart] |