28 ideas
1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
12772 | Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise [Fraassen] |
12771 | Is it likely that a successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? [Fraassen] |
12773 | Analytic philosophy has an exceptional arsenal of critical tools [Fraassen] |
12770 | We may end up with a huge theory of carefully constructed falsehoods [Fraassen] |
18487 | We want to know what makes sentences true, rather than defining 'true' [McFetridge] |
18488 | We normally explain natural events by citing further facts [McFetridge] |
12184 | Logical necessity overrules all other necessities [McFetridge] |
15083 | The fundamental case of logical necessity is the valid conclusion of an inference [McFetridge, by Hale] |
15084 | In the McFetridge view, logical necessity means a consequent must be true if the antecedent is [McFetridge, by Hale] |
12180 | Logical necessity requires that a valid argument be necessary [McFetridge] |
12181 | Traditionally, logical necessity is the strongest, and entails any other necessities [McFetridge] |
12183 | It is only logical necessity if there is absolutely no sense in which it could be false [McFetridge] |
12192 | The mark of logical necessity is deduction from any suppositions whatever [McFetridge] |
14919 | Empiricists deny what is unobservable, and reject objective modality [Fraassen] |
12182 | We assert epistemic possibility without commitment to logical possibility [McFetridge] |
12187 | Objectual modal realists believe in possible worlds; non-objectual ones rest it on the actual world [McFetridge] |
3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
12186 | Modal realists hold that necessities and possibilities are part of the totality of facts [McFetridge] |
6783 | To 'accept' a theory is not to believe it, but to believe it empirically adequate [Fraassen, by Bird] |
14917 | To accept a scientific theory, we only need to believe that it is empirically adequate [Fraassen] |
6784 | Why should the true explanation be one of the few we have actually thought of? [Fraassen, by Bird] |
12769 | Inference to best explanation contains all sorts of hidden values [Fraassen] |
13066 | An explanation is just descriptive information answering a particular question [Fraassen, by Salmon] |
12768 | We accept many scientific theories without endorsing them as true [Fraassen] |
1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |