46 ideas
| 14611 | Metaphysics should avoid talk of past, present or future [Smart] |
| 17729 | Examining concepts can recover information obtained through the senses [Jenkins] |
| 17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
| 17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
| 17740 | Instead of correspondence of proposition to fact, look at correspondence of its parts [Jenkins] |
| 17730 | Combining the concepts of negation and finiteness gives the concept of infinity [Jenkins] |
| 17719 | Arithmetic concepts are indispensable because they accurately map the world [Jenkins] |
| 17717 | Senses produce concepts that map the world, and arithmetic is known through these concepts [Jenkins] |
| 17724 | It is not easy to show that Hume's Principle is analytic or definitive in the required sense [Jenkins] |
| 17727 | We can learn about the world by studying the grounding of our concepts [Jenkins] |
| 17720 | There's essential, modal, explanatory, conceptual, metaphysical and constitutive dependence [Jenkins, by PG] |
| 17728 | The concepts we have to use for categorising are ones which map the real world well [Jenkins] |
| 17726 | Examining accurate, justified or grounded concepts brings understanding of the world [Jenkins] |
| 17734 | It is not enough that intuition be reliable - we need to know why it is reliable [Jenkins] |
| 17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
| 17723 | Knowledge is true belief which can be explained just by citing the proposition believed [Jenkins] |
| 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] |
| 17472 | Thick mechanisms map whole reactions, and thin mechanism chart the steps [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
| 17471 | Using mechanisms as explanatory schemes began in chemistry [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
| 17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
| 17718 | Grounded concepts are trustworthy maps of the world [Jenkins] |
| 17739 | The physical effect of world on brain explains the concepts we possess [Jenkins] |
| 17731 | Verificationism is better if it says meaningfulness needs concepts grounded in the senses [Jenkins] |
| 17732 | Success semantics explains representation in terms of success in action [Jenkins] |
| 17725 | 'Analytic' can be conceptual, or by meaning, or predicate inclusion, or definition... [Jenkins] |
| 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] |
| 17465 | Lavoisier's elements included four types of earth [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
| 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] |
| 14615 | If time flows, then 'how fast does it flow?' is a tricky question [Smart] |
| 14614 | The past, present, future and tenses of A-theory are too weird, and should be analysed indexically [Smart] |
| 17468 | Over 100,000,000 compounds have been discovered or synthesised [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
| 17470 | Water molecules dissociate, and form large polymers, explaining its properties [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
| 17473 | It is unlikely that chemistry will ever be reduced to physics [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
| 17474 | Quantum theory won't tell us which structure a set of atoms will form [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
| 17475 | For temperature to be mean kinetic energy, a state of equilibrium is also required [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
| 17469 | 'H2O' just gives the element proportions, not the microstructure [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
| 17467 | Isotopes (such as those of hydrogen) can vary in their rates of chemical reaction [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |
| 17466 | Mendeleev systematised the elements, and also gave an account of their nature [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry] |