46 ideas
13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
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] |
22858 | There is collective action, where a trend is manifest, but is not attributable to individuals [Lukes] |
5845 | Niceratus learnt the whole of Homer by heart, as a guide to goodness [Xenophon] |
22854 | Power is a capacity, which may never need to be exercised [Lukes] |
22850 | Hidden powers are the most effective [Lukes] |
22852 | The pluralist view says that power is restrained by group rivalry [Lukes] |
22855 | One-dimensionsal power is behaviour in observable conflicts of interests [Lukes] |
22856 | Political organisation brings some conflicts to the fore, and suppresses others [Lukes] |
22857 | The two-dimensional view of power recognises the importance of controlling the agenda [Lukes] |
22859 | Power can be exercised to determine a person's desires [Lukes] |
22863 | Power is the capacity of a social class to realise its interests [Lukes] |
22860 | The evidence for the exertion of power need not involve a grievance of the powerless [Lukes] |
22861 | Power is affecting a person in a way contrary to their interests [Lukes] |
21133 | Supreme power is getting people to have thoughts and desires chosen by you [Lukes] |
22851 | In the 1950s they said ideology is finished, and expertise takes over [Lukes] |
22862 | Liberals take people as they are, and take their preferences to be their interests [Lukes] |
22853 | Anyone who thinks capitalism can improve their lives is endorsing capitalism [Lukes] |
5833 | Education is the greatest of human goods [Xenophon] |
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] |