92 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 6779 | Instrumentalists say distinctions between observation and theory vanish with ostensive definition [Bird] |
| 14415 | A ground must be about its truth, and not just necessitate it [Merricks] |
| 14408 | Truthmaker needs truths to be 'about' something, and that is often unclear [Merricks] |
| 14395 | If a ball changes from red to white, Truthmaker says some thing must make the change true [Merricks] |
| 14398 | Truthmaker says if an entity is removed, some nonexistence truthmaker must replace it [Merricks] |
| 14403 | If Truthmaker says each truth is made by the existence of something, the theory had de re modality at is core [Merricks] |
| 14397 | Truthmaker demands not just a predication, but an existing state of affairs with essential ingredients [Merricks] |
| 14396 | If 'truth supervenes on being', worlds with the same entities, properties and relations have the same truths [Merricks] |
| 14400 | If truth supervenes on being, that won't explain why truth depends on being [Merricks] |
| 14394 | It is implausible that claims about non-existence are about existing things [Merricks] |
| 14390 | Truthmaker isn't the correspondence theory, because it offers no analysis of truth [Merricks] |
| 14412 | Speculations about non-existent things are not about existent things, so Truthmaker is false [Merricks] |
| 14414 | I am a truthmaker for 'that a human exists', but is it about me? [Merricks] |
| 14418 | Being true is not a relation, it is a primitive monadic property [Merricks] |
| 14391 | If the correspondence theory is right, then necessary truths must correspond to something [Merricks] |
| 14419 | Deflationism just says there is no property of being truth [Merricks] |
| 14393 | The totality state is the most plausible truthmaker for negative existential truths [Merricks] |
| 6780 | Anti-realism is more plausible about laws than about entities and theories [Bird] |
| 14413 | Some properties seem to be primitive, but others can be analysed [Merricks] |
| 14416 | An object can have a disposition when the revelant conditional is false [Merricks] |
| 14392 | Fregeans say 'hobbits do not exist' is just 'being a hobbit' is not exemplified [Merricks] |
| 14410 | You believe you existed last year, but your segment doesn't, so they have different beliefs [Merricks] |
| 6796 | Subjective probability measures personal beliefs; objective probability measures the chance of an event happening [Bird] |
| 6797 | Objective probability of tails measures the bias of the coin, not our beliefs about it [Bird] |
| 14417 | Counterfactuals aren't about actuality, so they lack truthmakers or a supervenience base [Merricks] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 14402 | If 'Fido is possibly black' depends on Fido's counterparts, then it has no actual truthmaker [Merricks] |
| 6800 | Many philosophers rate justification as a more important concept than knowledge [Bird] |
| 6786 | As science investigates more phenomena, the theories it needs decreases [Bird] |
| 6792 | If theories need observation, and observations need theories, how do we start? [Bird] |
| 6757 | Explanation predicts after the event; prediction explains before the event [Bird] |
| 6777 | Realists say their theories involve truth and the existence of their phenomena [Bird] |
| 6804 | There is no agreement on scientific method - because there is no such thing [Bird] |
| 6805 | Relativity ousted Newtonian mechanics despite a loss of simplicity [Bird] |
| 6778 | Instrumentalists regard theories as tools for prediction, with truth being irrelevant [Bird] |
| 6775 | Induction is inference to the best explanation, where the explanation is a law [Bird] |
| 6791 | If Hume is right about induction, there is no scientific knowledge [Bird] |
| 6790 | Anything justifying inferences from observed to unobserved must itself do that [Bird] |
| 6738 | Any conclusion can be drawn from an induction, if we use grue-like predicates [Bird] |
| 6739 | Several months of observing beech trees supports the deciduous and evergreen hypotheses [Bird] |
| 6799 | We normally learn natural kinds from laws, but Goodman shows laws require prior natural kinds [Bird] |
| 6798 | Bayesianism claims to find rationality and truth in induction, and show how science works [Bird] |
| 6752 | The objective component of explanations is the things that must exist for the explanation [Bird] |
| 6754 | We talk both of 'people' explaining things, and of 'facts' explaining things [Bird] |
| 6750 | Explanations are causal, nomic, psychological, psychoanalytic, Darwinian or functional [Bird] |
| 6761 | Contrastive explanations say why one thing happened but not another [Bird] |
| 6758 | 'Covering law' explanations only work if no other explanations are to be found [Bird] |
| 6759 | Livers always accompany hearts, but they don't explain hearts [Bird] |
| 6756 | Probabilistic-statistical explanations don't entail the explanandum, but makes it more likely [Bird] |
| 6760 | An operation might reduce the probability of death, yet explain a death [Bird] |
| 6785 | Inference to the Best Explanation is done with facts, so it has to be realist [Bird] |
| 6788 | Maybe bad explanations are the true ones, in this messy world [Bird] |
| 6787 | Which explanation is 'best' is bound to be subjective, and no guide to truth [Bird] |
| 6751 | Maybe explanation is so subjective that it cannot be a part of science [Bird] |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 6776 | Natural kinds are those that we use in induction [Bird] |
| 6767 | Rubies and sapphires are both corundum, with traces of metals varying their colours [Bird] |
| 6768 | Tin is not one natural kind, but appears to be 21, depending on isotope [Bird] |
| 6771 | Natural kinds may overlap, or be sub-kinds of one another [Bird] |
| 6770 | Membership of a purely random collection cannot be used as an explanation [Bird] |
| 6773 | If F is a universal appearing in a natural law, then Fs form a natural kind [Bird] |
| 6769 | In the Kripke-Putnam view only nuclear physicists can know natural kinds [Bird] |
| 6774 | Darwinism suggests that we should have a native ability to detect natural kinds [Bird] |
| 6764 | Nominal essence of a natural kind is the features that make it fit its name [Bird] |
| 6766 | Jadeite and nephrite are superficially identical, but have different composition [Bird] |
| 6808 | Reference to scientific terms is by explanatory role, not by descriptions [Bird] |
| 6753 | Laws are more fundamental in science than causes, and laws will explain causes [Bird] |
| 6762 | Newton's laws cannot be confirmed individually, but only in combinations [Bird] |
| 6763 | Parapsychology is mere speculation, because it offers no mechanisms for its working [Bird] |
| 6772 | Existence requires laws, as inertia or gravity are needed for mass or matter [Bird] |
| 6746 | There may be many laws, each with only a few instances [Bird] |
| 6740 | 'All uranium lumps are small' is a law, but 'all gold lumps are small' is not [Bird] |
| 6741 | There can be remarkable uniformities in nature that are purely coincidental [Bird] |
| 6742 | A law might have no instances, if it was about things that only exist momentarily [Bird] |
| 6743 | If laws are just instances, the law should either have gaps, or join the instances arbitrarily [Bird] |
| 6744 | Where is the regularity in a law predicting nuclear decay? [Bird] |
| 6747 | Laws cannot explain instances if they are regularities, as something can't explain itself [Bird] |
| 6748 | Similar appearance of siblings is a regularity, but shared parents is what links them [Bird] |
| 6749 | We can only infer a true regularity if something binds the instances together [Bird] |
| 6803 | If we only infer laws from regularities among observations, we can't infer unobservable entities. [Bird] |
| 6801 | Accidental regularities are not laws, and an apparent regularity may not be actual [Bird] |
| 6745 | A regularity is only a law if it is part of a complete system which is simple and strong [Bird] |
| 6802 | With strange enough predicates, anything could be made out to be a regularity [Bird] |
| 6789 | If flame colour is characteristic of a metal, that is an empirical claim needing justification [Bird] |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 6807 | In Newton mass is conserved, but in Einstein it can convert into energy [Bird] |
| 14406 | Presentists say that things have existed and will exist, not that they are instantaneous [Merricks] |
| 14407 | Presentist should deny there is a present time, and just say that things 'exist' [Merricks] |
| 14411 | Maybe only presentism allows change, by now having a property, and then lacking it [Merricks] |
| 14405 | How can a presentist explain an object's having existed? [Merricks] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |