18 ideas
20350 | Metaphysics generalises the data, to get at the ontology [Richardson] |
20349 | Metaphysics aims at the essence of things, and a system to show how this explains other truths [Richardson] |
20351 | Metaphysics needs systems, because analysis just obsesses over details [Richardson] |
15557 | Verisimilitude has proved hard to analyse, and seems to have several components [Lewis] |
15554 | A disposition needs a causal basis, a property in a certain causal role. Could the disposition be the property? [Lewis] |
15560 | We can explain a chance event, but can never show why some other outcome did not occur [Lewis] |
15559 | Does a good explanation produce understanding? That claim is just empty [Lewis] |
15556 | Science may well pursue generalised explanation, rather than laws [Lewis] |
15558 | A good explanation is supposed to show that the event had to happen [Lewis] |
4809 | Lewis endorses the thesis that all explanation of singular events is causal explanation [Lewis, by Psillos] |
14321 | To explain an event is to provide some information about its causal history [Lewis] |
20356 | Humans dominate because, unlike other animals, they have a synthesis of conflicting drives [Richardson] |
15555 | Explaining match lighting in general is like explaining one lighting of a match [Lewis] |
20366 | A mind that could see cause and effect as a continuum would deny cause and effect [Richardson] |
15552 | We only pick 'the' cause for the purposes of some particular enquiry. [Lewis] |
15551 | Ways of carving causes may be natural, but never 'right' [Lewis] |
15553 | Causal dependence is counterfactual dependence between events [Lewis] |
1558 | Clearly the gods ignore human affairs, or they would have given us justice [Thrasymachus] |