“The spontaneous tendency to invoke a Final Cause in explanation of every difficulty is characteristic of metaphysical philosophy. It arises from a general tendency towards the impersonation of abstractions which is visible throughout History.” PhilosophyCausesDifficultyFinalsAriseTendenciesExplanationCharacteristicsVisibleSpontaneousMetaphysicalAbstractionInvoke Book:Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science including analyses of Aristotle's scientific writings Source: Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science including analyses of Aristotle's scientific writings
“The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.” KnowsMayHas BeensPhilosophyUseSpeakLanguageGivenUnderstandingResultsKnow HowDegreesPhysicsExperimentsSatisfiedMathematicalExplanationDescriptionInterpretationSchemesPhysicistCriteriaPlain Language Author:Werner Heisenberg
“Of course, there remains the question of why we should find mind-brain identities so persistently counter-intuitive, if they are true. But this is a simple psychological question, and there are a number of plausible explanations. Indeed this is a topic that is quite extensively discussed outside philosophy, by developmental psychologists and theorists of religion among others, under the heading of 'intuitive dualism'. It is rather shocking that so few of the many philosophers working on 'the explanatory gap' are familiar with this empirical literature.” IfsShouldMindPhilosophyCoursesLiteratureSimpleNumbersBrainIdentityRemainsPhilosopherFamiliarPsychologicalExplanationGapsTopicsShockingIntuitivePsychologistHeadingsPlausibleTheoristsDualismDevelopmental Author:David Papineau
“A certain kind of methodologically-minded philosopher of science is quick to read off metaphysical conclusions from features of scientific practice. Chemists don't derive their laws from fundamental physics, so reductive physicalism must be false. Biologists refer to natural numbers in some of their explanations, so numbers must exist. I think that this kind of thing makes for bad philosophy.” ThinkingKindPhilosophyLawCertainNaturalNumbersPracticeFundamentalsPhilosopherPhysicsConclusionFeaturesExplanationMetaphysicalBiologistChemist Author:David Papineau