The empiricism tag has no wiki summary.
5
votes
3answers
201 views
What are the most basic assumptions one has to make in order to conduct science?
I often wondered: What are the most basic assumptions I have to make before I can even start thinking about life, universe and the rest?
So far I have boiled them down to three:
There is a world, a ...
6
votes
1answer
166 views
What did Wittgenstein mean by saying that the belief in the causal nexus is a superstition?
In the Tractatus-Logicus Wittenstein says:
5.1361
The events of the future cannot be inferred from those of the present.
Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.
I'm not quite ...
3
votes
1answer
93 views
What did Hume and Russell have to say about atheists and morality?
I have heard Christian apologists argue that, since atheists view humans the same as other animals, they can therefore have no more of a moral compass than do animals. E.g., Greg Bahnsen argues this ...
2
votes
2answers
60 views
What is the all (sabba) in the buddhist suttas and philosophical context?
What does the Buddha mean by 'the all' (sabba) as found in the suttas? How is this perspective categorized philosophically and how does this perspective compare with other modern philosophies?
I have ...
10
votes
1answer
238 views
How is Bonjour's coherence theory of justification not just a version of foundationalism?
In presenting his coherence theory of justification BonJour appeals to what he calls the “Observation Requirement.”
Bonjour’s observation requirement is the notion that there are some kinds of ...
3
votes
1answer
140 views
What is a mathematical or logical name for the process of proving a statement by exhausting the domain?
I am trying to understand logic and I came across a set of actions that I describe below that I can't get my head around.
Suppose you have a bag of multiple colored balls.
Situation 1.
Argument: ...
8
votes
1answer
353 views
Was Aristotle an Empiricist?
When I was taught about Aristotle and Plato, the picture I got was very much like this image from a Raphael fresco:
Usually Plato is said to be pointing to the heavens, which represent abstract ...
5
votes
1answer
155 views
Are there any responses to Penelope Maddy's “Second Philosophy”?
I am finishing up reading Penelopy Maddy's [2007] "Second Philosophy". I really enjoy her flavor of naturalism. Like Quine, she justifies parts of mathematics because of its application. Unlike Quine, ...
3
votes
1answer
227 views
Contradiction between belief in cause and effect & belief in the continued existence of matter
In A Treatise of Human Nature, section 1.4.7 (the conclusion of part 1), Hume states that there are some circumstances in which belief in the continued existence of matter and the belief in cause and ...
3
votes
0answers
257 views
how are rationalism and empiricism related to modern epistemology? Should epistemology be seen as incorporating both? [closed]
Epistemology by simplest definition is the theory of knowledge and one of the things it addresses is the source of knowledge. On the other hand we know that rationalism (deduction) and empiricism ...
6
votes
5answers
874 views
Does philosophy belong to empirical science or formal science?
According to Wikipedia, science
can be divided into empirical
science (such as natural science and
social science) and formal
science (such as mathematics,
logic, statistics). I was wondering
if ...
7
votes
3answers
356 views
Who said they were hiding in the woods?
In my undergraduate days, I remember reading someone occupying roughly a mental and historical space as David Hume (originally my thought was between Hume and Kuhn), and have a vaguely recalled ...
17
votes
6answers
7k views
What did David Hume mean when he said that “reason is a slave to the passions”?
I don't understand the meaning of this oft-quoted quotation of Hume's in On Reason, namely his saying that "reason is a slave to the passions." What exactly does he mean by that ? Is it simply that ...
