All Questions

I'm an outsider to the philosophy community (I'm a mathematics PhD student), and I'm curious of whether the following critique has been addressed. During some superficial discussions I had on ...

Why, according to Putnam in "Models and Reality", is moderate realism more affected by the so-called Löwenheim-Skolem Paradox than extreme realism? I understand the gist of Putnam's grip ...

One subsequence in the argument I'm working on goes something like this: ♢A → □♢A. ¬□♢A. ∴ ¬♢A. This seems valid (it's modus tollens, no?) but it seems to make the actual argument too "easy&...

Can anyone choose three and the tell me the meaning of these aphorisms by Friedrich Nietzsche, maybe even provide an example? but i mainly just need someone to break down at least 3 of these from ...

Graham Rees (who takes what one could say is a "middle of the road" approach to appraising Bacon's relevance to the practice of science in our times) writes in a 2002 article that (as a ...

According to Wikipedia: In logic, logical form of a statement is a precisely-specified semantic version of that statement in a formal system How can something be a semantic version of another thing? ...

As you can see less rich countries tend to have lower average IQ https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country People with higher IQ tend to make more money https://...

I feel like a lot of "logical fallacies", if called out, can just be labelled by the opponent as inductive reasoning. For example: "candidates didn't know the air conditioner didn't ...

A very short question: If, following Carnap, we can represent a possible world as a state description starting from a quantified language L, why does it make sense, following standard modal logic, to ...

Charles Renouvier (1815-1903) was a French philosopher. He adopted a view of the finiteness of space and time. He also adopted a view of finiteness of God. Could you, please, give me the whole picture ...

How can I apply John Rawls theory of justice to everyday decision making?

I was reading the SEP article on justification logic and the question arose for me, whether the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic justifications of set-theoretic axioms (a difference that has ...

In Reformation Day GIF, a man is depicted slapping Martin Luther and calling him a heretic. In my search for the identity of this mystery man, I learned that the GIF's background is a GIF with the ...

(Carolyn) Merchant sees proof in the link between persecution of witches and development of modern science in the work of Francis Bacon, one of the reputed father of the new scientific method, showing ...

In the last sentence of the first paragraph of section 3a about Feminist Criticisms of Autonomy in the article Autonomy | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, there is a phrase "tarnished by ...

By "definitional question," I mean questions like what is knowledge, what is justice, what is love, etc - questions that relate to the definition of certain abstract concepts. Take the ...

I've seen references to ωth-order logic sprinkled (sparsely) throughout my studies, though what properties this has compared to and contrasted with nth-order logics I wouldn't be able to tell you (I'm ...

I've seen the term "ontic predicate" bandied around in some works. Whenever it has a clear definition it seem no different than how one would define it in (first-order) logic, i.e. it being ...

I define ‘existence’ here as the totality of being, and I take it as obvious that existence is actual. In this context, ‘necessary’ will be defined as ‘must exist because it cannot fail to exist’. The ...

There's a very simple objection to the simulation hypothesis that I came up with, and I've read others come up with this same idea. So I assume it's something philosophers should already be aware of. ...

The theory-theory contends that when we attribute beliefs to others in order to explain and predict their behaviour (mind read) we use a a folk psychological theory. What is a good reason to object ...

In possible world semantics for propositional calculus, possible worlds are usually taken to be models for propositional formulas (the set of valuations in which a certain formula is true) In first ...

AFAIK, according to the counterpart theory, it is true of me that I could have lived a different life, if my counterpart in another possible world did live a different life. But where is it true that ...

Can space be distorted without things that occupy the space being distorted? I mean it is whether in reality or imagination?

Creating a life is (normally) a perfectly voluntary action with well known consequences, and hence the people involved are morally responsible for the result. But, what are the arguments for that the ...

I am looking for a view that would completely eliminate concrete objects by saying that being an abstract structure is enough for a world to be experienced by it's observers. If it is enough for a ...

What is the formal definition of a mathematical statement? We can all agree that the statement "Humans are apes" is not a mathematical statement, and the statement "4 is a prime number&...

Did Peirce apply his triadic theory (that things are comprised of Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness) to music?

It seems that, "A can be forced to equal B," allows, "A is possibly equal to B." In possible-worlds lingo, this gets us, "There is a possible world where A = B." Since ...

In a recent interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci (Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the U.S.) was asked why he advised the public against wearing masks in early 2020. One of Dr. Fauci's arguments was ...

I’ve been recently mulling over semantic and linguistic issues and I realized that my understanding of these fields may not correspond to the commonly accepted wisdom, so to speak. Although the ...

I'm trying to understand if a couple of statements would be considered axiomatic: Example 1: "murder is the unjustified killing of a person; if there was a murder, then a person was killed ...

Heidegger seems to be one of ther most controversial figures in philosophy as some philosophers consider him the greatest philosopher of the 20th century and others a charlatan. Analytic philosophers ...

The other day, my housemate said "Don't forget to not leave the spoon at the bottom of the container". I understood what he meant: "Do not leave the spoon at the bottom of the ...

This idea has always been very strange to me. The first time I encountered this idea was when I was required to read about the Euthyphro Dilemma in college. It felt like a whole dialogue about ...

I'd like to ask about a specific impression that I have about issues concerning the Axiom of Choice. It seems to me that either one claims that the axiom is an obvious fact about the modelled concept (...

Here is an excerpt from the book An Introduction to Philosophy by Russ W. Payne (2015) which is causing me some confusion. Mathematics had long served as the rationalist’s paradigm case of knowledge ...

There is a very fine-line between strawman and genuine criticism. How do you find the line? In recent debates about abolishing the police, a common counterargument is "Do you want criminals ...

While working on an argument over the last few days, I came to a point where I needed to formally render an "even if" sentence. Here and here, I found some good options, but I'm not sure I ...

Imagine for a while that a circle you see by your own eyes is in fact no circle but a regular constructible polygon with large number of sides where the side distance length is ultimately too small ...

I've been debating with a hard core Star Wars friend who loves repeating Yoda's "Do or do not, there is no try" knowledge. I tried to explain that the DO (B) and DO NOT (C), are end results, ...

I was skimming through the wikipedia article on the simulation hypothesis and saw the following argument by Elon Musk: If you assume any rate of improvement at all, games will eventually be ...

How existance of a thing ( Physical/abstract/ psychological) can be proved in philosophy. How ontology is connected to philosophy.

I am reading Essentials of Logic, 2e by Irving M. Copi. And I do not understand this exercise from page 87. Identify the fallacy of ambiguity that best characterizes each passage. ... Being ...

Since mathematicians have embraced classical logic, as e.g. MacFarlane points out in his 2021 intro book to philosophical logic (§ 7.4), one needs to distinguish between [meta-]reasoning and argument/...

As far as I can think of they both promote a sense of individualism but are they even comparable or do they overlap in any way?

Could anyone recommend undergrad-level intro papers or secondary literature on the is-ought gap and fact-value dichotomy please? Keen to read examinations and challenges. thanks

A funny joke consists of: A premise P that, for maximum humor, should be in some way familiar or relatable A conclusion Q, that in some way involves injury, harm, embarrassment, or some other taboo A ...

I can't see how language could be both socially constructed and innate

I recently argued with a friend about veganism. My position was basically that everyone who can allow a dietery change in their lives ought to be vegan. I argued that these days there are sufficient ...