All Questions

I've been stumped on this one question in particular for several days now and I'm hoping to get some help on where I'm going wrong. Given the following premises: ∀x∀y(StrongPref(x,y)→ ¬StrongPref(y,...

The problem of criterion simply states two claims: I can only identify instances of knowledge provided I already know what the criteria for knowledge are I can only know what the criteria for ...

these are the contexts: 1): If the number 0 has a certain property, and any natural number a has the property implies that a +1 also has the property, then every natural number has the ...

Occam's razor, or the law of parsimony, states that the simplest explanation for any given data is most likely the correct one. Some have attempted to use Occam's razor in a metaphysical sense, to ...

While reading Wikipedia I noticed the phrase "well-ordered language" in the following related to Gödel's completeness theorem: The completeness theorem then says that for any first-order theory T ...

Why no science of logic? By logic, I mean here deductive logic only. By science of logic, I mean a scientific investigation of logic as objective performance and manifest capability of human beings, ...

Closely related to Is there a term for the belief that "if it's legal, it's moral"? Is there a term for the belief that if something is illegal, it's immoral? Is it simply a variant ...

Can someone please explain in simple terms what are the two types of death that Maurice Blanchot talked about? I came across an article about it on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy but I don't ...

Wittgenstein claimed that many philosophers misuse language and write nonsense. He later claimed that a private language, one that cannot in principle be understood, is impossible. Does that suggest ...

Physicist Max Tegmark is widely known for proposing that there is a multiverse where mathematical structures would exist as real and actual universes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I've been looking for it, but Google leads the search to multiple sort of pages that, although they talk about logic, explain the subject very differently from each other and they don't fix a list ...

I'm trying to get the difference between the concept of argument in the field of formal and informal logic and I'm still a little bit confused by how. Are true premises and non-false conclusions ...

I'm just trying to know if there is any scientific work that is politically neutral. Does poverty/inequality stems from cultural values or behavior? What experiment could be done to prevent ...

A syllogism with two facts as premises leads to a deduced fact: Premise 1: The sky is above my head (fact) Premise 2: I look up and I see blue (fact) Conclusion: The sky is blue (...

Through the doomsday argument people try to calculate the number of humans that will ever live based only on the number of humans that have lived until now. To me this arguments seems very flawed, but ...

The English word "philosopher" comes from the Greek, and literally means "lover of wisdom." But what is the literal translation of the analogous term in Chinese? (There's more to this question than ...

I see that the goal of yoga is liberation from the karma and from the birth/death cycle. People say that it is the ultimate happiness forever. But wouldn't that be boring and monotonous if there is ...

What tends to be the opinion on Heidegger's analysis of Greek philosophy? What do experts in the (classical) history of philosophy make of his statements about ancient Greek philosophy?

Using the FITCH program and the FITCH derivation rules you should make a proof or derivation of C10 from P5 through P11. P5: ∀x∀y(StrongPref(x,y)→ ¬StrongPref(y,x)) P6: ∀x∀y∀z((StrongPref(x,y)∧...

I have a question about reading material implications. I know this read as "if p then q". like: if the moon is made of green cheese then the earth is round. but I can't read it in this sentence: ...

Both Stephen Wolfram and nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft think that the universe is a Cellular Automata. As far as I know, 't Hooft developped a series of frameworks to build different models of ...

the most authentic art is modernist art which reflects in its own fragmentation the fragmentation of society. What is the difference between Adorno's 'fragmentation' and post-modern art's ...

Sometimes I hear arguments that seem to appeal to the fact that something is morally permissible because it is legally permitted. For example: Abortion is moral because it's legally permitted. ...

I'm currently writing an article on the philosophy of physics. Part of the article, involves an experiment which would substantiate whether or not consciousness causes wave function collapse. Many ...

I am laying out a relationship between mathematics and ethics which I'm not sure is correct. In mathematics, we have axioms, statements we assume to be true. All the rest is logical deductions from ...

I have developed an interest in studying Pythagoras, mainly his idea of Number as the Arche. It seems that neither him nor his school left any writings, and what survives of it comes through Aristotle'...

So, I plan to begin to self study aesthetics, and was wondering whether a working knowledge of art history would be helpful for the same? If so, would Gardner's History of Art be sufficient? Also, on ...

Most societies through time (and even in the animal kingdom) seem to either exist as a patriachy or a matriachy. i.e. the head of the family and village in a society is either seens as the elder man's ...

We have this predicate: Prime(x) ≡ x>1 ∧(∀y)(Divide(y,x) → (y=1 ∨ y=x)). Now I have to turn this into an English sentence. I've come up with three answers: x is a prime number if x is greater ...

Can someone give an explation on the meaning of "θάνατός ἐστιν ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ὁρέομεν, ὁκόσα δὲ εὕδοντες ὕπνος," a remaining fragment by Heraclitus. This website translated it as "All the things we ...

Like if we talk about making choices, how can we know if it's made out of a habitual or automatic thought process or is independent and conscious? To most degree, the succession of thoughts in a ...

Recently, I had an argument with someone who stated that the chance of experiencing nothing after death is extremely low. Their reasoning was that one can think of many more metaphysical realities in ...

I’m interested to see whether people think the value of human life is worth less if our existence is the result of a simulation created by a “higher being.” Would living in base reality give more ...

For example, suppose I have this problem: T (T ⊃ (B ∨ M)) (M ⊃ H) ~H I heard there's a programming language called Prolog which can verify whether the conclusion was true or false. I would like to ...

Can someone explain in simple terms what exactly is a first-order logic? From my amateur standpoint, I think that first-order logic is a some kind of a system of symbols and general logical rules and ...

How can you explain to a 5 y.o. how abductive reasoning differs from IBE? I don't understand even though I read SPE and these papers: Campos, Daniel G. On the Distinction between Peirce’s Abduction ...

I know there are many factors when making decisions such as emotion, logic and reason etc ... But my question is how significant is instinct or intuition driven decision making important when human ...

I know that science and ethics must work hand in hand to lead to a better pathway and future development on preserving the health of the scientific discipline. But what are the major issues which ...

Respected group members, I want ask you that if food scarcity in group and other group have limited resources for survive , my wife and children dying with starvation would I morally right to attack ...

I assume utilitarianism to be the doctrine that one should act to maximize the overall amount of some "happiness". Next to the fact that it's not quite clear what happiness is supposed to be and ...

Gregory Chaitin is a mathematician who thinks that the universe is itself a computer, or similar... He has written papers closely related to the field of hypercomputation (For example, he invented ...

A follow-up, of sorts, on this question, in which I'd like to refine the notion of moral obligation. Consider some instances in which the notion might arise: Most people agree that a trolley operator ...

In the realm of statistics and machine learning, a lot of discussion has arisen recently around the difference between explaining and predicting: That the two are not the same, and that the difference ...

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is Lewis Carroll. Mary loves roses Which one of the sentences are necessarily true/false or contingently true, and why?

I'm interested in whether there is a particular name for the above (part mesaurement, part prediction) formula/hypothesis (e.g. "every second, 4 babies are born","every minute, 330,000 google searches ...

In Nietzsche's first essay in A Geneaology of Morals, he suggests that use of language in which subjects and verbs are distinguished may influence or at least correspond to conceptual distinctions in ...

All the computer languages I'm familiar with, be they imperative or declarative have the same core mechanics (arithmetic and logic).They have the same loops, conditionals etc. Whatever the language it ...

I cannot find a clear answer to what mind-body supervenience implies for non-material realisations of mind-properties and zombies. Let’s start with the zombies first, because it is often stated that ...

I'm a software developer, and I'm making an application that is, basically, a religious-inspired social media platform. It's free, not freemium, no consumables, nothing to pay for and users have ...

Is unplugging a robot from power the same as killing a person? As the commenters said this does not quite work because robots can be plugged back in. So let's replace robots with philosophical zombies,...