All Questions

Consider the first-order sentence ∃x (∀y (A(x,y) → B(x,y)) → ∃z C(z)) Let's write this sentence in prenex form. First let's write one of the conditionals using the equivalence: a → b ⟺ ~a | b ∃x (~(∀y ...

I am studying Ramsey's 1925 paper Universals, and he states that "Socrates is wise", "Plato is wise", etc. are propositions of the form "x is wise", yet "Neither ...

I've seen the word explosion used in basic logic and deontic logic. The commonality seems to be an explosion is when the 'topic' of a logic universally applies, i.e. everything can be inferred or ...

So reading this argument for moral skepticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_nihilism#Argument_from_queerness It seems to me like the identical argument can be made against universals. Is this ...

this is a famous quote from Emanuel Kant: “philosophy is to learn how to think, and not to learn thoughts”. Where exactly did Kant say that? And what is the correct form of it?

So I was thinking of Godel's theorem (I am by no means an expert in this topic). Does Godel's only work when the cardinality of the number of axioms is the same as the cardinality of the number of ...

Can two things or x number of things that are not infinite create infinity? Let's assume that x is not infinity. I am thinking that it's not the case, and there's no paradox here, but I just want to ...

I am reading How to prove it by Velleman, and something is bothering me. On page 70, he states that "all unicorns are green" is vacuously true and so is "all unicorns are purple." ...

I have, in the last years, developed the somewhat controversial opinion that land property (not necessarily private property tout court) is the root of all evil. Without going too deep into whether ...

This question has its origin in a debate/thread about gods, mysterious ways and "gods plan" as in "can god communicate his plan to humans". This is not a question about a single ...

I was thinking about how population influences the power dynamics in a polity. The community that has the majority has more say in political discourse. Can we use the term "Numerical power" ...

We are trying to understand the English word "unless". Consider the following statement: "I will not go to Best Buy unless I need a TV". It appears that I can rephrase the ...

Are there grounds for reasoning that one who is naturally inclined to evil, and who yet acts morally is in some sense actually fulfilling the definition of the word morality/ethics, and is therefore ...

I can't find it, but I have a distinct memory of there being an SEP article that says something like as if the ordinals were there before the sets in relation to a question about whether ordinals (or ...

Leibniz stated: "Thus committed to maintaining that if there were nothing more to motion than relative change of position, then, since motion could be ascribed with equal right to, say, Train A ...

To make my question easier to understand, assuming a no-religious stance, we are made of the atoms that make up everything else in the universe. Why are we categorized as humans, and not the stars ...

If I say to an individual, who belongs to a higher social caste, that I will not help him but only those who are socially outcast and downtrodden, will it be considered as an abuse to the higher caste?...

I'm struggling to understand a step in resolution proof at http://www.ale.cs.toronto.edu/docs/ref/ale_trale_ref/ale_trale_ref-node44.html (man(X) --> mortal(X)) AND man(socrates) (man(socrates) --&...

If one party is more liberal than the other, then shouldn't the liberal party win every time? Doesn't the very logistics of following the electoral process intertwine with politics itself? For example,...

Frege claimed that "it is true that" adds nothing to the actual meaning of an assertion, and following him along this line are prosentential theories of truth. However, I wonder if this is ...

Antinatalism or anti-natalism is the ethical view that negatively values procreation. Antinatalists argue that humans should abstain from procreation because it is morally wrong. In scholarly and ...

How Ethics and Metaphysics would be made (the procedure behind them) ? Which philosophers have worked on the idea of relationship between language, reasoning and the procedure of it and more ...

Buddhism, according to the Pali canon, seems to be ultimately about saying no to life in consideration of ceaseless cravings or will constituting it, whereas Daoism seems to emphasize the 'path' or ...

I'd like to prove the following argument: Premise: ∀x SameShape(x,c) Conclusion: ∀x Cube(x) | ∀x Tet(x) | ∀x Dodec(x) From the following axioms The following axioms say that any object can be exactly ...

I have found a couple of books relating to metametaphysics, and it surprises me that this branch of philosophy exists. Before I plunge myself down a new rabbit hole, I would appreciate help in putting ...

Does anyone claim that a truly autonomous work of art would act to bring about the negation of original impulse, within social reality? Let's suppose the Gay Science is such a work of Art, and it was ...

It's been a long time since I have been thinking this and haven't found answers but I do have some viewpoints. First of all let me describe the problem. We know that humans are the only species on ...

Corals, sea anemones, sponges, etc. are animals according to modern biology. Mold or mushrooms are not plants and belong to their own realm of fungi. The Venus flytrap is a plant, though it is capable ...

Chalmer's new work is getting some publicity https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/17/virtual-reality-is-genuine-reality-so-embrace-it-says-us-philosopher Can't we argue that our (universal, ...

It is customary nowadays to have the introduction rule for the possibility operator "◊" be a two-edged negation of the necessity operator "□": ◊A = ~□~A. It is also possible (haha!)...

some people who believe in the prophethood and divine inspiration of specific individuals ,use this argument,as one of the arguments,that proves that their believe in such individuals is legitimate ...

Does try-catch from programming has any basis in formal logic or mathematics and if so what is it? Is it something like the following pseudocode? Try X, If you catch Y (success) than continue, If you ...

Euclid's Theorem is the statement that there is no largest prime. We might put it this way in first-order logic: ∀x ∃y (y >= x & Prime(y)) An informal proof is pretty straightforward: Let n be ...

I am not a hundred percent sure this belongs in Philosophy SE, but I couldn't think of a better SE to ask it, so I am asking it here. I got into an argument with a friend who claimed that the science ...

I found this assumption in this paper: 'Energy: Between Physics and Metaphysics', Mario Bunge. I am intrigued as to what is the latest on this approach. As a practicing scientist, it is hard to put ...

Some historical examples include the Gnostics, Advaita Vedanta, Kant, Schopenhauer, and countless mystics. I was just wondering if there is a common name for these sorts of worldviews. Thank you!

I'm looking for someone that can explain this lecture slide to me in a more clear language. I have an exam in a few days and i just cannot wrap my head around why this means that there is only one x s....

In all Abrahamic religions it is taught that everything that God does is for the good. Is it philosophically possible to argue that our universe is good without arguing from the perspective of a ...

In the book "Language, Proof, and Logic" there is a problem 11.26 about translating ambiguous sentences. Given an ambiguous sentence in English, we should provide two translations, one for ...

I see this sort of thing in political discourse a lot. Here are some examples: Socialists blaming capitalism for all the world's problems Nazis blaming Jews for all the world's problems Libertarians ...

Edited to make the question clearer Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument can effectively be reduced to just two options: Either (1) close to zero civilisations reach a post-human stage and run many ...

It feels like narratives and knowledge are two related concepts that would appear in some sort of diagram, but I have never seen such a diagram and I'm not sure exactly what the connection between the ...

According to the Wikipedia page on Marxist economics, one criticism Marx had of capitalism is that the capitalist model of employment creates a difference between the value the workers create and the ...

I recently watched a video on YouTube where there is a discussion about whether or not we should listen to angels. A woman on the show wrote a book about her visions, and had claims of being able to ...

I recently asked about the argument for proving the existence of other minds. This argument is called the best explanation argument. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/#BestExpl Could you ...

Can presentists account for the passage of the future through the present into the past? Presentism is the view that only present things exist and what’s present changes (i.e., things change, time ...

Here is The Knowledge Argument according to SEP (Mary is either monochrome or views the world through monochrome monitor): (1) Mary has all the physical information concerning human color vision ...

C.S. Peirce wrote: "[...] if the universe conforms, with any approach to accuracy, to certain highly pervasive laws, and if man's mind has been developed under the influence of those laws, it is ...

While reading Logicomix, I came across a scene that I don't quite understand. Russell: ...Logicians are creating elaborate ways to "say the same things in different words"...this "...

Let's try to translate the English sentence: "Everything to the left of every tetrahedron is also to the left of every dodecahedron" Consider the predicates Tet(x): x is a tetrahedron LeftOf(...