Questions tagged [epistemology]
Epistemology is the study of knowledge, acquisition thereof, and the justification of belief in a given claim.
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Knowledge and do we have any? [closed]
What is Knowledge and do we possess any? What are the views about Knowledge from Islamic and Western point of view?
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Question about pyramid schemes
I’m collecting some content for a course on reasoning about weird things and I’m looking for any articles or sources that explore the reasoning involved in multi-level marketing schemes (a relative of ...
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Can one be a nihilist?
From Wikipedia:
[Nihilism]... rejects general or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge [...]
Rejecting something means to me, claiming that something is not true ...
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Is there a word for the belief in truth? [closed]
I just wonder if there is a word for the belief in truth to look it up and learn more about it.
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Is there a philosophical stance concerning justification of decisions?
When faced with dilemmas, I always felt I had no solid ground that'd justify my decision. Say I'm considering becoming a lawyer. But I obviously don't know what being lawyer is like. I can ask my ...
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Reliabilism, rule-circularity, and the "an inference rule is innocent until proven guilty"-principle
An argument is premise-circular if its conclusion is contained among the premises, and rule-circular if it endorses the reliability of the inference rule by which it was attained.
A rule-circular ...
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Do philosophers in twentieth century tend to ignore the history of philosophy?
as I read the history of western philosophy up to early nineteenth century, I have a feeling that the philosophy is somehow "making progress" over this long period. Not that philosophers ...
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Understanding some aspects of schematism in Kant's philosophy
I'm struggling to understand Kant's schematism. Kant says that imagination produces the synthesis of schemata and that schemata are how we can relate intuitions to concepts. He goes on to give the ...
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Knowing the laws of the universe but not its total state or ontology, what does philosophy have to say?
Since GR but also in special relativity and QM we can have laws, yet never access to the total physical state of the universe at any time. And that the ontology of science, the physical, is changing ...
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How did Descartes made a logical skeptic argument against logic, without falling into a paradox, in his Metaphysical Meditations? Is it actually valid
René Descartes seems to have made some arguments against logic and mathematics in his Metaphysical Meditations, however it seems that these arguments are still logical, and the problem is whether that ...
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Does the self change iff there is a change in knowledge? [closed]
While still being distinct terms. And is there a term for this? Hope that’s enough to go on!
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A question about Berkeley's attack on Locke's distinction of primary and secondary qualities
I'm reading W. T. Jones account of Berkeley's theory, and I find that in general Berkeley convincingly demonstrated some weak points that are fundamental to Locke's theory. But there is one of his ...
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What makes philosophers statements different from anyone elses statements?
I answered a question recently. I had backed it up with logic and reasoning as well. But someone had told me that my answer was just a comment of opinion, and that I needed to add some insight from a ...
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Which philosophers and philosophies discuss "worldview epistemologies"?
A lot of theologians and religious thinkers advance the idea that in order for any position to have meaning in epistemology or ethics or metaphysics it is necessary to interpret reality through some ...
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How "fairly sophisticated" could the intersection of mathematics and ethics be?
On page 42 of A Theory of Justice (the 1999 edition), Rawls says that moral theorizing might eventually involve "fairly sophisticated mathematics," and later in the book (page 105) he ...
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I am having trouble Alvin Goldman's example
"Suppose that Jones is told on fully reliable authority that a certain class of his memory beliefs are almost all mistaken. His parents fabricate a wholly false story that Jonese suffered from ...
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Do the rules of basic logic have to presupposed to gain philosophical knowledge?
First, let me apologize if my question is nonsensical in any sense. I do not have any philosophical training whatsoever, but I am really interested in some philosophical questions.
I was thinking ...
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A "paradox" of coherentism?
This is a follow-up to a question I had about foundationalism, which seems paradoxical inasmuch as it is a thesis that has been argued for (perhaps it is just the historical argumentation that is ...
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What are lottery propositions?
I've been reading up on the notion of lottery propositions. It seems like there are two notions of knowledge one can subscribe to in relation to probability: either you're skeptical and think you only ...
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Are different conception of morality just new terms for science-friendly versions of religions?
Note: religion is herein defined as "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith".
Given that there are multiple mutually exclusive conceptions of morality, both ...
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What is the difference between truth and fact in mathematics and science?
I am particularly curious on how one can closely talk about truths and facts with the areas of knowledge mathematics and science.
I cannot seem to distinguish between these two terms with respect to ...
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How can we know (with absolute certainty) that our logic is correct?
How can we know (with absolute certainty) that our logic is correct?
Even statements like Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” relies on our logic: that I exist is a logical consequence of my ...
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Need help with this paper on epistemic justice
What form must a theory of epistemic injustice take in order to successfully illuminate the epistemic dimensions of struggles that are primarily political? How can such struggles be understood as ...
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How does hylomorphism solve mind-body and form-matter problem? How do they interact?
So, I have been reading Aristotle and Aquinas for quite a while, but their nuanced terms make their philosophy hardly graspable. It is not clear to me how do they solve mind-body and form-matter ...
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What is the relationship between Anekantavada and Pyrrhonic skepticism?
Best skeptic arguments, five tropes of Agrippa are these: (wiki)
Dissent – The uncertainty demonstrated by the differences of opinions among philosophers and people in general.
Progress ad infinitum – ...
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Can Cogito, ergo sum be formalized?
I was wondering lately whether Descartes argument for the existence of undoubtable truth could be formalized. I tried to formalize his argument in FOL, but only his light version proving that there ...
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Which philosophical concept is parallel to Anekantavada ? Pluralism or perspectivalism? Is Anekantavada a metaphysical or an epistemological term?
Anekantavada in Jain philosophy means that each object or thing under scrutiny has infinitely many qualities associated with it, and language can only describe some of them. Plus, the perspective that ...
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The Problem of the Criterion in the history of philosophy
In his 1966 book Theory of Knowledge Roderick Chisolm provides two sets of questions:
What do we know? or What is the extent of our knowledge?
How do we know? or What is the criterion for deciding ...
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What are the objective differences between what's real and what's fake? [closed]
If someone makes a copy of Mona Lisa, why is this "Mona Lisa" a fake Mona Lisa, and not a real Mona Lisa? Why would copies be fake?
If someone "creates" something they call an &...
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Is it logically coherent to imagine a person who has no prior conception of the world?
I'm working my way through An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and I've come to realize there's a specific problem I've had with several philosophers' writings: they tend to assume as part of ...
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Can truth exist even though nothing happens?
There’s magnet. If the magnet didn’t attract the other magnet and then disappeared, in this case can “the magnet attracts the other magnet” never be true?
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Phenomenology of consciousness/learning/understanding the every-day?
I am a machine learning scientist who watched a lecture series on phenomenology. I feel like, since it is the study of consciousness’ structures and how they behave over time, it might have utility in ...
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Math, semantic meaning, and human senses as ungrounded
(1) Let's say I understand how one section of math behaves, maybe the natural numbers, and all of math is connected such that any one section of math can be interchanged for any other (my naive, ...
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What's a good introduction to formal epistemology for a math/philosophy double major?
Preferably one that has exercises and is geared towards people who have more of a background in math than philosophy.
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What is philosophical position is it for only the things that are in your immediate vicinity to exist at any given time?
You can only know so much about what is going on around you. For example, it is impossible for me to know what is going on in China right now if I am in South America. I might try to look at the news, ...
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What is the philosophy of engineering about?
Wikipedia has an article about the philosophy of engineering. There are also papers related to this indexed by PhilPapers. I wonder what philosophical questions can be asked about engineering other ...
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Do undefined concepts or assumptions have to exist?
In philosophy, we have the notion that definitions are infinitely regressive if we take the attitude of trying to define everything and it is unending. But of course, the very idea of an “infinite ...
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Axiom 4 in epistemic logic
In epistemic logic, axiom 4 says that if I know p, then I know that I know p. What is the philosophical value of such an axiom?
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Does empirical science need of the Past-Future hypothesis? [duplicate]
Scientism is the claim that science is the only source of knowledge.
I was reading a article about scientism that argues that the PFT is needed to science.
We can conclude, therefore, that the PFT is ...
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What are strong and contemporary arguments for rejecting scientism?
Introduction
I read this article by Hietanen, J., Turunen, P., Hirvonen, I., Karisto, J., Pättiniemi, I. and Saarinen, H. (2020), How Not to Criticise Scientism.
From the article, there are various ...
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There is some simple refutation of scientism?
Scientism (Science as Ideology) is the thesis that claims that the emphirical science is at least the best source of knowledge.
Two of the most important classifications of scientism are:
Strong ...
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Understanding the difference between analytic/synthetic vs necessary/contingent
I was listening to a lecture by John Searle on philosophy of language and he mentions the classifications: analytic/synthetic and necessary/contingent. I am not sure what the difference is but using ...
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Are there scholarly works on philosophy of language treatment of the Gettier problem?
I found two essays on a kind of response to the Gettier problem. One is a Philosophy Now article, and another is a blog post. On both sources, they argue that Smith's belief (on the original Gettier ...
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Positivism and Scientism
Positivists have been criticized for their scientism when in fact it seems that antipositivists are the ones that support scientism. Positivists try to exclude things from the label science, knowledge,...
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Reality-related mathematical axioms
We are often told (Feynman i.a.) that mathematics is different from science in that the results are not measurable.
We might take the speculation a bit further and wonder if indeed mathematics is ...
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According to Logical Positivism, why is it that for a statement to be meaningful, its contradiction must also be meaningful?
I am trying to understand the argument for the supposedly paradoxical nature of the verifiability criterion. The argument goes as follows:
Suppose that the principle of verifiability is itself ...
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Are all beliefs ultimately rooted in faith?
For the purpose of this question let 'belief' mean anything a person accepts to be true for whatever reason - in particular if someone 'knows' something they also 'believe' in it.
I read this old ...
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Is it fallacious to argue that something is correct, of good quality, or acceptable because a community of experts has established it as such?
Earlier today, I asked a programming question on a forum. I phrased the question as "What is the best way to do x?" Someone responded with something to the effect of, "the best way is ...
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What is the minimum feature structure for a valid family resemblance definition?
As part of a research project, I am trying to better understand Wittgenstein's family resemblance definitions. I have come across various interpretations of this idea and I want to check my ...
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Is imagination a sufficient condition for something to exist?
We can imagine a chair and build it,
We can imagine the Starship Enterprise
And given the neccessary technological knowledge build it.
We can imagine a living flying elephant and it seems given the ...
