Questions tagged [terminology]
The study of terms and their use.
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Is there a difference between ambiguity and vagueness?
I was reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles about Ambiguity and Vagueness, and was led to ask this question. Is there a difference between the two concepts? If so, are there ...
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What terminology distinguishes questions that define goals from those that accomplish them?
I will soon give a technical talk in which I want to stress the importance of asking the right questions. I propose to use a philosophical analogy; comparing the questions "How do I live a good ...
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Term for the dichotomy of blaming a philosophical counter-example on oneself vs. our commonsense
Imagine some philosopher answers a question of the form "What is X?". Then a critic points out that, according to this answer, O is not X, but we clearly consider it to be X. It seems that ...
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What is the difference between token mental state vs type?
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
Part 6 paragraph 4:
The classical identity theory holds that each token mental state (in a particular person’s mind at a particular time) is identical ...
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how these two statements can be true at same time?
If you consider any two numbers that are not equal in value (2 is not 3), and it is a true statement that they are not. However, it is also true to state that they are the same: both are numbers.
You ...
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When and why do we say that two things are the same?
In a preceeding question I have asked about the foundations of rational reasonning. It seems the concept of identity plays a key role. However "identity" is not observed in the real world: our mind ...
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Is there a term for the fact that it may need more information to describe a probability distribution than conveyed by the event itself?
For example, X is a random integer from 1 to 16. Now I get a piece of information: X is 3, 5, 9, or 14. This has 2 bits of information for the knowledge about X. But if the list of options is random ...
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Is there agreement on “axiology” vice “value theory”?
Of course, Wikipedia is neither authoritative nor internally consistent—no surprise there. But, having encountered the word axiology, I checked out the article of that name, which asserts that “it is ...
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What are the differences between sentience, consciousness and awareness?
Dictionary definitions such as this one often seem to use the terms sentience, awareness, and consciousness as if they are synonymous with each other. Is this really the case? If not, how do they ...
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What is 'an Ontological Evil'?
In various discussions touching upon topics between geopolitics, ethics, and general philosophy, I have seen the term used, in phrases such as 'please do not believe that members of [faction that both ...
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What do the meanings of ponens and tollens have to do with Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens? [closed]
There are two inference rules in propositional logic called Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens. I was wondering how the meanings of ponens and tollens have to do with the rules? That is, how does the ...
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Is there a name for the following transhumanist doctrine: "the most important thing to do with one's life is to try to avoid death"?
[Disclaimer: I don't have any formal training in philosophy and I'm just curious, so I hope this question is in scope.]
I'm interested in whether there is an established name for a simple (admittedly ...
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What is the ontological relationship between a "process" and a "law of physics", from this philosophical perspective?
I was reflecting on the difference between the subject of physics and the subject of biology, and this was the conclusion I reached: Physics is the study of the laws of objective reality, while ...
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Is the mass/count-noun distinction the same as the continuous/discrete one?
Justification for this as a PhilosophySE questions: there are two SEP articles concerning this topic:
The Logic of Mass Expressions (Nicolas[18]).
The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions (Steen[22]).
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Does logic have a more proper word to mean something similar to dilemma but neutral?
Section 7.8 The Dilemma of Copi's Introduction to Logic says:
The dilemma is a common form of argument in ordinary language. It is, in essence, an
argumentative device in which syllogisms on the ...
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Names for most popular taxonomies of informal fallacies?
Informal fallacies are not formal, so as might be expected, there exists no prevailing standard taxonomy. Various books on logic and logical fallacies organize fallacies differently (see chapter ...
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What are the reasons some thoughts cannot be simplified, reduced to a simpler set or phrases?
What are the reasons some thoughts cannot be simplified, reduced to a simpler set or phrases? When reading Heidegger or Hegel, one wonders why those authors couldn't simplify their tangled web of ...
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How do we know we've defined a thing properly when all definitions have exceptions? [closed]
I don’t understand definitions.
Let’s take this question: “What is a woman?”
Now if I am a Platonic Idealist (or some other essentialist) then I think that all women share the same essence and will ...
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What is a complete understanding?
In a comment to this recent question of mine, somebody used the phrase, "complete understanding."
Without necessarily answering the linked question (i.e. without defining "understanding&...
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Is attacking an argument because it's machine generated an ad hominem fallacy?
I really want to say rejecting a line of reasoning because ChatGPT created it would be an ad machina argument.
(Note, I'm interested in the case where the rejection is made without any consideration ...
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Is understanding possible?
Often, humans will claim to "understand" something. When pressed, they will define understanding as something like:
Knowledge
Conception within the mind
Comprehension
Awareness of meaning
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What is the difference between morality and ethics?
Is there a difference between morality and ethics, and if so, what is it? I have seen those terms used interchangeably, but have any philosophers made a distinction between the two?
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To View Things by their Function
Jordan Peterson regularly talks about how we view things in the world as tools, instead of mere objects. Some examples:
1) We see something as a chair because we can sit on it. If you cannot sit on ...
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Exact significance, of menthological settings (imagery, symbolism, plans, but where is the role of constructs for obtaining divergence)?
What is a menthological setting?
Is it something, that lets your mind, interleave, expand, (and diverge!), along the lines, of a mental setting?
Thanks.
(For example:
example menthological construct
)....
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What is the standard name for this mild form of dualism?
Dualism is traditionally thought to be the belief that matter and mind are separate things. However, I have this belief that while matter causes mind to emerge, nonetheless they are separate entities. ...
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Can a collection be a single 'thing'?
Can a collection be any single object in itself, for example Collection A is 'one collection' or set A is 'one set' or even one 'mathematical object' if viewed as a whole? For example a set containing ...
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How to understand "type-which-corresponds-to"?
In the comment on How do we define this?, user g s wrote a deleted comment indicating that things could be defined using "type-which-corresponds-to" (exact quote from memory). They followed ...
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Is "Why do we live?" a philosophical question?
After posting a question akin to "Why do we live?" in the r/AskPhilosophy subreddit its moderators got it removed, providing as motivation "All questions must be about philosophy".
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"Impredicative" definitions in mathematics
In this blog post, the following definition of an "impredicative definition" is offered:
A definition is said to be impredicative if it defines an object E by means of a quantification over a ...
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Two kinds of abstract objects - circles and sets
Both circles and sets are considered abstract objects. I can visualise a circle in my mind (can 'see it through my mind's eye') but can't visualise a set or a number. I have no picture of a set in my ...
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Is there an opposite concept to trilemma?
In economics or other fields, there's a concept trilemma. It means
A trilemma is a difficult choice from three options, each of which is
(or appears) unacceptable or unfavourable. There are two ...
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What is the rigorous definition of free will?
What is the rigorous definition of free will? There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of debate around free will. These debates seem to go nowhere, and that is because (so I think, anyway) ...
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Is there a term for materialistic non-determinism?
I was trying to explain to someone that an underlying assumption of science is ... and then couldn't come up with a term to describe it.
What I'm hoping to give a name to, is the idea that the world ...
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What's the correct term or phrase for "Breaking a complex problem down into its fundamental tenets"?
Any problem I encounter, I distill down into fundamental tenets to create a model where the relationships between the distinct components of the problem are clear and more easily defined / discussed.
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What noun describes the ideology that most things are scams?
What’s the -ism that portrays this outlook. This forgotten -ism is related to — BUT NOT — capitalism, corpocracy, cynicism, Marxism, misanthropy, nihilism, pessimism, socialism or skepticism. Such ...
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What is the term for a property instantiated either verbally or by judgement?
A promise is an example of a speech act. Is there a broader term encompassing nonverbal judgements? For example, consider a domain where objective measures of a property are vague or nonexistent; a ...
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Interpret Bayesian probability as frequentist probability?
It is usually said that the Bayesian probability is a subjective concept, quantifying one's degree of belief in something, while the frequentist probability is the the fraction of certain outcomes ...
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How, in layman's terms, should this Conifold argument against illusionism be interpreted?
There's a discussion about philosophical zombies and illusionism going on in The Symposium, which is the main chat room for Philosophy on Stack Exchange and Conifold posted this a day or two ago (the ...
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Is there a term for the belief that "if it's legal, it's moral"?
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. ...
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Is Kant's talk of "homogeneity" the deeper point-of-contact between his theory of categories, and modern category theory?
The SEP article on category theory says:
Categories, functors, natural transformations, limits and colimits appeared almost out of nowhere in a paper by Eilenberg & Mac Lane (1945) entitled “...
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Antonym(ic) definitions of a phenomenon by its lack of property
I thought I saw the term antonym or antonymic (?) definition occur somewhere on the Stackexchange with a reference, but now I can't find it.
I refer to things like UFO which is characterized by its ...
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What does "physical" mean to philosophers?
A childish question (literally) -
My 8 year old asked me this morning: "Dad, what does 'physical' mean?" - and I found myself at loss for an ordinary language answer.
Every answer I could come up ...
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Where does 'numerical' in 'numerical identity' come from?
L.S.,
the word numerical has several meanings. E.g. numerical in the meaning ''given by numbers', and when saying Numerical Identity, meaning 'only one'.
When was the first time the word was ...
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How do terms and concepts map to and relate to each other when thinking across languages?
I am working on creating a cross-linguistic dictionary every now and then, and currently thinking about the relationship between terms (single or multi word), morphemes (word parts), and concepts. At ...
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Is there a name for the relation between a proposition and the proposition formed after applying the diamond modal operator?
I don't know if there is a name for it but, since a negative proposition is the negation of another proposition for e.g. the proposition that "it is not the case that it is sunny" is the ...
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Is this a fallacy: "A woman is an adult who identifies as female in gender"? [closed]
The phrase tries to avoid the overt circular definition found in the variant, "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman", by swapping woman with female in gender. But is that still a ...
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Is the dichotomy between natural and unnatural defensible?
Are not the dictionary definitions of natural and unnatural inconsistent?
Why wouldn't whatever humans create (e.g. money, plastic bags, books, internet, laptop, lamp, buildings, airplanes, etc) be ...
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what do you call a logical argument between 2 people who hav personal grudges? Its opposite of Ad Hominem bt not Inverse Ad Hominem. what's it called?
If A and B already have personal grudges but keep that aside, they are discussing a subject and a conflict erupts argument. Their points are based on the subject only and nothing personal but the heat ...
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Why is Xenophanes B34 epistemological fragment also gnoseological?
I was reading a History of Ancient Philosophy (from the National Research council in Spain, CSIC) book where the following Xenophanes' fragment B34 is classified as gnoseological, without further ...
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Ethical naturalism and moral naturalism
This article (Shook, 2015) makes a distinction between "ethical naturalism" and "moral naturalism":
Moral naturalism as defined at the conclusion of the previous section
is ...
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