103
votes
Being alive today: the most improbable coincidence?
Your reasoning would be sound if you picked any random human who ever lived and checked whether they would be alive today. This chance would indeed be rather low. (Because today's world population is ...
- 1,011
95
votes
If you place a pencil in an opaque box and close the box, does the pencil exist?
If you shake the box, it rattles. If you measure its weight before you put in the pencil and after, it will have increased by exactly the weight of the pencil. That's how you know the pencil still ...
- 1,049
67
votes
If you place a pencil in an opaque box and close the box, does the pencil exist?
I’m having a tough time explaining why the pencil ceases to exist once you close the box.
Because you're trying to explain something which is wrong physically and wrong philosophically. Your friends ...
- 1,331
52
votes
If you place a pencil in an opaque box and close the box, does the pencil exist?
The assumption that the pencil continues to exist - even when the box is closed - is the most simple hypothesis which explains all relevant observations. E.g., the observation that the pencil exists ...
- 20.6k
42
votes
Being alive today: the most improbable coincidence?
Shuffle a standard deck of 52 playing cards and look at the arrangement you end up with. Assuming your sorting was completely random the probability of you getting that exact arrangement is about 1 in ...
- 521
26
votes
If you place a pencil in an opaque box and close the box, does the pencil exist?
You are assuming that existence is a phenomenon that can undergo sudden state changes. Or in simpler words: That things can cease to exist and came (back) into existence instantly and without ...
- 1,858
26
votes
An argument that everything exists
You're apparently defining "thing" as "something that exists", which makes the statement "everything exists" a simple tautology and thus not very meaningful.
- 697
22
votes
If you place a pencil in an opaque box and close the box, does the pencil exist?
If you place a pencil in an opaque box and close the box, does the
pencil exist?
This is a Metaphysical question to which we do not know the correct answer. But here are some philosophical views
...
- 2,359
16
votes
How does a thought imply there is a thinker in "I think therefore I am"?
The "I" of the Cogito does not stand for Descartes, or for the subject, or for the subject's self. It stands for the thing thinking the Cogito when the subject thinks the Cogito.
The ...
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14
votes
What is objective morality?
A proposition is objective if its truth value is independent of the person uttering it. A fact is objective in the same way.
For morality to be objective, moral propositions such as "Killing is bad",...
- 26.6k
11
votes
Accepted
Does anything you can think of exist?
This is an interesting question, there are several ways of looking at it. Here are two:
Alexis Meinong looked at it from the point of view of intentionality. Intentionality is the fact that any ...
- 26.6k
10
votes
Is willful ignorance about one's own mortality escapism?
Actually the whole business of living other than the animalic part, is denying death.
So the idealism you are seeking by not denying death is itself a denial of death.
[I]
The human animal is ...
- 650
10
votes
If you place a pencil in an opaque box and close the box, does the pencil exist?
Simplicity is a criterion for theory or explanation selection. It can clash with other criteria such as explanatory reach. Also there is no agreement on the nature of simplicity. Intuitively, I ...
- 35k
10
votes
Accepted
If turtles see everything, and nothing seen can see, does it follow that non-turtles exist?
First, your premises are inconsistent: your second premise implies that turtles do not see other turtles, or themselves, yet, according to the first premise, they see everything. So, taking y=x, we ...
- 41.7k
10
votes
Accepted
An argument that everything exists
I recommend distinguishing between object and word (noun): on the one hand, objects exist; they are real. On the other hand,
some words refer to objects while other words do not. Hence all objects ...
- 20.6k
9
votes
What are the counterexamples to Kant's argument that existence is not a predicate?
There are no counterexamples to Kant's "argument" because it is not an argument. It is a view of predication under which being/existence is not a "real" predicate discussed in ...
- 41.7k
9
votes
Being alive today: the most improbable coincidence?
The first time I recall encountering this argument was in Alan Moore’s Watchmen, where the probability of what you describe is likened to “events with odds so astronomical they’re effectively ...
- 231
8
votes
Being alive today: the most improbable coincidence?
The probability of an event X happening, GIVEN THAT IT HAS HAPPENED, is always 100%.
I hear thinking like you give used in many flawed arguments. For example, I once got into a conversation with ...
- 259
8
votes
Accepted
How to disprove "I'm entitled to my opinion"
Welcome to this SE, Daniel. I think the problem with the argument is what you are trying to prove:
how can I disprove that there exists an inherent privilege (an entitlement) to believe whatever ...
- 19.1k
8
votes
Accepted
How to denote the idea of nothingness in formal terms?
There's some recent formal work by Graham Priest on this topic, which can be found in his monograph One. Oxford 2016, p.99ff.
Priest works in a non-standard mereology, where parthood is a non-well-...
- 1,388
8
votes
Accepted
Is reincarnation inevitable?
The scientific perspective
I observe from other answers here that arguments invoking current science are acceptable. So from a scientific perspective, here are some questions:
In your model, the ...
- 196
7
votes
Ontological status of variables
What is a variable ?
A variable is a "syntactical" object:
it lives in formalized languages.
In the formalized language of logic and mathematics, it "works" like a pronoun.
When we have a ...
- 35.4k
7
votes
Accepted
Descartes' Demon
Many would are argue that you are right, the demon is still successful in his deception.
DesCartes claims in the cogito that he has proven the existence of an "I", since for there to be deception, ...
- 26.6k
7
votes
Is willful ignorance about one's own mortality escapism?
This question takes it for granted that fear of death is a logical necessary thing. However, there is nothing that is more clearly a product of evolution than fear of death. There is no deep truth ...
- 1,344
7
votes
Can we logically prove that anything exists?
IMO, there are two related but different issues here.
We prove statements : in math and logic we prove a theorem from axioms. There is no way of proving a statement "from scratch", i.e. without ...
- 35.4k
6
votes
Quine's "to be is to be the value of a bound variable"
Quine's argument about existence relies on Russell's theory of descriptions. Therefore, one source of criticisms on Quine's thesis are criticisms on the theory of descriptions.
The theory of ...
- 7,251
6
votes
How can we prove something exists?
A question like, How can I prove something exists? must be placed in a context. Who is asking, and what will they accept as proof?
In an ordinary everyday sort of way, it might be answered by saying ...
- 18.5k
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