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1500 questions
22
votes
10 answers
Are different values of nothing equivalent?
Are different values of nothing equivalent? Is 'no tigers' the same as 'no zebras'?
Stephan Schielke
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22
votes
16 answers
Is knowledge non-physical?
What is the fundamental nature/ontology of knowledge? Is knowledge a physical state? Is knowledge a specific arrangement of physical particles in a brain, a book, a solid-state drive, a GPU, etc.? Or is knowledge fundamentally non-physical, existing…
Mark
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22
votes
10 answers
What is a ‘woman'?
In contemporary society, the theoretical and philosophical question of what gender is is an active topic of discussion.
Arguably, while gender may have been a topic of philosophical analysis prior to the 20th century, by asking for example what the…
Timmy Fry
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22
votes
12 answers
Could law be written in formal logic?
I essentially have two questions:
Could law be written in formal logic?
If that's indeed possible, should it be?
I see possible drawbacks being:
Difficulty to express certain concepts, I can't exactly point out examples (if you can please do) but…
paternostrox
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21
votes
9 answers
Is economics a science?
In class, I made the argument that economics is not science, because it cannot undertake repeatable experiments. Someone rebutted: this would mean that I am ignore an emerging body of work, some by prominent Nobel Prize winners, that is transforming…
Aleesha
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21
votes
14 answers
Is “If white privilege exists, why did Elizabeth Warren pretend to be an Indian?" a fallacy, and if so, which one?
I recently came across the meme below. I consider it a logical fallacy (the existence of one use of a socioeconomic tool other than white privilege does not preclude the existence of white privilege).
Is this an example of a named logical fallacy?…
mcating
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21
votes
16 answers
Why am I this particular human being?
Some philosophers dismiss this as a question about a tautology: when Alice asks "Why am I Alice?", this is equivalent to her asking "Why is Alice Alice?", which is not an interesting question. But other philosophers believe that, from a…
present
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21
votes
2 answers
Is Science about Truth or Adequate Models?
Is it the general view amongst philosophers of science that science isn't about truth but rather adequately predictive models and therefore it doesn't make sense to speak of a scientific theory as true so much as an adequate model of the…
James Tauber
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21
votes
5 answers
What responses are there to Singer's "Should this be the last generation?"?
The article can be found here.
It deals with many issues, but what I would really like to see a response to is the following paragraph:
[W]hy don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized…
Xodarap
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21
votes
14 answers
What is a straight line?
I am not a philosopher; I am an engineer with a reasonable grasp of mathematics.
This question has been bothering me for a long time, and I have asked a variation of it to a mathematical community. While some people raised interesting points, others…
MGA
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21
votes
4 answers
How do defenders of libertarian freewill reconcile it with constraints imposed by the laws of physics?
Libertarian freewill is the position that we have some measure of metaphysical freewill. Per this position, a free agent at a given point in time is able to freely select a course of action among several possible courses of action, i.e. given the…
Alexander S King
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21
votes
2 answers
How can domain modeling practice benefit from metaphysical ideas?
In software development, there is an activity called domain modeling, by which the developer creates a representation of the problem domain using some language (ultimately a programming language). When modeling a particular domain, developers have…
Otavio Macedo
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21
votes
4 answers
What are some good books about the philosophy of quantum mechanics?
I am fascinated about the implications of quantum mechanics to philosophy. Where can I find good references to the philosophy of quantum mechanics, and its implications for realism/antirealism, holism, contextuality, causality, determinism,…
Kaplan
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21
votes
6 answers
Are the unexamined lives of others worth examining?
Socrates continually admonished his interlocutors to become more introspective, arguing passionately for self-examination:
The unexamined life is not worth living.
But an examined life is painful, and necessitates an involvement with real…
Joseph Weissman
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21
votes
2 answers
How does Nietzsche define and characterize "freedom" throughout his works?
My basic question concerns the meaning of freedom in Nietzsche's work. Nietzsche suggests that, in reality, a will can never be absolutely "free" or "unfree"—rather, any particular will is going to be strong or weak to some actual degree, ruling…
Joseph Weissman
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