Philosophy Stack Exchange
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Is Nothing actually imaginable?

It's possible to imagine something, for example a table, we see one everyday and can bring it in front of our minds eye (although it's a moot point whether we can see it - I certainly don't). But of course this is a real object so we have a…
Mozibur Ullah
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What did Socrates teach which lead to his conviction that he spoiled youth and taught other Gods?

Socrates was finally sentenced to death because his judges declared that he spoiled youth by his teachings and that he learned other Gods. But what precisely did he teach?
Marijn
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What is the origin of the Continental vs. Analytic divide?

There's been much ado about the divisiveness between Heidegger and Husserl fans on the one side, with Frege and Russell stalwarts on the other. I'm mostly amused by accounts of name-calling between Derrida and Searle. With regards to the C/A divide…
Ryder
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Is it possible to scientifically determine good and evil?

Sam Harris has argued on many occasions - the earliest of which I'm aware of being in his book, The End of Faith, as well as later on in The Moral Landscape - that it is (at least theoretically) possible for us to scientifically determine what is…
Jez
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Does compatibilism imply that a chess program has free will?

I am puzzled by compatibilism and am trying to understand what it means using a test example. Given that a typical chess program generates several choices, evaluates them with a goal of winning and chooses a specific option, would this imply that it…
Harshavardhan
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Do any philosophers disagree with Occam's razor?

I never bought into the razor. For example, if I have two hypotheses A and B with equal evidence, the razor would have me pick the simpler one. But personally in my mind, I create a sort of credence-distribution over the two hypotheses and hold the…
Mike Izbicki
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How can one refute John Searle's "syntax is not semantics" argument against strong AI?

There are many refutations of John Searle's Chinese Room argument against Strong AI. But they seem to be addressing the structure of the thought experiment itself, as opposed to the underlying epistemic principle that it is trying to illustrate.…
Alexander S King
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Why should almost extinct animals be protected from going extinct?

The feeling that it's "sad" if a species dies out seems to be coming from an aesthetic point of view how the world should be. But is there a rationality behind it? The only rational reason I was able to come up with is that more variety gives more…
Nikolaj-K
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What is the difference between Law of Excluded Middle and Principle of Bivalence?

Law of Excluded Middle: In logic, the law of excluded middle (or the principle of excluded middle) is the third of the so-called three classic laws of thought. It states that for any proposition, either that proposition is true, or its negation is.…
Tames
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What are some arguments against the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment?

I read this article about how this guy in Switzerland did an experiment that he thought proved the Simulation Hypothesis of reality (link: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847). I have also been reading the original philosophy paper by Nick Bostrom…
Josh Zmijewski
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Selection of logical connectives {¬,∨,∧,⇒,⇔} in set theory?

Nearly every treatment of set theory, whether Paul Halmos' Naive Set Theory, Herbert Enderton's Elements of Set Theory, Patrick Suppes' Axiomatic Set Theory, etc. introduce a common set of logical connectives, namely "not" ¬, "inclusive or" ∨, "and"…
EthanAlvaree
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Is Philosophy formalisable?

This is something that has irked me for quite some time, especially since I come from a mathematically oriented background. Can the field of Philosophy be formalised in the sense that Mathematics is formalised? It doesn't necessarily have to be an…
ThisIsNotAnId
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Is there a parallel between Hegelian "essence" and Kantian "concept"?

I think I've found a paralelism between these two notions, at least to some extent. For Kant defines (in Logic, I, I, §1, also translated) concept as "an universal representation" Every knowledge, i.e. every representation referred with…
henrique
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Theories of Everything as a hold over from monotheism?

In his book "A Tear at the Edge of Creation", physicist Mario Gleiser argues that results from cosmology and particle physics make it unlikely that we will ever find an elegant unified theory of everything. He suggests that the current search for a…
Alexander S King
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Was Nietzsche making fun of the military mindset when he said "That which does not kill me, makes me stronger"?

A friend of mine told me that he interpreted this quote as mocking the military mindset, and that it should not be taken as indicative of what Nietzsche actually thought, so I looked it up in context, and found this: MAXIMS AND ARROWS [ . . . ] 7.…
Ben Hocking
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