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Did Putnam prove Hume wrong about the impossiblity of grounds for ethical claims?

Hume's argument in A Treatise of Human Nature that we can't derive normative judgments from descriptive statements is well known. Recently one of my teachers said that Putnam proved Hume wrong by showing that ethical judgments are in fact connected…
Gabriel
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What does "everything" mean?

For starter, I'm not a student in philosophy, but mathematics. I only have a general knowledge in logic and set theory, all in the context of mathematics. My question comes from a doubt I got while discussing arguments for the existence of God. The…
Alessandro Nanto
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Isn’t everything absurdly improbable?

Isn’t every event by definition improbable in the sense that each event precedes an infinite series of causes that could have (theoretically atleast) been different? We think of someone winning five lotteries as extremely improbable and a rare…
user62907
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2 answers

What are the truth-values of intuitionistic logic?

Classical propositional logic is bivalent, that is its set of truth-values has cardinality 2 (True & False). Intuitionistic logic drops the law of the excluded middle; does it have the same set of truth-values? If not - then what is its set of…
Mozibur Ullah
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Besides state punishment, are there any other reasons why one should not do crimes?

Committing crime can result in punishment by the judiciary. Assuming extreme skepticism and that there is no flawless proof of an absolute goodness, are there any reasons that why one should not do criminal activities, if doing so can lead to a…
An_Elephant
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Why is it an unpopular view, among philosophers and religious people, that a human being has a supernatural, spiritual soul?

I used to believe that a human being has a supernatural, spiritual soul and that it is obvious for the reasons stated below. I was very surprised to find out that not only secular philosophy, but even Catholic academic theology seem to reject this…
gaazkam
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Is there an ethical basis for killing less intelligent animals (as food) but not killing animals of higher intelligence?

I'd like to know whether morally there would be a difference between killing/hunting animals of higher intellect (apart from humans) and animals generally regarded of lower intellect. If there is no difference, why do some people object to…
user1039203
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What is the best scientific argumentation against the Dust Theory?

The "Dust Theory", by Greg Egan, states that... ... there is no difference, even in principle, between physics and mathematics, and that all mathematically possible structures exist, among them our physics and therefore our spacetime. These…
Hugo Sereno Ferreira
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When does absence of evidence imply evidence of absence?

There is a well known maxim that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In his book "The Black Swan", Nassim Taleb advocates this using a medical example - something along the lines of no evidence of disease is not the same as evidence of…
Daniel
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Representation versus cartography in Deleuze and Guattari?

Can someone help me contextualize and concretize the theme of representation (what they sometimes call "tracing") versus cartography ("mapping," "diagramming," even "meta-modeling", etc.) in Deleuze and Guattari? There are a lot of drawings and…
Joseph Weissman
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What does Hegel mean by "Quality"?

In the Science of Logic, Hegel initially presents quality as existent determinateness. He further distinguishes two modes of determining quality in accordance with the moments of existence: Determinateness thus isolated by itself, as existent…
emi
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Can mathematics be separated from the physical world?

I am a math enthusiast, with very little interest in physics. In fact, today I thought to myself how can I expel the physical world from mathematics completely. However, this has proved to more difficult than I had previously thought. The notion of…
JimmyJackson
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If you used intuitionistic logic in real life, would you not sound absurd?

Intuitionistic logic does not include the law of the excluded middle and double-negation elimination. I imagine a real-life conversation with an intuitionist might go like this: Amy said you didn't go to school yesterday. She was wrong about it…
MWB
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Are there any good non-technical discussions of what a scientific theory is?

So, I'm teaching a course on Scientific Realism in the fall. I wanted to start off with a unit titled "What is a theory?" to make sure all of my students are on the same page and to prepare them for later topics. The problem I'm having, however, is…
Dennis
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What does Nietzsche mean by "there are no facts, only interpretations"?

I came across this philosophical thought. There are no facts, only interpretations written by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). As translated from Notebooks, Summer 1886 – Fall 1887, in The Portable Nietzsche (1954) by Walter Kaufmann, p.…
NullPointer
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