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1500 questions
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Do all epistemologies suffer from the "regress of justifications" problem?
Aristotle describes the regress problem in his logical work Posterior Analytics I.2:
b5. Some hold that, owing to the necessity of knowing the primary premisses, there is no scientific knowledge. Others think there is, but that all truths are…
Geremia
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How would Robert Nozick and Ayn Rand respond to the following moral dilemma?
Consider the following scenario:
In a remote isolated village, there is a family with a sick infant, who desperately and urgently needs a specific type of medicine. They have no way of procuring it in time, since the closest pharmacy is 500 Km…
Alexander S King
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13
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1 answer
What is the axiom of reducibility? And what philosophical controversies did it incite?
Trying to come to terms with basics concerning philosophy of logic, and wish to ask about some particular issue: What is in simple words the axiom of reducibility put forward by Russell? And what is its philosophical context? Among which…
L.M. Student
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Why does Popper think there are no a priori synthetic statements?
Lately I´ve been reading Poppers "Logic of Scientific Discovery" and I am especially interested in his critics of induction as a scientific method. When he trys to show that a principle of induction can´t be formulated, he writes:
Kant tried to…
Lukas
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13
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8 answers
Why does the material conditional have the truth table it does?
Can someone provide me with the simplest possible argument for why the material conditional has the truth table it does?
Googling doesn't help at all, providing only flimsy and clumsy arguments. I want the argument to be simple, and yet as…
Michael Smith
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2 answers
How does language alter our experience of the world?
I was thinking — if we didn't have words our experiences would be different somehow.
It seems to me that perhaps words are limiting our experiences because as soon as we relate an experience to a word it becomes entrenched, explored, all the…
Daniel
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3 answers
Was the Republic a meritocracy?
One direct way of stating the heart of the question might be: is there sufficient textual evidence and support for the assertion that Plato's Republic contains meritocratic elements?
A second and larger concern here would be if so, because of this…
Joseph Weissman
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How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
This question became a symbol for the silly and pointless sophistry of medieval scholastics. But as modern scholarship has shown scholastics was not such a thoughtless desert as some of its caricatures: the role of Duns Scotus and Ockham in the…
Conifold
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3 answers
What is the relation between proof in mathematics and observation in physics?
Recently in his 2015 Hirzebruch Lecture in Bonn, Arthur Jaffe re-amplified his famous perspective that finding proof in mathematics is analogous to making experimental observation in physics. In paraphrase: One observes that a proof exists, much as…
Urs Schreiber
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What are some good books on phenomenology for a mathematician?
I have a background in Mathematics, and am starting to wander into the complex realm of Philosophy. I'm interested in trying to understand what is the meaning of the scientific investigation in relation with natural "reality" (an undefined term for…
marco trevi
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Why did Epicureanism become "the main opponent" of Stoicism?
I was reading about Epicureanism on Wikipedia, and there I saw that, apparently, Epicureanism was in conflict with Stoicism and Platonism. I then read up on those two philosophies, and well, they do not seem mutually exclusive at all! They are…
jcora
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13
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1 answer
What sources discuss Russell's response to Gödel's incompleteness theorems?
In his book My Philosophical Development Russell writes,
In my introduction to the Tractatus, I suggested that, although in any given
language there are things which that language cannot express,
it is yet always possible to construct a…
user13627
13
votes
12 answers
Can belief in science be considered a form of theism?
Based on the problem of induction, nobody can assert with absolute certainty that the laws of science (i.e. physics, chemistry, etc,...) will hold all the time, in every part of the universe. Believing that that is the case is therefore a form of…
Alexander S King
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13
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4 answers
What fallacy excludes "outsiders" from discussing "insider" issue?
I see this a lot on the internet, especially as of late with what's trending in the news:
You're a man, so you're not allowed to comment on women's issues.
You're a woman, so you're not allowed to comment on men's issues.
You're white, so you're…
NobleUplift
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16 answers
Does the notion of an all-powerful God conflict with the idea of free will?
In Abrahamic religions, God is often believed to be wholly omnipotent. People also seem to believe that humans have "free will", especially insofar that they feel they are in control of their own actions.
Regardless of whether these beliefs are…
apoorv020
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