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1500 questions
11
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3 answers
Are "if smoke then fire" arguments deductive or inductive?
I'm new to philosophy and have a question regarding deductive vs. inductive reasoning:
I'm told that "John ate a strange plant in the forest and got sick. Clearly, the plant made John sick."
I believe that the usage of "clearly" makes this…
Ben
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Have there been any proposed empirical tests for free will?
Have any observational, i.e., empirical, tests been proposed for determining whether an entity has free will? That is, given an arbitrary entity, how would one test whether it has free will. Asking does not count as a valid test.
Or to put it…
RussAbbott
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Is there a name for the fallacy that refuting the argument refutes the conclusion?
Is there a name for the fallacy that refuting an argument refutes the proposition?
e.g. there is a belief in X..
somebody provides an argument for X.. or even a bunch of arguments for X.
Somebody refutes these arguments.
But they commit the…
barlop
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11
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How can souls and angels be pure forms if only matter undergoes change?
In Thomas Aquinas' philosophy, angels are conceived as pure forms without any matter, like God, but contrary to God they still possess potentiality.
Although there is no composition of matter and form in an angel, yet there is act and…
viuser
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11
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3 answers
What is the justification for averaging utility in utilitarianism?
Every time I have heard utilitarianism discussed, it is generally assumed that utility should be averaged. While this sounds reasonable, the reasoning isn't particularly strong.
What justifications are there for using an (arithmetical) average?
Are…
Casebash
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11
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3 answers
On Wittgenstein's family resemblance and machine learning
Wittgenstein proposed in his later philosophy the concept of family resemblance to describe groups which cannot be defined by a single (or simple set) of common features but instead display (from the SEP):
There is no reason to look, as we have…
Alexander S King
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11
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2 answers
Is knowledge possible in the Heraclitean system?
Heraclitus proposed that everything was in flux always:
The Greeks before Heraclitus focused on the essence of things, its nature and being, which they deemed unchangeable. In contrast, Heraclitus said: "You cannot step into the same river twice,…
Jon Ericson
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11
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Who is Plato and Socrates' God?
I'm reading the Phaedo, as translated by Benjamin Jowett. The characters alternately mention "God" (As a monotheist would spell it with a capital "G"), for example, at one point, Socrates says:
Then there may be reason in saying that a man should…
Alexander S King
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11
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6 answers
Can radical skepticism be refuted?
The conclusion of an epistemology course I took a few months ago was that radical skepticism can never be refuted because the skeptic chose the radical approach. We can never prove him wrong because he can just doubt in the validity of method we use…
ninek
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6 answers
What's an intuition for material implication?
The paradoxes of material implication show that the usual interpretation of implication as "if ... then" statements leads to counter-intuitive results. For example, from (P & Q) -> R we can derive (P -> R) v (Q -> R), which doesn't make much sense…
Xodarap
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3 answers
What does gender have to do with epistemology?
I am learning about feminist epistemology through the text of Lorraine Code (What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge) and that of Susan Bordo (The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture).
Although I…
L.M. Student
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3 answers
Has there been any philosophical investigation into the role of aesthetics in mathematics?
There are many mathematicians who talk about the particular beauty of a subject. They may say a particular result is pretty. It may be beautiful.
It seems to me play a fundamental role in the composition of new mathematics. I know that there are…
Mozibur Ullah
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11
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2 answers
Did Kuhn "recant"?
I've heard (from a source which now escapes me) that later in his life Kuhn retreated from some of the more relativistic claims of The Structure of Sceintific Revolutions. Specifically, I think I remember hearing that he retreated from the claim…
Xodarap
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5 answers
What is the main message Kierkegaard is trying to deliver in his suicidal quote?
In his journal Kierkegaard wrote:
I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's…
HaneenSu
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What does "il n'y a pas de hors-texte" mean in philosophy and literary criticism?
Does the phrase "il n'y a pas de hors-texte" amount to the same thing in literary criticism and philosophy?
There's a lot of bad google hits on this phrase, and I haven't read On Grammatology [p158] cover-to-cover. It seems to me that though,…
user6917