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1500 questions
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Why was Socratic epistemology diminished?
My question is a follow-up from reading this answer;
"Roughly speaking, Socrates believed truth could not be discovered with certainty, Plato believed that truth could only be known via recollection, and Aristotle believed that truth could be…
Jas 3.1
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11
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What are the philosophical implications of the Halting Problem?
In a great answer, a community member gave the following proof sketch that the halting problem is undecidable:
Proof that the halting problem is undecidable. If there were a computable procedure to reliably determine whether a given program/input…
Joseph Weissman
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11
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1 answer
What is the Anti-Realist and Constructionist interpretation of empirical dating methods and existence of the past?
I'm fairly interested in the realism, anti-realism debate and would like to hear, if possible by an anti-realist or constructivist, how dating methods fit into their world view.
As a realist, dating methods give me an actual approximate age of an…
MM8
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Was Kant anticipating Gödel's incompleteness in his antinomies?
Kant's attempts to prove that there's a limit to pure reason based on the existence of antinomies, i.e. pairs of propositions where each one is rational, but the propositions contradict each other. One example is:
Thesis:
The world has a…
Alexander S King
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11
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2 answers
What are the philosophical implications of the Higgs mechanism in theoretical physics?
The higgs mechanism is a mechanism by which gives gauge bosons their mass, by absorbing the goldstone bosons appearing in the goldstone theorem. I found this mechanism very mathematically beautiful, but what philosophical implications can you draw…
user1577
11
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4 answers
Can Suicide be Rational?
The concept of rational suicide occasionally occurs in the context of ethical questions, such as whether or not there are any circumstances in which physician-assisted suicide would be morally acceptable. Those who favor physician-assisted suicide…
Jordan S
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11
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4 answers
What is the fallacy in comparing evolution to a fairy tale?
I found the following statement on this Creationist site.
If a fair maiden kisses a frog which instantly changes into a handsome
prince we would call it a fairy tale. But if the frog takes 40 million
years to turn into a prince we call it…
Green Noob
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Is it possible to define "the supernatural"?
From a naturalistic perspective, it is possible to argue that the supernatural not only doesn't exist, but cannot even be defined. The reasoning goes that anything which "appears" to be supernatural, is simply misunderstood or conforms to laws of…
LightCC
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Are there any true Wittgensteinians?
[CRUCIAL CLARIFICATION: unless I explicitly say otherwise, all references to Wittgenstein, or W, below should be read as "the post-Tractatus Wittgenstein." I am not interested in those who could be described as followers of the author of the…
kjo
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Does philosophy have a dark side?
Can the "love of wisdom" be turned into something bad? Were there evil philosophers in the past?
I was recently reading a book about the dark side of psychology, how people use psychological tricks to manipulate others. Does philosophy have a "dark…
draks ...
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Why is the existence of qualia considered an argument for dualism and against materialism?
Qualia is the term to used describe actual subjective experience and sensation, as opposed to mere knowledge and information.
The concept is best described by Frank Jackson's color blind scientist thought experiment: A scientist knows everything…
Alexander S King
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11
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6 answers
Was Socrates a monotheist?
I know my question seems weird, but in Plato's books Apology, Crito, and Phaedo (and probably in other books since I've read only these three and I am in the middle of the third one), when Socrates wants to swear in a god's name or talk about…
mil
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Are there philosophical theories that are either confirmed or refuted by the majority of experts?
Do there exist any philosophical theories that have been either confirmed or refuted by the majority of experts? That is, confirmed or refuted such that a consensus has been established about the validity of the theory - similar to the consensus of…
Jo Wehler
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4 answers
Do machine learning algorithms have knowledge (if not justified true beliefs)?
By "machine learning algorithm" I'm referring to basic, primarily statistical, machine learning algorithms; for concrete examples consider simple classifier algorithms like SVM or Bayesian classifier or decision trees. I'm stipulating that these…
Dave
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Should philosophers care about the existence of emotions?
Cody Gray recently asked "Why should philosophers feel any different about the existence of emotions than they do about the color of the sky?" as a rhetoric question. But both physics and psychology were once subject matters of philosophy, so there…
Thomas Klimpel
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