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When did Plato's Republic (re-)emerge as his most popular work?

Today, the Republic is often considered to be Plato's best known and most influential work. Some even consider it as one of the best known and most influential works of all of philosophy; at least it is a contender for this populist view. However,…
Artem Kaznatcheev
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How is Bonjour's coherence theory of justification not just a version of foundationalism?

In presenting his coherence theory of justification BonJour appeals to what he calls the “Observation Requirement.” Bonjour’s observation requirement is the notion that there are some kinds of justified beliefs that are spontaneous and come from our…
Kevin Davis
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Identifying three kinds of "unity" in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason"

After reading about transcendental Aesthetics and transcendental logic, I perceive three kinds of unity in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Unity of properties of an object which is sensed through apperception, followed by combination/unification…
user1846458
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Why is epistemology done from a phenomenological point of view?

I'm currently in a class where we are studying, among other things, the philosophy of perception. The papers we have read so far, for example Grice's "The Causal Theory of Perception" and Strawson's "Perception and it's Objects," emphasize a very…
Potato
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Why isn't existence a predicate?

According to SEP There are two sets of reasons for denying that existence is a property of individuals. The first is Hume and Kant's puzzlement over what existence would add to an object. What is the difference between a red apple and a red…
Mozibur Ullah
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How can we justify the use of logic?

I would like to hear some philosophical arguments which justify the use of logic. Additionally, if a justification of logic takes the form of an inference, is it a problem if this inference itself makes use of logic. Can we justify logic in a way…
Ponderer
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Should I trust mathematics?

First of all I'm not an expert in this field, please correct me if I'm lacking relevant knowledge here. A few hundreds years ago mathematics was largery based on intuition. People realised we need to make mathematics more rigorous. Axioms and…
user107986
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What is the symbolism of Piraeus in The Republic?

Plato's Republic opens with this famous sentence: I went down yesterday to the Piraeus [...] According to Professor David Roochnik, in his lectures about The Republic, the choice of Piraeus as the setting for the dialogue is symbolic for two main…
Otavio Macedo
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Is "opacity of mind" specifically a Nyingma position within Buddhism?

In various Nyingma Buddhist groups in Nepal there is a local theory of mind that, most basically, holds that you can not ever know what another person is thinking. This is a phenomenon that I have come across in relation to both the Sherpa and Yolmo…
LaurenG
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Is the notion in Hume that you cannot deduce an "ought" from "is" related to his assertion that reason must be the servant of the passions?

I hear it asserted that David Hume said one cannot deduce an "ought" from an "is". I also find it asserted that he said reason must be only the servant of the passions. I had long uncritically thought that the argument was: one cannot deduce an…
Michael Hardy
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What are some alternative readings of Aristotle's remark "O my friends, there is no friend"?

Jacques Derrida's 1988-89 seminar on "The Politics of Friendship" centers itself around a quotation attributed to Aristotle, found in Diogenes Laertius (V, 1, 21) and later quoted by Montaigne ("On Friendship", I, 28) "O my friends, there is no…
Michael Dorfman
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Does thermal time hypothesis finally resolve Zeno's paradox?

Is Time Just A Trick Of The Mind? (read article) Carlo Rovelli, one of the founder of Loop Quantum Gravity theory likes to think so. Furthermore wikipedia entry highlights: This position has lead him to face the following problem: if time is not…
user1207
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What came first, language or consciousness?

What came first, language or consciousness? Has any philosopher said that language gives us consciousness by allowing us to communicate with ourselves and therefore giving us choices that we did not have before? And on the other hand, what has…
Sean
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What is the fallacy: "Nothing bad has happened, so nothing bad will happen"

I was talking to a small business owner the other day. When asked why they never incorporated in order to limit their liability, their explanation was, to paraphrase, "nothing bad has happened to us in the past, so nothing bad will happen to us in…
pooter03
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Does the Scientific Method of research apply to philosophy?

The Scientific Method is essentially the effort to discover causation in perceived correlations of collected data. In other words it hunts for 'recipes' that can be applied to consistently achieve a desired result, and as such does not inquire into…
slashmais
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