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1500 questions
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What is "Under Erasure"?
I am fairly uneducated person in philosophy, yet trained in theoretical physics. For irrelevant reasons, I have became very much curious about Sous rature (or under erasure). The concept(or strategy?) which I know near to nothing about it, like…
user16812
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Is homeopathy verifiable?
Would homeopathy be verifiable according to the logic positivists (and thus science)?
On the one hand, one could, in principle, observe patients recovering after being given a homeopathic medicine. On the other hand, one could say that the…
Dasherman
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What is the best order to read Aristotle in?
A question similar to this was asked, but mine is a little more specific. In any given writing of Aristotle I find concepts which it seems he explores in other places. Is there an order in which the more fundamental concepts will be introduced…
interestedguest
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Why does Sartre say one cannot be anything unless others recognize one as such?
I was reading "Existentialism is a humanism" here. Though most of it is clear, I have trouble understanding how he makes the below claim which comes near the end of the lecture. How do you go from "I think" to discovering others?
...Contrary to the…
nakiya
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Can a "real" paradox exist?
Given a statement, S:
"S is not true."
We arrive at a paradoxical solution whether or not we assume S to be true or false. Does this automatically imply that we have made an error in logic, reasoning and/or the structure of the original…
Craig
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9
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6 answers
Do messenger-based religions contradict the idea of an all wise God?
Many religions believe that their holy book is the literal word of God (and not the word of the messenger). For instance, the announcement of "new rules" for humanity, such as Quranic injunctions like no drinking, no gambling, no charging interest,…
Snowman
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Can we be Boltzmann brains? Or, how can we be sure there is no conspiracy about the past?
The way things are traditionally presented about time, there is the present, the past is fixed, and the future is open. The second law of thermodynamics is invoked. But how can we be so sure the past is fixed?
Some musings on this topic can be found…
Nate
9
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4 answers
Understanding Grice's Theory of (Non-Natural) Meaning
I am trying to understand Paul Grice's famous essay "Meaning".
So consider a computer system which is fed a dictionary of every English word in existence. The computer system then randomly spits out a finite number of words. Let us suppose this…
George
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9
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8 answers
Is there any exception to the law of "Cause and Effect"?
I've heard that 'God' is the only exception to the law of Cause and Effect which means that He is not dependent in His existence on anything. Can it be philosophically true? If we accepted this exception how could we make sure that the law would not…
Amin
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Arguments for moral realism?
I would like to hear some good arguments for moral realism. Most that I find online is based on "If you don't believe in objective values, then murder is okay". While this might seem frightening, I don't think it proves anything. Believing in…
pgsandstrom
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Why isn't Cantor's diagonal argument just a paradox?
Cantor's diagonal argument concludes the cardinality of the power set of a countably infinite set is greater than that of the countably infinite set.
In other words, the infiniteness of real numbers is mightier than that of the natural numbers.
The…
nir
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What does the "meaning of Being" mean in Being and Time?
I read Being and Time a few years ago, but it seems to me the question is only partially answered there. He deals with the question of whether Being is "indefinable" very early on [p 4]. He claims that Being is not an entity, and so not amenable to…
user6917
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2 answers
What exactly is informal logic and is this what I'm looking for?
I've been reading and researching about formal and symbolic logic for some time now, mainly out of interest in rationality. But I've come to a point where the various logical systems seem more like irrelevant calculus than serious attempts to…
Kevin Holmes
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Is our Philosophy, the Human Philosophy, the only possible Philosophy which can exist?
What I'm asking is if is there any possibility for a Non-human Philosophy, that is, a Philosophy founded on questions which we can't even conceive. Is possible a Philosophy of questions which only can be though by God, by advanced civilizations, by…
Fractalon
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What reason does an individual have to vote?
Given that the outcome of an election will be the same whether one individual votes or not, what reason does that individual have to vote?
Obviously there is an extremely unlikely case where one vote will change the outcome.
As a group, the voters…
Jake
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