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Wikipedia gives an explanation of Kant's usage of the term noumena, part of which reads as follows: By Kant's account, when we employ a concept to describe or categorize noumena (the objects of inquiry, investigation or analysis of the workings of the world), we are in fact employing a way of describing or categorizin...
I have heard from numerous sources that our senses cannot be relied upon and therefore all knowledge that we have is subjective & relative. In other words, many people claim that variance in perception implies variance in concepts that a person forms/deduces. Yet, I know that color blind people accept the same physics ...
A common philosophical question revolves around the existence of free will, but these debates gloss over the concept of "free will" itself, either taking it as a given (that everyone understands what the term really means), or proceeding with a murky and unspecific definition. Have there been attempts to provide a rigo...
What is Kant's thoughts on ethics? And what do his "Transcendental Deduction" ideas have to do with his ideas on ethics? Please keep in mind that I'm a a newb to philosophy, so the simper and more easily digestible your answer is, the better for me. UPDATE: I found this video which helped me understand a lot. Anyone kn...
Systems of ethics that address intergenerational issues should provide guidance on how to balance the interests of those people nearing the end of their lives, those just beginning, and those in between, and also on how to balance the interests of those people alive now and those who will be in the future (if those who...
I had a professor who I found quite worthless except his explanation of philosophy as: an attempt to reduce the flux of the world to arrive at unchanging truth The class was centered around seeing trends throughout the history of philosophy in order to make guesses at a central truth. The professor was very religious...
In relation to the question "What are the necessary conditions for an action to be regarded as a free choice?", it came up that one way to insure the possibility of free-will was to have more than one choice. But that doesn't separate free-will from non-determinism or from randomness. In the context of a human making a...
Consider the example of causal determinism. It can be phrased in many ways, all with identical meaning: - The idea that "every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences” (Van Inwagen, 1983). - The world is governed by (or is unde...
Is there a connection between Wittgenstein's argument against the theory of types, and the proof of Gödel's incompleteness theorem? (It seems that Gödel's proof relies on referring to symbols as numbers, whereas Wittgenstein's argument is that you can do no such thing in Russel's theory of types.) Was it really Wittg...
Amateur here. I always held that the only way to identify truth is by the scientific method. You test it. But, as I sit here smoking my pipe, I think there has got to be some method to deal with real world uncertainty. I'm not arguing against the scientific method. I'm asking a different question. I'm asking about...
Is there any new, i.e., conceived in the last century, philosophical idea that radically changed the world in the twentieth century? I know it's kinda hard to come up with a precise and definitive answer because honestly we have virtually no historical distance but I'd love to give some thought to the matter anyway. B...
Where might I find some thoughtful philosophical or critical readings of The Matrix, in particular which treat the primary theme of virtual reality?
Physicalists are people who equate brain states with mental states. There are people in this category; and yet there are many people who do not hold this view. Such people hold that there is an ontological difference between phenomenological experience and the physical firing of neurons one's brain. Prima facie, this s...
I think law of excluded middle makes sense to mean that a statement should be either logical or illogical but in this case I don't assume "not logical" = "illogical" since the author didn't say "illogical", the author said "not logical." Can we formalize logic about logic in a way so that a statement such as "That's no...
Here is another question I didn't get a clear answer to when the term "consistency" is applied in philosophy, logic and computer science. Is always lying consistent since we know the statements are false? For example please assume that some person or system always makes false statements. Knowing this I could deduce ev...
The Second Law of thermodynamics states that "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease over time." What are the philosophical implications of this statement, especially wrt to theology and metaphysics?
Example is that the word unknown is not unknown so it doesn't define itself. Similarly French is not French, it's in English, and "long" is not long and only 4 letters short. That's by example my understanding of heterological and no real definition besides "true about itself". English is autological since the English ...
How is it possible for things that do not exist to not be the same? How can one differentiate nonexistent entities? How can I know the difference between ghosts and werewolves if neither exist?
I've read in one mathematics book that any definition is not a proposition. Why is it so? What definition of proposition makes the former into the latter? EDIT: There is well-known analytic-syntactic distinction introduced by Kant. In it analytic propositions include definitions. If we say that definition is not a prop...
A friend of mine keeps trying to convince me that within quantum mechanics there are deep philosophies. I must admit I'm lost, I saw "what the bleep do we know" and find the experiments interesting but how does that effect how we live/think/operate within the world? One example my friend used was that how interrelate...
I find myself aligned with the motivation behind paraconsistent logic, they seem to me reason enough to warrant an attempt to structure logical systems which deny logical explosion. It does seem very odd to me that classical logic automatically trivialities the entire string of propositions in a proof by proving every ...
I often hear from media personalities that they are right about a theory or assertion merely by associating themselves with someone or something. For example: "I know Mr. X very well (for years) and i know that he wouldn't do something like that." "I've been in the X Organization for years. The X Organization would c...
Searle's Chinese Room basically argues that a program cannot make a computer 'intelligent'. Searle summarises the argument as Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the prog...
I will try to be as specific as possible here: philosophers of mind often specify two levels of existence and/or explanation, the mental and the physical, even if they don't subscribe to dualism. There are understandable issues that might require you to address ontological arguments in those terms if you are arguing fo...
Possible Duplicate: Was mathematics invented or discovered? To be more precise, does mathematics describe the physical world or does it describe a mental representation of the physical world? If the latter is true, then an empirical science, physics namely, tries to describe mental phenomena via what is believed to...
While taking a group of benefactors on a tour through the new aviary they had just helped to build, a noted ornithologist commented, "And here we have two of the finest examples of ravens that I have ever seen. Notice the lustrous black plumage for which all ravens are famous." The ornithologist continued his lecture, ...
Background Settle a bet- more likely; enrich a debate. A friend of mine (a philosophy PhD with a penchant for economics) and I have been arguing for some time on the same topic. He is a libertarian with Austrian-perspective economics, I am a left leaning liberal with Keynesian economics. It should not take a genius to ...
I am finishing up reading Penelopy Maddy's [2007] "Second Philosophy". I really enjoy her flavor of naturalism. Like Quine, she justifies parts of mathematics because of its application. Unlike Quine, she also justifies the rest of mathematics because it is unreasonable to separate mathematics into philosophically jus...
I feel like this came to me in a dream, but I remember reading something about something called the Special Flower Paradox, where everyone thinks that since they are subtly subverting from the norm that they are somehow superior to the normal person, despite there not being such thing as the normal person. Is there suc...
In a description of David Hume, examples of a priori and a posteriori are given: a posteriori: "Dogs are carnivores" a priori: "Bachelors are unmarried" I am having trouble differentiating between the two statements. "Bachelors are unmarried" is a priori because I know that the definition of Bachelor is unmarried man. ...
The Pinocchio paradox arises when Pinocchio says: "My nose grows" From Wikipedia, Pinocchio is known for having a short nose that becomes longer when he is under stress, especially while telling a lie. From the Wikipedia article on The Pinocchio Paradox. Assume the sentence: "My nose grows now" is true: Which means t...
The philosophical school of logical positivism (which later became known as "logical empiricism") was a type of analytic philosophy that attempted to combine empiricism with rationalist epistemology. From a brief examination of history, it appears that logical positivism was the leading school of thought in the philoso...
As a layperson, I try not to fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect. As an example, one area where I know that I am vulnerable is when biochemistry intersects with nutrition and disease. Is it possible for me, as a layperson without specific scientific knowledge (in this case, biochemistry), to make any sound or vali...
What are the newest or latest arguments for or against the existence of God? What is the state of this debate? After proponents and critics have argued and responded to everything so far, what else is there to talk about? What are they stuck on?
The etymology of a word does not appear to have any significance other than historical. How can we characterize the connection between the original formation of a word and its current use, or its current meaning derived from its original one? For instance "energy" is a word that has all but completely lost its Aristote...
Is it possible to generate sentences that are made up of "atomic contradictions", but which remain logically valid as a whole? By "atomic contradictions", I mean atomic propositions that are not logically valid. My question could be restated as follows: consider any formal system pertaining to classical logic or perhap...
Which philosophers have argued that a God cannot exist and why? What are some of the major positions involved, and perhaps some common responses?
It is often said that you cannot prove nor disprove God. People who bring forward this kind of reasoning often try to persuade you that there is a kind of balance, a truce; you can't prove your point (God does not exist), I can't prove mine (God does exist), nor can we disprove each other - so, we are on the same level...
I had a flash after watching some videos of Dr Aubrey de Gray's researches on postponing aging indefinitely. According to him, it will be possible – in a near future – to cure aging process of every single cell of our body, so people could remain healthy until … well for ever. And the major side effect of being health...
What other philosophy of mind books might be recommended if I like John Searle? I am an engineer who is interested in AI and the possibility of machines become able to think and the philosophy behind this topic. I have already enjoyed listening to a couple of lectures of John Searle and would like some help finding out...
Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, was a school of analytic philosophy famously connected with the Vienna circle and with a significant following up until the 1950's. What were the main criticisms that were articulated to refute logical positivism, who articulated them, and why were they so successful...
Possible Duplicate: How is philosophy useful? Examinging its practical and real-life impact and the benefits of getting a degree in philosophy Many people today are of the opinion that philosophy as a discipline is somewhat irrelevant, or worse. Others, meanwhile, seem to have taken a stance more akin to Jonathan Ba...
In my experience, many definitions define an object/idea by merely listing it's characteristics. For example: Avocado a large, usually pear-shaped fruit having green to blackish skin, a single large seed, and a soft, light-green pulp Sweet having the taste or flavor characteristic of sugar, honey, etc. producin...
The answer to Could a sentient machine suffer? suggests that The ability to suffer would not seem to be a necessary condition for sentience This made me wonder what the minimum necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be considered sentient are?. The 'something' here does not necessarily have to be human...
I've been asking myself the following question over and over again: can one write an algorithm (a series of steps for solving a problem) for something that came about through a process that is at least partially foreign to human understanding? Some claim that it is possible to write an algorithm(s) that could, in prin...
Wikipedia says: Analytic philosophy" can refer to: A general philosophical tradition characterized by an emphasis on clarity and argument (often achieved via modern formal logic and analysis of language) [emphasis mine] What are some examples of how analyzing language can help solve philosophical problems? EDIT: It ...
I hope this is neither too simple nor off-topic; I apologize if so. I have just noticed that standard sentence logic seems to make assumptions about time in determining the truth/falsity of a statement. Specifically: a statement like "It is dark outside", or "It is Wednesday", seems to assume time is "frozen", i.e., bo...
After years of studying physics I am suddenly struck by the question - What is energy? Wikipedia defines it thus: Energy is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems. (1) If that is the case, what is work? In physics, work is the amount of energy transferred by a ...
Researchers including Synthetic Genomics have made incredible advances, but in doing so, have also made a powerful philosophical contribution to how we (as ordinary people) view life itself. We now live in a world where DNA has been written by man, and Craig Venture himself has talked extensively in interviews about b...
I was wondering if the philosophy of Traditionalism (a la Rene Guenon and followers) still had followers and thinkers writing? If so, who?
I'm having a discussion with someone who thinks that it's a non-sequitur to describe something as X if it's not possible for it to not be X. Here's an example: It's wrong to say a chair is amoral, because a chair cannot be moral. I don't agree, who is correct and why?
I've heard this pop up in a discussion with my physicist/engineer roommates, but didn't care to ask at the time. Now I'm mighty curious about it. Wikipedia doesn't really seem to say much on this issue. From what I understand about the Uncertainty Principle, it says that there are certain properties of electrons and ...
At the request of the moderators, I've reformulated this question to change the emphasis of the question to something perhaps a little more broad-ranging: Question. What are the major modern motivations for Dialetheism? Context. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on Dialetheism: A dialethei...
Bertrand Rusell writes in his essay "Why I Am Not A Christian": There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; [...] Warren Rachelle, however, states in his response: To simply state that "there is no reason why the world could not have come into being without first cause" withou...
Could someone explain to me what exactly is meant by the phrase "fact of the matter about" (or "no fact of the matter about")? Another variant is: "(no) fact of the matter as to". In some cases, there's no "about" or "as to" at the end (e.g. see last example below). This is a phrase I have run into many times, especi...
As an interested outsider who is prone to reading about different formulations of logic, I've become interested in better understanding the big picture of what people are trying to accomplish as they are researching logic, or merely talking about logic as a proper subject of philosophy. For instance: in the course of ...
I read The Art of War by Sun Tzu but don't recall the author mentioning anything directly regarding criticizing one's enemies. It seems that when you get into an argument with your enemy and start criticizing him/her, then it's a no-win situation because: winning the argument is usually returns no reward (a hollow vi...
Are different values of nothing equivalent? Is 'no tigers' the same as 'no zebras'?
For those who don't know what a complex number is, in simple terms, a complex number is the square root of a negative number! For example, the square root of -1 is called a complex number. Those numbers appear in laws describing real-world phenomena. Hence my question, how can we rationalize the fact that complex numbe...
In this question and reading about the ontological argument elsewhere I have discovered that there is (and has been) a lot of discussion about it, and that it was taken very seriously. Can someone explain to me how thinking about something perfect (or being able to conceive it) must mean that it exists? (This is obviou...
Definition/Update In what follows I use the term God to refer to an entity that has at least one of the following properties: Has created the universe Is omnipotent Is omniscient Approaches to Atheism A great many philosophers and scientists have put together their efforts to form what today is known as rationalism;...
It is a given that we can conceive normal things like a regular hot dog or a space shuttle. It is also a given that we can conceive perfection in things that are fully understood, like a perfect cube or circle. But can we really conceive perfection in things that are not completely understood? How? My actual problem is...
Suppose there is a physical theory that predicts that the observable physical laws differ when applied to the observer himself rather than to the other people, for any given observer. Would existence of such theory invalidate the applicability of scientific method? I am referring to a paper by Thomas Breuer where he h...
Sometimes this image is used to explain what agnosticism is and how it's independent from belief: It makes some sense but I still have confusion understanding it. What is the difference between knowledge and belief? Image source: "Agnosticism" on Metaphysics For Life A similar article: http://www.noforbiddenquestions...
Spinoza's first axiom in The Ethics goes "All things which are either are in themselves or in another." Omnia quae sunt vel in se vel in alio sunt. The meaning of this, as many commentators have pointed out isn't exactly clear. But, later on, in his third demonstration of proposition 11, Spinoza seems to imply exist...
Question: Is there a line of philosophical thought or a named theory/area-of-inquiry that deals with the phenomenon of a person perceiving/believing that appreciation for an event/topic/item decreases as a formal, intellectualized understanding for the event/topic/item increases? Example/clarification: A person might f...
In Plato's Apology Socrates clearly indicates he would continue to philosophize even if the court ordered him not to: if now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher’s mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; tha...
The easiest way to explain this question is with a thought experiment: Consider God, the ultimate of everything, who is wholly omnipotent (all-powerful) and omniscient (all-knowing). Let's just say, hypothetically, that he wanted X group of individuals to save a man from under a burning car (this is a totally random ex...
Historically, what kinds of government and politics have been influenced by the maxims of Kant's "categorical imperative"? Take for example, the maxim that one should only act in such a way that the action can be made a universal law, binding on all individuals. The government can take actions which ordinary individual...
I've heard the following definition of morality: A particular action or choice is moral or right if it somehow promotes happiness, well being or health, or it somehow minimizes unnecessary harm or suffering, or both. A particular action or choice is immoral or wrong if it somehow diminishes happiness, well being or he...
If one considers a abstract systematization of what constitutes modern philosophy, it is very natural to come up with something like wikipedia's outline: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, and many other narrower subjects. This is pretty comprehensive, of course with the...
Consider the following propositions: "I am me" "I am my Father's son" In both these cases, the predicate is the same as the subject by definition of the very subject and predicate. Is there a special name for these kinds of propositions?
Which philosophers write about subjectivity? What are some primary sources for philosophical theories of subjectivity?
If you look, you can find many "equivalent", sufficient axiom sets for classical propositional calculus. The set {CqCpq, CCpCqrCCpqCpr, CCNpNqCqp} seems like the axiom set most commonly used. There do exist systems with only one axiom, and systems with no axioms, so why is {CqCpq-1, CCpCqrCCpqCpr-2, CCNpNqCqp-3} more...
Which Philosophers are most often cited as Materialists (aka physicalists)?
Are the differences, if they exist merely semantic ("First World War" vs "World War One") or are they more substantial; for example one's a historical trend and the other's a broader philosophical system? Speaking only as philosophical amateur I suspect Materialism is an outlook and Empiricism is a methodology but I co...
Metaphysical/ontological vagueness, classically understood, can be summed up as the problem of borderline cases of some thing x. Clouds are the standard examples of vague objects. If posit that our minds meet up with some things in the world that we call "clouds" that have something akin to definite boundaries beyond w...
The anthropic principle postulates that our universe is selected for the presence of consciousness in it. I cite Wikipedia: the anthropic principle is the philosophical argument that observations of the physical universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it To make the anthropic principle preci...
I have long been interested in physics as (working toward) a description of absolute truth and, as a consequence, have had a number of discussions with people with religious and metaphysical beliefs far from mine own. These conversations often turn toward ontology, the study of existence vs. non-existence. It seems t...
Imagine that 6 billion people of earth out of 7 billion population (almost 85%) think that a song is beautiful. In other words, 85% of the whole population, subjectively consider a song as being aesthetically appealing. Can we based on this "mass subjectivity" consider the song to be "objectively beautiful"? Can we cla...
Is it ethical to commercialize a product that was developed with the aid of the responses obtained from questions I posed to online Q&A communities? For instance, if I asked a question to a programming community, and subsequently an answer to the question was either used outright or used as the basis for the solution, ...
I'm not satisfied with the situation I'm in currently. I tend to watch senseless TV shows and do other senseless things such as gaming for hours (it's ok to me to game about an hour, but if it takes up too much time, I feel like wasting my time). I read that some/all buddhists want to be "free of desires". This is what...
I'm have a question that I don't think is on topic over on Christianity.SE even though it is the exchanges in chat there constantly raise the issue. This is a kind of thought experiment. "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -- Aristotle Without judging whether t...
This question is a step backwards because I've run into trouble with definitions on my original question: What would be the logical consequences of human will/nature being corrupt? Is there any way to define terms such as "evil" or "good" that do not depend on a divine being as the source of that standard? Obviously at...
Does the concept of existence entail the concept of death? I am asking this because many philosophers have tried to prove the existence of god (Descartes through the Meditations) by saying that he necessarily exists. But as experience has shown, things that exist do not exist forever.
It is a very well known phenomena that people feel pride for the country where they were born and/or live, even though the effect seems to be declining slightly nowadays. Frequently, governments also try to instill a sense of national pride in their citizens in order to motivate them to serve the country. But is it eth...
Some quantum mechanics experiments seem to suggest that our current understanding of reality is flawed. Entanglement experiments show us that particles separated in space, can still somehow communicate - and they interact instantaneously (faster than the speed of light). Some "which way"/"cosmic eraser" variations of ...
Are there any obligations a reader (of any form of text) has to fulfill towards the author? Which philosophers argue within this context? Example: Is there anyone arguing, a reader must / should (not) read the end of a thriller at first to see how the plot is ending?
When I make a claim in a proof that a mathematical entity exists, is this no more than saying that the theory I'm working within is consistent, and that all the steps upto that point in the proof are allowed moves in the theory? By mathematical entity I mean a number, say 3; or an algebraic system such as the group of...
It is curious to note that a eminent Physicist like Stephen Hawking thinks the universe has a beginning. This has some rather startling Religious implications You can find the link here: http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html Now let us take Thomas Aquinas argument for the existence of God. It in its simp...
How could you write NCpq in terms of moving the negation inside the conditional and keeping the conditional? The question got posed here originally by someone else. I can't post there at the moment, so I thought I'd put it here. If the only primitive connectives are negation N, and the material conditional C (all othe...
If I understand Karl Popper's reasoning correctly, a theory is 'scientific' if there can be devised a test that tries to disprove it; i.e., it must be falsifiable. Now, imagine a theory that theoretically we could build a test to disprove it, but it is not possible to actually build such a test, e.g.: It requires some...
Is it valid to say that if all the conditions for an event E to happen will happen if all the conditions favorable for it to happens namely n1,n2,n3.... are present & all the factors which may hinder the progress or stop event E altogether are absent? For example, consider the following definition of corrosion: Corros...
(Sorry if this question is off topic, but I concluded that philosophy is most suitable site to ask this question - I think this question is little off topic on theoretical CS SE site. I think that site is for problem with mathematics.) (In below question, AI = computer = robot. Sorry for mixing them.) Yesterday, I was...
I'm a computer programmer. There is one thing that I've noticed now for some time, and it has obsessed my mind. Does complexity generate more complexity naturally? To understand the example better, consider this scenario. You want to create a website. You create a static website (with 4 simple pages). Then you want to...
In our semantics class we were arguing about the exercise 3.(7) from page 33 in Chierchia et al.: What relationship holds between the sentences in the following example?: a) "If John discovers that Mary is in New York, he will get angry." b) "Mary is in New York" Is there any Entailment or Presupposition between the...
I began to read Hawking's recent book 'A Grand Design' some time ago and noticed that he savages philosophy. He says '...philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics'. This annoyed me so much I didn't bother to read any further. Assuming that Hawking is simply...
I'm asking for the name of a philosophy and any authors, books, or articles that explore a particular philosophy. The philosophy is motivated in part by a question of, "in what is our universe/multiverse hosted?". As best as I have collected it, the main idea is that every possible logically coherent mathematical sys...
I would like to read the text written by Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and so on. Is there any reference of the best order to read them? Is the chronological order the best or correct one? Or is there a best or correct order?
While philosophy and science as held as separate disciplines (and often taught in completely different colleges within a university [i.e. College of Liberal Arts vs. College of Science]), it is patently clear that there is an immutable relationship between philosophy and science. Philosophy can often be seen as providi...

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