Questions tagged [methodology]
25 questions
11
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12 answers
How To Distinguish Between Philosophy And Non-Philosophy?
Surely not all thinking or intellectual effort is philosophy, right?
Where to draw line between philosophy and all other thinking?
What, if any, feature is present only in philosophy?
DareWithTruth
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9
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Why should we listen to Michel Foucault if he based his arguments on biased historical claims?
I have only recently heard about philosophical ideas of Michel Foucault from a friend of mine. His claims, those concerning madness for example, sound iconoclastic to me. After looking up some relevant facts I found that a significant proportion of…
Zhipu 'Wilson' Zhao
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7
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Do theories come from observations or do they determine what is observed?
While re-reading Shimon Malin’s “Nature Loves to Hide” I was trying to get a better grasp of the distinction between Ernst Mach’s philosophy that theory comes from observable magnitudes alone and what Einstein told Heisenberg: “It is the theory that…
Frank Hubeny
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Is topology of cultural ideas and concepts studied in modern philosophy?
I am going to mumble about couple of things I really don't know and I am going to ask for guidance and further reading material.
There is a field of mathematics called topology which studies continuous deformations of objects into each other and…
meguli
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When studying philosophy, is there a prioritization of primary or secondary sources/texts?
How do/did philosophers like Zizek, Cornel West, Derrida, Sartre study philosohy? Did they focus on primary sources or secondary? Both at the same time? I am currently reading a primary source and would imagine it would take a very long time to be…
Sphygmomanometer
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If calculating the p-value post-hoc is meaningless, why is it reasonable to believe the Grimm's Law (and other laws of historical phonology) is true?
Why is it reasonable to believe that the Grimm's Law is true? How can those things be scientifically investigated?An obvious answer is that we can take an dictionary of native Gothic words and the corresponding Latin words, and see whether Gothic…
FlatAssembler
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Implicit Models and Probability - are degrees of belief/truth/existence a complete free-for-all?
Or, to put it another way, as long as you model your statements using the grammatical framework of our modern logical idioms, is it appropriate practice to assign a probability to any utterance at all, even in the absence of any logically…
Paul Ross
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What is there to philosophy these days, other than intellectual self-gratification?
Preliminary notes
I understand that the title of my question has a provocative note. However it also stems from a genuine question.
I come from the standpoint of being a radical agnostic and pragmatist (I know nothing but, for the purposes of…
chasly - supports Monica
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Why does Quine expand the underdetermination thesis through his global holism?
Quine's application of the problem of underdetermination took the thesis to be a problem not only for physics (as Duhem before him), nor even for the particular sciences, but for any and all theories about knowledge. There is as such a disagreement…
Ovid
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What does "speculative" exactly mean in philosophy?
Recently, I read a lot about "Speculative Realism" being the (not that) new kid in town. But what does "speculative" or "speculation" exactly mean in the domain of philosophy? What exactly distinguishes a speculative position from a non-speculative?…
XXXZZZ
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Can there be a rule of thumb / algorithm to optimize level of generality?
When we define an abstract structure, establish theories or theorems, or build models, etc., we tend to want them to be "general" enough so they can be applied to a variety of situations. However, of course, more generality is not always better.…
SE_
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How can spirituality be reliably researched?
My questions are
1 is there a reliable method for research into spiritual activity such as an individual providing healing, or any other service?
2 is there a ‘happy medium’ pardon the pun, that’s acceptable?
Most research into spiritual belief…
Eranerdog
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1 answer
Term for the dichotomy of blaming a philosophical counter-example on oneself vs. our commonsense
Imagine some philosopher answers a question of the form "What is X?". Then a critic points out that, according to this answer, O is not X, but we clearly consider it to be X. It seems that the philosopher's reply can take one of two…
303
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Are there any points that can't be made without thought experiments?
Are all thought experiments simply another way to assert certain claims and examples or does it have inherent epistemological value?
Edit: is there any point that can't be made without thought experiments?
user46880
1
vote
3 answers
Why do many philosophers attach so much importance to laymen intuition?
For instance, when discussing "what is Justice", one of Rawls's key argument for "justice has to be a universal concept" is that we do not talk about anything that is "just for person A but not for person B".
In other words, Rawls is relying on our…
J Li
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