The study of terms and their use.
The study of terms and their use.
Questions tagged [terminology]
548 questions
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Is there a term for the belief that "if it's legal, it's moral"?
Sometimes I hear arguments that seem to appeal to the fact that something is morally permissible because it is legally permitted. For example:
Abortion is moral because it's legally permitted. Killing two year olds is immoral because we have laws…
Thunderforge
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Difference between implication/conditional and logical entailment?
What is the difference between the implication/conditional truth function and the notion of logical entailment?
My naive understanding as a computer programmer is that the conditional is a function on two Boolean inputs, whereas entailment is some…
user
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What does it mean for a book or a theorist to be "post-modernist" as opposed to "modernist"?
I'd like a succinct comparison of the two "-isms", though I know this is a tall order.
unusualhabit
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What is the difference between "reductio ad absurdum" and "proof by contradiction"?
What is the exact difference between reductio ad absurdum and proof by contradiction?
Wikipedia used to state that:
Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its…
loudandclear
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What is Philosophy?
What is a comprehensive definition of Philosophy? Alternatively, is it impossible to define Philosophy? This is a pseudo-meta question, but it seems like it belongs here.
Joseph Spiros
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How can we reason about "if P then Q" or "P only if Q" statements in propositional logic?
When you have a propositional sentence of the form P ⊃ Q — which we might read as "if P, then Q" — how can you tell when it is true, or false, based on the truth-values of P and Q in classical logic? When is this different from Q ⊃ P? And what is…
Niel de Beaudrap
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What, if anything, is the difference between ethics and moral philosophy?
Are the terms 'Ethics' and 'Moral Philosophy' different in extension as terms in philosophy? Some Departments of Philosophy have courses with titles like "Introduction to Ethics" and others with titles like "Introduction to Moral Philosophy."…
vanden
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Interpret Bayesian probability as frequentist probability?
It is usually said that the Bayesian probability is a subjective concept, quantifying one's degree of belief in something, while the frequentist probability is the the fraction of certain outcomes when observation is conducted many times (either in…
D.F.J.
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What are some methods of defining things?
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…
Hugo
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What does "physical" mean to philosophers?
A childish question (literally) -
My 8 year old asked me this morning: "Dad, what does 'physical' mean?" - and I found myself at loss for an ordinary language answer.
Every answer I could come up with ended up sounding like a definition of…
Alexander S King
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Is everyone considered a "philosopher"?
Is every person who has ever questioned what they did or what they are going to do a philosopher? Does this idea fall under philosophy in any way, or is it merely a semantic debate?
Dynamic
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Term for people who believe God once existed but then disappeared?
Reading Wikipedia, I learnt
Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable.
Comment: Am I correct if I say an agnostics would say: "I don't know whether God exists or…
Severus Snape
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What Precisely Does "Semantics" Mean?
What do logicians mean when they refer to the notion of "semantics"? I don't find the definition "the connection between words and meaning of those words" to be that satisfactory here.
Informally, I have been taking it to mean "the formal…
Harold W
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What are the differences between sentience, consciousness and awareness?
Dictionary definitions such as this one often seem to use the terms sentience, awareness, and consciousness as if they are synonymous with each other. Is this really the case? If not, how do they differ? Some books suggest that sentience and…
coleopterist
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How do quantifiers work in predicate logic?
Predicate logic is somewhat like propositional logic, except that where propositional logic only works on the level of whole sentences (e.g. A = "Socrates is mortal", B = "All Scottish people eat their porridge plain"), it allows you to talk about…
Niel de Beaudrap
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