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1500 questions
32
votes
5 answers
Does humanism's rejection of God necesitate relativism?
I had the following discussion on Programmers.SE:
@Peter Turner, Which is a good example of how religion warps morality, leading people to imagine their concerns are moral when they are profoundly immoral. – TRiG
@TRiG, Which is a good example of…
Peter Turner
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votes
17 answers
How does mathematics work?
If I am given a parking lot with ten thousand cars and I want to determine whether one of the cars is orange, the only way I can do this is go through the parking lot examining each car until I find one that is orange or I examine each car and…
Craig Feinstein
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32
votes
3 answers
Is First Order Logic (FOL) the only fundamental logic?
I'm far from being an expert in the field of mathematical logic, but I've been reading about the academic work invested in the foundations of mathematics, both in a historical and objetive sense; and I learned that it all seems to reduce to a proper…
Mono
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32
votes
7 answers
Are Methodological Assumptions of StackExchange Fundamentally Flawed?
I looked here for an answer while writing a paper on evidence and scientific inference. I then saw the bold claims made by the website that the process goes as follows:
Anybody can ask a question
Anybody can answer
The best answers are voted up and…
KKell
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32
votes
16 answers
Is there anything that is totally random?
When I say totally random, I mean absolutely random, not pseudorandom.
If I want to say "totally random" numbers such as 1,26,17,4,1 and 27, although I see them to be totally random, they aren't. These are numbers that I think are influenced by my…
Garmen1778
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31
votes
10 answers
What is the difference between Fact and Truth?
I'm curious about the difference between Fact and Truth. I was searching on the internet if I could find it. But still I'm confused about the exact meaning.
I first read the forum discussion here
Fact and Truth where an author has given two examples…
NullPointer
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31
votes
19 answers
Is atheism just another form of dogma?
I was raised Catholic, and part of my motivation for leaving Catholicism was my dislike of any kind of enforced structure. However, to my surprise, it seems like Atheism is also dogmatic. Is this intentional? Is atheism supposed to be only…
user189728
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31
votes
10 answers
Why is scientism philosophically wrong?
I think a combination of science and philosophy alone leads to closer to truth.
Why is it that it is wrong to think that science alone leads to truth? Isn't empirical truth the only one we can be sure about? If there is any absolute truth at all,…
BlowMaMind
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31
votes
4 answers
What are the philosophical implications of Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem?
Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem states
Any effectively generated theory
capable of expressing elementary
arithmetic cannot be both consistent
and complete. In particular, for any
consistent, effectively generated
formal theory that…
Joseph Weissman
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31
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11 answers
Where and how can I get started in contemporary philosophy?
We are living in an unprecedented era of philosophical research and development where "big thought" is once again everywhere. And yet I feel like I hear this question so often:
Where to begin studying contemporary
philosophy, where are the most…
Joseph Weissman
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31
votes
1 answer
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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31
votes
16 answers
Do fundamental concepts in physics have any logical basis?
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,…
Green Noob
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30
votes
10 answers
Isn't the notion that everything will occur in an infinite timeline an example of the gambler's fallacy?
I've seen a few different formulations of this, but the most famous is "monkeys on a typewriter" - that if you put a team of monkeys on a typewriter, given infinite time, they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare, and indeed every text…
Lou
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30
votes
15 answers
Was Robin Hood's point of view ethically sound?
The story of Robin Hood was a favourite of mine as a child.
But as an adult, I am beginning to change my mind for a couple of reasons.
The first being that if we assume a free market exists, regardless of how he redistributes wealth, a disparity…
Adam Ledger
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30
votes
5 answers
Is "I cannot imagine a mechanism for X to happen, so X can never happen" a named logical fallacy?
I have encountered this reasoning quite frequently:
Somebody posits the hypothesis that an event X can happpen. A recent example I encountered was "vinegar and salt in the boiling water make eggs easier to peel afterwards", but I have seen many…
rumtscho
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