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What does Whitehead mean by calling science anti-rational?
In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead writes:
Science has never shaken off the impress of its origin in the historical revolt of the later renaissance. It has remained predominantly an anti-rationalistic movement, based upon a naive faith.…
Mozibur Ullah
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Is Sisyphus actually happy or is he content?
I am having trouble understanding what Camus meant when he says "One must imagine Sisyphus is happy" in the essay The Myth of Sisyphus. What does Camus mean by happiness, and how can Sisyphus be happy when faced with a meaningless existence?
When…
Movers
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Schrödinger's cat being "both dead and alive"
Famously, Schrödinger's cat is found to be both dead and alive within a closed system - at the mercy of quantum mechanics. But why is the cat "both dead and alive"? For the Copenhagen interpretation, according to Heisenberg "the wave-function…
Ilya Grushevskiy
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Is formal logic a branch of philosophy?
Pondering over logic in the everyday 'ways of reasoning' sense of the word, classifying informal logical fallacies, talking about kinds of arguments and things like this surely belong to philosophy.
I have a question, though: does formal logic…
Michael Smith
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5 answers
What are the problems with reductionism?
It seems intuitive to me to think that if there is a basic substance or building block of nature (e.g. fermions and leptons, etc.), then all facts regarding entities comprised of that substance are reducible into facts about instances of said…
Apodictic Apple Juice
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3 answers
Did Wittgenstein think that pure description, without the influence of explanation, could be pursued?
Wittgenstein is stated as having said "we must do away with the explanation and description alone must take its place" (PI 109).
But isn't this akin to the myth of the given that Sellars attacked?
Can a clear distinction really be made between…
Mos
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What is Wittgenstein claiming when he says that "each thing can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same"?
In Tractatus 1.21 Wittgenstein writes
Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same. [1]
I'm looking for commentary on this point, since it seems out of place given other statements in the Tractatus, and also…
David Roberts
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Are there philosophic discussions of Husserl's dissertation?
Husserl wrote a doctoral thesis on calculus of variations. It does not seem to be available on the Göttinger Digitalisierungs-Zentrum and so far as I have found the online collections of his works are only philosophical. Anyway I'd rather not read…
Colin McLarty
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What is the origin of the truth table in logic?
Specifically for the material implication if possible. Who was the first to use a truth table for this and justify its validity?
IgnorantCuriosity
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What are some good books on anger in philosophy?
I'm sure that there is a philosopher that tells about anger, but I don't know his/her name. Could you help me? I'm studying about the anger in many cultural fields: arts, history, religion.
Now I am interested in anger in philosophy.
What would you…
sunrise
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Why did Heidegger (postmodernism) ignore Schelling's later thought?
F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854) seems to be a seriously overlooked figure of modern philosophy: is there a good reason (beyond the merely historical) for his diminished relative importance compared, for instance, to Hegel?
Heidegger admitted that…
Myron Moses Jackson
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What is an 'argumentum ad lapidem'?
I've seen philosophical arguments descriped as 'argumentum ad lapidem', but never quite understood what the criticism is trying to indicate. As best I can tell, it's a dismissal of an argument with no good justification. Could anybody expand a…
Jez
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Was Hobbes a natural law theorist?
I would like to hear some opinions on a question I am asking myself due to contradictions in the references of my term paper.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on "The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics" states:
Aquinas was not the only…
iphigenie
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If the universe is infinite, shouldn't I already have been contacted by a time and space travelling doppelgänger?
If the universe is infinite, by virtue of chance it means that every possible configuration of matter must exist somewhere (according to this documentary).
Therefore, if the universe is infinite and it's possible to travel through time and space…
user2215
8
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2 answers
Have any philosophers applied the concept of "underdetermination" to non-scientific contexts?
Most resources I've found on underdetermination approach the subject within the context of science. That's definitely a fascinating area of study, but I'd like to explore ways of applying underdetermination more broadly. I'm interested in the notion…
Matt Diamond
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