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What are the most significant philosophical consequences of instrumentalism?
Are there any significant philosophical consequences to the instrumentalist view of the universe?
Does it quickly become a distinction without a difference (perhaps simply inline with pragmatism?), or as a premise does it lead down any unique paths…
DuckMaestro
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What does Dawkins suggest is the main flaw in these three arguments from Aquinas?
Source: p 100-101, The God Delusion, By Richard Dawkins
1. The Unmoved Mover.
Nothing moves without a prior mover. This leads us to an infinite regress, from
which the only escape is God. Something had to make the first move, and that…
user8572
8
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Did the early greek philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle make use of the Jewish scriptures just as much as writings from India and Egypt?
I'm a student of philosophy carefully reading through the Britannica Great Books series. In our homeschool discussions, occurring each Wednesday afternoon, I'm finding most of the questions challenging but too difficult. My teacher says not to be…
Darcy Davis
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How do we know how to follow a rule?
This question seems to either be at the forefront or the background of countless philosophical enquiries. Much has been written on Wittgenstein's rule paradox (e.g. Kirke's Wittgenstein: On Rules and Private Language," as well as many others). Here…
Jon
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Which philosophers have written about fear?
It occurred to me some time ago that fear is the result of a lack of control, and try as I might I cannot conceive fear existing without this vacancy. Looked at from the other direction, in a situation where you feel completely in control is it…
stoicfury
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Arguments for moral realism?
I would like to hear some good arguments for moral realism. Most that I find online is based on "If you don't believe in objective values, then murder is okay". While this might seem frightening, I don't think it proves anything. Believing in…
pgsandstrom
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What good books are there on the mind–body problem?
What good books are there on the mind–body problem?
I would be especially curious whether there are any well-written books about the "mind vs. brain" problem and related questions like the hard/soft problems of consciousness that are not written by…
user128932
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If the Platonic world exists how would we know?
If we assume existence of a non-material world of ideas that mathematics describes there are some questions that a Platonist has to address.
1) How is the ideal world related to the real one, where mathematics also plays a role?
2) How do we gain…
Conifold
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Peirce's law, law of the excluded middle, and intuitionism.
I have no training in formal logic and have tried to understand how Peirce's law is equivalent to the law of the excluded middle to no avail. I hope someone can explain this to me.
Also, in passing, I wanted to know why intuitionistic logic rejects…
DLV
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What are the moral consequences of a Douglas Adams' cow?
In the "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" there is a cow specifically designed to a) want to be eaten and b) be able to communicate it. By that the designer wanted to make sure, that it's morally acceptable to kill it. Assume we have a moral…
Einer
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Is imagination limited to what we have already perceived with our five senses?
Is it possible to imagine something that is not a combination of what we have already perceived with any of our five senses? I mean, was it possible for humans to think of flying if there were no birds out there? Has there been any study to show…
B Faley
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Is there any relation beetwen justification logic and type theory?
Justification logics, was introduced by Sergei Artemov, are epistemic logics which allow knowledge and belief modalities to be ‘unfolded’ into justification terms: instead of □X one writes t:X, and reads it as “X is justified by reason t”.…
Ali
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Why distrust our senses?
It seems self-evident that the phenomena we sense are accurate and correlate to the real world.
What sorts of philosophical arguments might cast doubt on this conviction in the veridicality of perception?
brentonstrine
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Why isn't Cantor's diagonal argument just a paradox?
Cantor's diagonal argument concludes the cardinality of the power set of a countably infinite set is greater than that of the countably infinite set.
In other words, the infiniteness of real numbers is mightier than that of the natural numbers.
The…
nir
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Why are homologies evidence for evolution instead of common design?
I have seen some creationists arguing that when evolutionary biologists use homologies (anatomical or genetic) as evidence for evolution, they are committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent. So both evolutionists and creationists would agree…
user8083
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