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What did Bell’s theorem actually prove? I keep hearing three different answers
I'm doing philosophy with some physics. In the space of one week I have been told by three different people that Bell's theorem proves: that the universe is non-local; that there are no hidden variables in quantum mechanics; that Einstein was wrong.…
Started by Ethan Mercer4 replies -
Kant says taste is subjective but everyone ought to agree with it. How is that not a contradiction?
Yesterday a lecturer explained Kant's view of beauty and I nearly missed a stop. As far as I understood: when I call something beautiful, I am not reporting a property I can prove with concepts; it rests on my feeling of pleasure.…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies -
Reading group: Bergson’s Laughter (1900), one chapter a fortnight
Bergson's Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic is short, odd and still the most useful thing I've read as a working comic. His idea is that we laugh at ‘something mechanical encrusted on the living’: the moment a person…
Started by Gemma Pritchard5 replies -
“The ends justify the means”: obviously true or obviously false? I can’t decide which
I hear “the ends justify the means” constantly, at work and at gigs. My team leader says it when he wants us to hit targets by telling customers a tiny lie about wait times. A comic I know says it about stealing…
Started by Gemma Pritchard4 replies -
If numbers aren’t physical, how could we ever know anything about them?
I count tablets all day. Three tablets, thirty tablets, a strip of ten. The tablets are physical: I can drop them, and I do. But the three is not in any of them. You can't drop a three. My son's maths teacher…
Started by Hetal Shah4 replies -
What does Hume mean when he says reason is the slave of the passions?
Yesterday a lecturer quoted Hume saying that reason is the slave of the passions, and then the traffic got bad and I missed the explanation. It worries me. Epictetus is the philosopher who makes most sense to me in traffic, and he…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies -
What does “primacy of existence” (asalat al-wujud) mean in plain terms?
I've read that Mulla Sadra's central doctrine is the primacy or "fundamentality" of existence over essence. I've also read that this is the opposite of a view held by Suhrawardi, or Mir Damad, or both. I understand the words but not the…
Started by Reza Tehrani3 replies -
Did Ibn Khaldun invent sociology, or is that a modern compliment?
Ibn Khaldun called his new science 'ilm al-'umran, the science of human social organisation or civilisation. He looked for regular causes behind historical events: climate, economy, group solidarity, the transition from nomadic to urban life. Many modern writers call him the founder…
Started by Youssef Berrada3 replies -
Falsifiability is not a good criterion for what counts as science
Karl Popper, in Logik der Forschung (1934; English as The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1959), proposed that a theory is scientific if and only if it's falsifiable: it makes predictions that could turn out false. As a physics teacher I used to…
Started by Emeka Anyaoha6 replies -
What makes a death a “good death”?
In end-of-life care people talk constantly about a "good death". Usually it means: pain controlled, the person not alone, their wishes known and respected, family prepared, no futile interventions at the end. That's a practical list, and I believe in it. But…
Started by Elin Hedqvist4 replies -
What does “the right side of history” actually assume about history?
At least once a tournament, one of the kids I coach closes a round with “my opponent is on the wrong side of history.” Judges love it. I've started to find it slippery, but I can't say exactly why. As far as…
Started by Sam Ellery5 replies -
Ahimsa in Jainism: how far can non-harm be taken?
I grew up next door to a Jain family in Hyderabad. The grandmother wouldn't eat after sunset (to avoid harming insects attracted to light), and they avoided root vegetables, since pulling them up kills the whole plant and the many small organisms…
Started by Anand Kurup4 replies -
Reading group: The Second Sex, Introduction and Part One (“Destiny”)
Let's begin The Second Sex (1949) with the Introduction and Part One of the first volume, the three chapters on biology, psychoanalysis and historical materialism. A note on translations. The 1953 English translation by H. M. Parshley was abridged and is unreliable…
Started by Claire Dubois4 replies -
An unjust law is not really law: legal positivism is mistaken
H. L. A. Hart's The Concept of Law (1961) defends the separation of law and morality: what the law is is one question, what it ought to be is another. Lon Fuller argued against this in their famous 1958 exchange in the…
Started by Hamza Qureshi6 replies -
Reading group: ‘The Culture Industry’ chapter of Dialectic of Enlightenment
I do stand-up on the northern circuit and work in a call centre by day, which provides most of my material. A friend told me that Adorno and Horkheimer thought comedy on the radio was a form of social control, and I…
Started by Gemma Pritchard5 replies -
What’s the difference between the cosmological and the ontological argument?
First-year question, sorry. In my philosophy of religion module the lecturer moved fast through several arguments for God's existence and I came out mixing up two of them. I think one is about causes and one is about the concept of God,…
Started by Aoife Kilbride3 replies -
If the Big Bang marks the edge of a theory rather than a beginning, what is left of the kalām’s physics?
I studied physics, and I get asked about this a lot by friends who have watched debates online. Here is what I think the physics actually says. The hot Big Bang phase of the observable universe has a finite age, about 13.8…
Started by Lars Eriksen5 replies -
Mozi was a consequentialist two thousand years before Bentham, and lost the argument the same way
I read the later Mohist canons closely, so I live with this comparison. Here's the case. Mozi, writing in the fifth century BCE, argued that the test of any doctrine or policy is whether it promotes benefit and removes harm for the…
Started by Chen Yuting5 replies -
When Aristotle calls humans political animals, does he mean we need a government?
At least once a debate tournament some student cites Aristotle: "man is a political animal." It always gets used to mean that people need government, or that humans are naturally into politics, like campaigning and voting. I have a nagging feeling that's…
Started by Sam Ellery4 replies -
Algorithmic hiring tools are inherently unjust
I don't say this lightly. Algorithms trained on past hiring decisions learn past discrimination. The best-known case: Amazon built an experimental recruiting tool that, as Reuters reported in 2018, learned to penalise CVs containing the word "women's" (as in "women's chess club…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman6 replies -
Why is “begging the question” not the same as “raising the question”?
My students, and frankly most newspapers, use "this begs the question" to mean "this raises the question". A colleague told me that's wrong and the phrase refers to a fallacy. Could someone explain the fallacy properly, with a clear example, and where…
Started by Vikram Sethi3 replies -
Refusing to aggregate is contractualism’s best feature, not its embarrassing bug
Scanlon's transmitter room case: a technician is trapped under equipment in a TV station, receiving painful electric shocks. Freeing him means interrupting the broadcast of a big football match for fifteen minutes, and millions of people are watching. Add up the millions…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen5 replies -
A deliberate foul that accepts its penalty is still a move within the game
Here is a thesis from someone who builds rule systems for a living: a tactical foul, committed openly and paid for with the stated penalty, is part of playing the game, not a break from it. The strict formalist reading of Suits…
Started by Hsieh Wei-ting6 replies -
There is no self: the Buddhist and Humean bundle views are basically right
Hume, in the Treatise (Book 1, Part 4, Section 6), says that when he looks within he never catches "himself", only some particular perception: heat, cold, love, pain. The self is a bundle of perceptions in constant flux. The Buddhist doctrine of…
Started by Priya Raghavan7 replies -
What does Langdon Winner mean when he says artifacts have politics?
Anyone who builds puzzle games already believes that rules built into a world shape what people do in it. If I put a locked door at the end of a corridor, players will spend twenty minutes looking for a key, and none…
Started by Hsieh Wei-ting4 replies -
Why does the muddy children puzzle need the parent’s announcement if every child already knew?
A colleague at the studio showed me the "muddy children" puzzle. I love it and I don't understand it. Three children, each with mud on their forehead. Each can see the others but not themselves. A parent says: "At least one of…
Started by Hsieh Wei-ting3 replies -
Can someone explain what the Nyāya logicians meant by vyāpti (pervasion)?
My training is entirely in Western formal logic, and I've started reading Matilal's The Character of Logic in India. I understand the standard example: there is fire on the hill because there is smoke, and wherever there is smoke there is fire,…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak4 replies -
Essence and existence: why Ibn Sina’s distinction mattered to Aquinas
In the metaphysics of the Shifa', Ibn Sina distinguishes what a thing is, its essence or quiddity (mahiyya), from the fact that it is, its existence (wujud). You can understand what a triangle or a phoenix is without knowing whether any exists.…
Started by Layla Sfeir4 replies -
I have grown cocoa for thirty years and never seen chocolate made. How do I know that is where it goes?
Last week my son sent me an article that said most of what any of us knows, we know only because somebody told us. I laughed, then I thought about it while I was splitting pods. I have grown cocoa for thirty…
Started by Akosua Mensah5 replies -
A universal basic income would make people freer, not lazier
Philippe Van Parijs, in Real Freedom for All (1995), argues that a just society should maximise everyone's real freedom to do whatever they might want to do, and that an unconditional basic income is the best way to do it. Republicans in…
Started by Javier Ferrandis5 replies