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Frege and Husserl started on the same side. What was the psychologism dispute about?
I've been reading about the split between analytic and continental philosophy because my colleagues treat it as two tribes. What surprised me is that both traditions are said to trace back, around 1900, to two men who agreed about something: Frege and…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen5 replies -
Why did the rabbis write down the opinions they voted against?
I run a Talmud study group on Tuesday nights, and every year someone new asks the same thing: why does the text keep the losing side? When a law is decided, why preserve, often at length, the arguments of the sages who…
Started by Eliana Halpern7 replies -
What exactly was new about al-Khwarizmi’s algebra?
The word "algorithm" comes from the Latin form of al-Khwārizmī's name. “Algebra” comes from the al-jabr in the title of his book. So he is everywhere in my working vocabulary. But when I read about him, I get two stories. One says…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman4 replies -
Is Yājñavalkya’s unseen seer an answer to the problem of personal identity?
I study Sanskrit and Indian philosophy in Pune, and something about how Indian theories of self get slotted into Western debates bothers me. In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, Yājñavalkya says you cannot see the seer of seeing or think the thinker of thinking,…
Started by Meera Kulkarni4 replies -
What is Carnap’s distinction between internal and external questions, in plain terms?
I build machine-learning systems, and I've been reading about debates over whether numbers or properties "really exist". Several people pointed me to Carnap's paper "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (1950) as the place where someone argued these debates are confused. I read it…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen4 replies -
Chisholm’s contrary-to-duty paradox: why exactly do four sensible sentences become inconsistent?
I work for a tenants' organisation in Johannesburg, so most of my working life is spent on what is owed when someone has already failed to do what they should: the landlord who evicted unlawfully, the municipality that didn't provide alternative accommodation.…
Started by Thandeka Mokoena3 replies -
When philosophers ask what exists, what would even count as an answer?
I come to this from literature, so forgive me if the question is naive. In a seminar last week someone said ontology is "the study of what there is". I nodded along, and then on the bus home I realised I had…
Started by Kavya Menon5 replies -
Analogy, negation, or “without asking how”: how can finite words say anything true of God?
Every year one of my students asks the question that underlies everything else: when we say "God is good" or "God knows", what do the words mean? If they mean what they mean of us, God becomes a large human being. If…
Started by Ikechukwu Anyanwu4 replies -
Who was al-Ruhawi, and what does his Adab al-Tabib actually say about the physician?
At a hospital conference in Cairo, a speaker mentioned al-Ruhawi's Adab al-Tabib as one of the earliest systematic works on medical ethics, written in the ninth century, and then moved straight on to modern guidelines. I've been unable to find much more…
Started by Omar Ragab4 replies -
Strong Kleene, weak Kleene, Łukasiewicz: what actually differs between the tables?
I've been reading about how to reason with partially evaluated expressions, where some sub-expressions haven't been computed yet or failed. That led me to three-valued logics, and now I have three sets of truth tables on my desk that look almost identical.…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen4 replies -
Are talk therapy and antidepressants treating the same thing?
I have been in psychoanalysis for years in Buenos Aires, and like many people here I have also seen a psychiatrist and taken medication. At some point I started asking whether the two were working on the same problem from two sides…
Started by Martín Iriarte5 replies -
Outside a courtroom, who should carry the burden of proof?
In court the burden of proof is fixed by rules. In a criminal case the prosecution must prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt; in a civil case the claimant must win on the balance of probabilities. Islamic law has a well-known maxim to…
Started by Hamza Qureshi6 replies -
What does Ibn Sina mean by a thing that is “possible in itself, necessary through another”?
I am an architect, not a trained philosopher, so forgive me if this is basic. In reading about Ibn Sina I keep meeting a three-way division: the Necessary Existent in itself, things possible in themselves, and things that are possible in themselves…
Started by Reza Tehrani5 replies -
Wittgenstein said philosophy “leaves everything as it is”. Is quietism a position, or a refusal to have one?
I translate for a living, and this year I have been rereading a book about the Philosophical Investigations. I keep returning to §124: philosophy may not interfere with the actual use of language; it can only describe it; it "leaves everything as…
Started by Claire Dubois5 replies -
Can trained meditative introspection count as evidence? Abhidhamma and William James
For years my study has been the Abhidhamma, the systematic part of our canon that analyses experience into momentary mental events and their factors. In the classical Theravada scheme there are fifty-two mental factors (cetasika), seven of which are said to accompany…
Started by Nirmala Jayasekara4 replies -
Accident or intent: how should a court decide what someone actually did?
The cases that kept me awake, in my years reporting from the courts, were not the ones where anyone doubted who struck the blow. They were the ones where we knew exactly what happened physically, and everything depended on what the accused…
Started by Khalid Mahmood Awan4 replies -
How can death be bad for someone who no longer exists to be harmed?
We did Epicurus in my ancient philosophy module and I can't get past the argument, even though I don't believe the conclusion. As I understand it: harm requires a subject. While I'm alive, death isn't here. When death is here, I'm not.…
Started by Aoife Kilbride5 replies -
Austin says a vow on stage is void. The jurists said some words bind even in jest. Who is right?
This one comes from the courtroom. Since retiring I have been reading Austin, and one of his remarks keeps returning me to my old law books. Austin says a performative is "hollow" when said by an actor on a stage or as…
Started by Khalid Mahmood Awan4 replies -
What is apoha, and does defining by exclusion help with the frog-and-fly problem?
I teach philosophy at an upper-secondary school in Lund, and my hobby is reading Sanskrit philosophers in translation and noticing where they reached our problems first. I would like a clear explanation of one idea I only half understand. Dignāga, the fifth-…
Started by Oskar Nyberg4 replies -
Why did the Vaiśeṣikas count direction as a substance?
I teach physics and spend weekends exposing miracle tricks for a rationalist association, so I like the Indian schools that tried to describe the world piece by piece. The Vaiśeṣika list of nine substances is a favourite of mine: earth, water, fire,…
Started by Arvind Poojary3 replies -
Does the dialetheist really believe contradictions, or has she changed the meaning of ‘not’?
A question I keep returning to. Quine, in Philosophy of Logic (1970), has a famous argument against "deviant" logicians. Suppose someone claims to accept a sentence of the form "P and not-P". Quine says: then whatever they mean by "not", it isn't…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak4 replies -
Soundness and completeness of a logical system: what exactly is being proved?
I'm stuck on vocabulary, having no formal training in logic. I've read that a logical system can be sound and complete: everything provable is true, and everything true is provable. Fine. But then I read that Gödel proved a completeness theorem in…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen4 replies -
Is “aesthetic experience” one kind of experience, or a label for several unlike things?
Twice last month I lost track of time completely. Once was a late-night proof that came together with a kind of click, everything suddenly fitting. The other was a recording of the Goldberg Variations on a long drive. Both felt, from the…
Started by Derek Hollis4 replies -
Can reason tell right from wrong on its own, or does it need revelation?
In the courts I covered in Lahore, judges applied statutes, precedent and, where the law allowed, the principles of Islamic law. Many times a case was decided correctly by every rule and I went home feeling it had been decided wrongly. I…
Started by Khalid Mahmood Awan6 replies -
If syllogistic logic couldn’t handle relations, why did it last two thousand years?
Working inside predicate logic every day, I'm often reminded how much it can do that the syllogism can't. The textbook example (usually credited to De Morgan) is: all horses are animals, therefore every head of a horse is the head of an…
Started by Derek Hollis6 replies -
Did Epicurus actually make the argument from evil that carries his name?
In my theology seminar the lecturer put up the famous dilemma, "Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Able but not willing? Then he is malevolent...", with "Epicurus" printed under it. A friend in classics…
Started by Aoife Kilbride4 replies -
How did Kripke’s possible worlds turn S4 and S5 from arbitrary axioms into something meaningful?
I've been reading about modal logic for fun. I understand the operators. What I don't understand is the history I keep seeing summarised: C. I. Lewis invented several systems, S1 to S5, with different axioms; nobody could say which was "correct" or…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen4 replies