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What did Xenophanes actually say about horses, oxen and the gods, and what was he arguing for?
My students love to quote "if horses could draw, they would draw gods like horses" as a knock-down argument against religion. As a theology teacher I find that interesting, because the man who said it was not an atheist, as far as…
Started by Nikos Theodoridis4 replies -
What did Milton Friedman actually argue in his 1970 essay on business and profit?
In every business-ethics discussion I've been in, someone quotes Friedman's line that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits, and everyone either nods or sneers. Usually it's summarised as "greed is good". I've now found the essay (in the…
Started by Rohan Desai4 replies -
Yorùbá separates what you have seen from what you were told. What does that do to testimony?
Let me offer something from Yorùbá for comparison and see what others make of it. In a well-known study from the 1980s, the philosophers Barry Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo worked with Yorùbá healers and argued that the verb mọ̀, usually translated…
Started by Titilayo Adeyemi4 replies -
Wujūd, brahman, dao: are these even answers to the same question?
I keep returning to Mullā Ṣadrā. I've been looking at a comparative table of traditions' answers to "what is real?", and the Islamic row says: created being, contingent, distinct from a necessary existent. The key term is wujūd. That's fair for much…
Started by Reza Tehrani4 replies -
What are the Nyāya hetvābhāsas, and do they line up with the Western list of fallacies?
I've been reading about Nyāya logic on weekends. I keep meeting the word hetvābhāsa, usually translated "fallacy" or "pseudo-reason", and a list of five kinds. My questions, as a non-specialist: What are the five, in plain terms, with an example of each…
Started by Vikram Sethi4 replies -
Is “depression” one condition or several? A reader’s doubts
One question has followed me through years of my own analysis and of reading psychiatry: when two people receive the same diagnosis of major depression, do they have the same thing? Consider how the diagnosis works. A person needs five of nine…
Started by Martín Iriarte4 replies -
Hui Shi’s Ten Theses: paradoxes for their own sake, or a theory of space?
I spend most of my reading time on the Later Mohist canons, and I keep being drawn sideways to Hui Shi, Zhuangzi's friend and sparring partner. Almost nothing of his own survives. What we have is a list of ten theses preserved…
Started by Chen Yuting4 replies -
Mulla Sadra’s substantial motion: what if things change in their very substance?
I am an architect in Shiraz, and Mulla Sadra, who was born here, keeps pulling me back to questions about being. This one has been on my mind since I started reading about persistence. In Aristotle's framework, which Ibn Sina refined, a…
Started by Reza Tehrani4 replies -
Does Spinoza solve the mind–body problem or just rename it?
I came to this site for philosophy of mind and stayed for Spinoza, so I owe the question. Spinoza's move, as I understand it: there is one substance, with infinitely many attributes, of which we know two, thought and extension. A mind…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen4 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 -
Reading group: Kit Fine, ‘Vagueness, Truth and Logic’ (1975)
Vagueness is my obsession, and I've realised that many people know supervaluationism only from summaries. The original is better than the summaries. So: a slow read of Kit Fine's "Vagueness, Truth and Logic", first published in Synthese in 1975 and reprinted in…
Started by Oskar Nyberg4 replies -
The Abhidharma was the most thorough reductionism ever attempted. Was it right?
I taught chemistry for years, and when I first studied the Abhidhamma I recognised something familiar: a periodic table of experience. The Abhidharma traditions analyse everything a person is into ultimate constituents, dhammas: momentary events of consciousness, mental factors, material qualities. In…
Started by Nirmala Jayasekara4 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 -
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 -
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 -
A scripture with no author: what Mīmāṃsā does to the intention debate
The Western argument about artistic intention assumes there is an author whose mind we either consult or ignore. My tradition has a case where, on its own account, there is no author at all. Pūrva Mīmāṃsā holds that the Veda is apauruṣeya:…
Started by Govinda Prasad Upadhyaya4 replies -
Thirty-one years in the courts: legal causation is not physical causation, and should not be
For thirty-one years I reported on the courts of Lahore for a newspaper, the last ten mostly from the sessions courts. In retirement I am reading the jurisprudence I only skimmed in those years, and causation is where philosophy and the courtroom…
Started by Khalid Mahmood Awan4 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 -
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 -
Two people with the same income and different lives: a wheelchair user’s case for capabilities
I want to make a case from my own life for why Amartya Sen's question, "equality of what?", is the right one. Imagine two people in Amman with exactly the same income. One walks. I don't. To get to the same meeting…
Started by Dima Nasser4 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 -
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 -
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 -
The sea battle argument is a scope mistake, and Aristotle half saw it
Chapter 9 of De Interpretatione makes a fatalist of somebody in my class every year. So here is the case I make to them, and I would like it attacked by people who know more logic than my students. The argument: if…
Started by Giulia Ferrante4 replies -
Natural law is a form of ethical naturalism, and it needs no ontological naturalism
I keep meeting a confusion, in students and in some books: that "naturalism" is one view, and that a Catholic, by definition, can't be a naturalist. My thesis: natural law theory is a form of ethical naturalism, because it holds that moral…
Started by Ikechukwu Anyanwu4 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 -
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 -
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