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Testimony as an information channel: Nyāya’s śabda next to Dretske
I've been reading Dretske for a seminar alongside the Nyāya Sūtra, and I think they illuminate each other on testimony in a way neither does alone. Nyāya counts four means of knowing (pramāṇa): perception, inference, comparison, and śabda, word or testimony. The…
Started by Meera Kulkarni3 replies -
Bridges too low for buses: what did Winner mean by “artifacts have politics”?
In a short article about philosophy of technology I read about a bridge built too low for buses to pass under, so that the people who travel by bus could not easily reach what lay beyond it. The article said a philosopher…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu3 replies -
Does ‘atom’ in my physics class refer to what Dalton meant by it?
Last week one of the students I tutor for school-leaving exams asked, half joking, whether Dalton was "wrong about atoms or right about something else". It is a better question than it sounds. Dalton's atoms were indivisible. A few generations later Thomson…
Started by Emeka Anyaoha3 replies -
When I stir stock the surface dips. What did Newton’s spinning bucket prove?
I run a kitchen in Dubai. When I stir a big pot of stock, the surface goes down in the middle and up at the sides. I never thought about it until I read that Newton used a bucket of water doing…
Started by Joel D'Souza3 replies -
Bent when sitting, straight when standing: what is the problem of temporary intrinsics?
I hit a passage in my weekend metaphysics reading I could not follow, about something David Lewis called the problem of temporary intrinsics. The example: I am bent when I sit and straight when I stand. Both are true of me. But…
Started by Vikram Sethi3 replies -
Can a baby or an animal have a right if it cannot claim it? Interest theory versus will theory
I think about the ethics of drug trials on animals more than most of our customers would like. Someone at a talk recently said there are two main theories of what a right is: the "will" theory and the "interest" theory, and…
Started by Hetal Shah3 replies -
A researcher surveyed our village. Why does it matter what we meant by our answers?
Last year a research team came to our village with tablets and asked everyone the same questions. How many hours a day do you work? Do you trust your neighbours? How much land do you own? The questions were polite, but our…
Started by Akosua Mensah3 replies -
Cutting film taught me that clock time and lived time are different things
I cut documentaries in Tehran. A shot of a woman pouring tea can last eight seconds and feel like a minute, or last eight seconds and pass unnoticed, depending on what came before it. Every editor knows this. The clock and the…
Started by Parisa Moghaddam3 replies -
My daughter asked what mosquitoes are for. Is there an honest answer?
We were swatting mosquitoes on the balcony in Penang and my eight-year-old asked, quite seriously, "What are mosquitoes for?" I said something vague about food for birds and she said, "But that's what they're for for the birds. What are they for…
Started by Thamarai Raman3 replies -
Twenty-odd species concepts, and conservation law written as if there were one
This year a survey of one of the lakes our trust looks after turned up two populations that look almost identical, interbreed where they meet, but differ genetically and in when they spawn. Are they one species or two? The answer is…
Started by Anand Kurup3 replies -
What are the ‘four principles’ of medical ethics, and what do you do when they conflict?
A drug rep who also teaches a short course mentioned "the four principles" as if everyone knew them, and I nodded and then looked them up: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. I understand each one on its own. My problem is a…
Started by Hetal Shah3 replies -
What were Mozi’s three tests for judging whether a doctrine is right?
I've been reading about early Chinese philosophy for fun. Several books mention that Mozi proposed "three tests" or "three standards" for judging a doctrine, and one claims this was the first explicit methodology in Chinese thought. I'd like to know what the…
Started by Vikram Sethi3 replies -
QBism says the wavefunction is my degrees of belief. What exactly is it claiming?
A colleague who knows I work with Bayesian statistics sent me an article about QBism ("quantum Bayesianism", though I gather some proponents now prefer just the acronym) with the note: "your people have taken over physics." As far as I can tell,…
Started by Wanjiru Njenga3 replies -
What is Wakefield’s “harmful dysfunction” account, and why do psychiatrists still argue about it?
In our clinical module we spent a week on whether intense grief should ever be diagnosed as depression. When the diagnostic manual changed in 2013 and dropped the old exclusion for recent bereavement, there was a big argument, and one name kept…
Started by Elif Yıldız3 replies -
What did Weber actually mean by “value-free” social science?
In arguments about whether journalism or research can be neutral, Max Weber gets quoted by both sides. One side says Weber proved social science must be value-free. The other says Weber admitted that values decide what we study, so neutrality is a…
Started by Sana Rizvi3 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 -
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 -
The seat in front reclines into your knees. Whose few inches are they?
A small everyday case, with more philosophy in it than it seems. You are on a long overnight coach or flight. The passenger in front presses the button and reclines into the space where your knees are. The button belongs to their…
Started by The Editors2 replies -
“If I don’t sell it, the shop next door will.” Does that excuse selling a remedy I think is useless?
At our pharmacy counter in Ahmedabad we sell a herbal "immunity tonic" that I am fairly sure does nothing. It's legal, cheap and harmless as far as I know. Customers ask for it by name. When I told my father I didn't…
Started by Hetal Shah2 replies -
Twenty minutes below the pass, the weather turns. Is turning back the coward’s choice or the brave one?
Last season I was guiding two trekkers towards the Thorong La, which is 5,416 metres. About twenty minutes below the pass, cloud came over very fast and the wind changed. One client wanted to go on. He had saved for three years…
Started by Nima Tsering Gurung2 replies -
Reading group: Epictetus’s Handbook, about ten short chapters a week for five weeks
The Handbook (Enchiridion) is a pocket digest of Epictetus's teaching, compiled by his pupil Arrian, who also wrote up the longer Discourses. It is short enough to read on a bus and dense enough to argue about for a month. Our Book…
Started by The Editors2 replies -
Why can’t a proof assistant prove its own consistency, and should that worry the people who rely on one?
Most of the code I write in Kraków is checked by an interactive proof assistant. Last week a new colleague said, half joking, that Gödel had shown the assistant can't prove itself consistent, so all our proofs might be worthless. I gave…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak2 replies -
Did FitzGerald turn Khayyam into an Epicurean, or was he one already?
Everyone's grandfather here can recite some Khayyam. In English, everyone's grandfather could recite FitzGerald, which is not quite the same thing. FitzGerald's version (fifth edition, stanza XXIV; both the first and fifth editions are on Project Gutenberg) reads like a Roman poem:…
Started by Reza Tehrani2 replies -
Abusua dɔ funu, “the family loves the corpse”: who are our expensive funerals really for?
We buried my mother's cousin in September. The funeral cost more than our household makes from the farm in a good year, and the family will be paying it off past the next harvest. There were printed cloths with her face on…
Started by Akosua Mensah2 replies -
Filial duty, but whose? In most families I know, the daughter-in-law pays it
In my family, and in almost every family I know, when parents grow old the care is done by a woman who is not their daughter. The son has the duty; the son's wife does the work. Nobody says this out loud.…
Started by Thamarai Raman2 replies -
Your late mother’s diary: is reading it remembrance or trespass?
After a parent dies, someone has to clear the drawers. Sometimes one of them holds a diary. Suppose she never asked for it to be burned, and never said you could read it. It may explain things you always wondered about. It…
Started by The Editors2 replies -
Autumn and mono no aware: an emotion, or a trained way of seeing?
The maples in the hills north of Osaka are only starting to turn, and I'm drawing autumn pages for a children's book. My editor wants "the feeling of autumn", and I keep reaching for mono no aware, which is usually translated as…
Started by Rin Matsuda2 replies -
Is “Islamic philosophy” a useful label?
Some colleagues prefer "Arabic philosophy". Others say "philosophy in the Islamic world". Each has problems. "Islamic philosophy" suggests that it's all religious, or that all of it was done by Muslims. But Christians like Yahya ibn 'Adi and Jews like Maimonides wrote…
Started by Layla Sfeir2 replies -
Sartre’s “look” and Fanon on being fixed by another’s gaze
In Being and Nothingness (1943), Sartre describes the moment of being caught looking through a keyhole: suddenly I am an object for someone else, and I feel shame. The look of the other gives me an outside I can't control. Fanon's Black…
Started by Claire Dubois2 replies -
What did Ibn Sina mean by the “internal senses”?
In my history of psychology course, Ibn Sina was mentioned for his theory of "internal senses", and the lecturer said it was an early version of cognitive psychology. I'd love a clear explanation of what the internal senses were and how they…
Started by Elif Yıldız2 replies