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1500 questions
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Is Sisyphus actually happy or is he content?
I am having trouble understanding what Camus meant when he says "One must imagine Sisyphus is happy" in the essay The Myth of Sisyphus. What does Camus mean by happiness, and how can Sisyphus be happy when faced with a meaningless existence?
When…
Movers
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Is formal logic a branch of philosophy?
Pondering over logic in the everyday 'ways of reasoning' sense of the word, classifying informal logical fallacies, talking about kinds of arguments and things like this surely belong to philosophy.
I have a question, though: does formal logic…
Michael Smith
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What are the problems with reductionism?
It seems intuitive to me to think that if there is a basic substance or building block of nature (e.g. fermions and leptons, etc.), then all facts regarding entities comprised of that substance are reducible into facts about instances of said…
Apodictic Apple Juice
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Did Wittgenstein think that pure description, without the influence of explanation, could be pursued?
Wittgenstein is stated as having said "we must do away with the explanation and description alone must take its place" (PI 109).
But isn't this akin to the myth of the given that Sellars attacked?
Can a clear distinction really be made between…
Mos
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Are there philosophic discussions of Husserl's dissertation?
Husserl wrote a doctoral thesis on calculus of variations. It does not seem to be available on the Göttinger Digitalisierungs-Zentrum and so far as I have found the online collections of his works are only philosophical. Anyway I'd rather not read…
Colin McLarty
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Why did Heidegger (postmodernism) ignore Schelling's later thought?
F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854) seems to be a seriously overlooked figure of modern philosophy: is there a good reason (beyond the merely historical) for his diminished relative importance compared, for instance, to Hegel?
Heidegger admitted that…
Myron Moses Jackson
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What is an 'argumentum ad lapidem'?
I've seen philosophical arguments descriped as 'argumentum ad lapidem', but never quite understood what the criticism is trying to indicate. As best I can tell, it's a dismissal of an argument with no good justification. Could anybody expand a…
Jez
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Was Hobbes a natural law theorist?
I would like to hear some opinions on a question I am asking myself due to contradictions in the references of my term paper.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on "The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics" states:
Aquinas was not the only…
iphigenie
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If the universe is infinite, shouldn't I already have been contacted by a time and space travelling doppelgänger?
If the universe is infinite, by virtue of chance it means that every possible configuration of matter must exist somewhere (according to this documentary).
Therefore, if the universe is infinite and it's possible to travel through time and space…
user2215
8
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10 answers
Problems with the Omnipotence paradox
From Wikipedia:
The omnipotence paradox is a family of semantic paradoxes that explores what is meant by 'omnipotence'. If an omnipotent being is able to perform any action, then it should be able to create a task that it is unable to perform.…
UrsinusTheStrong
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Have any philosophers applied the concept of "underdetermination" to non-scientific contexts?
Most resources I've found on underdetermination approach the subject within the context of science. That's definitely a fascinating area of study, but I'd like to explore ways of applying underdetermination more broadly. I'm interested in the notion…
Matt Diamond
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5 answers
Where is the line drawn between immoral inactivity and a simple lack of action?
I've heard a lot about the supposed evils about not voting/voting for a 3rd party in recent political discussion here in the States. The reasoning seems to posit that (e.g.) in the Trump/Hillary race, refusing to vote for either party seems to…
Quirky Trombone
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Are there any resources for teaching young children philosophy and logic?
My oldest child is nearly six years old and will be starting his first level of formal schooling in a few weeks. I don't believe he will be taught philosophy and logic in the classroom, so I would like to suppliment his education.
Are there any…
Josh Peterson
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8
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4 answers
What did Thomas Nagel intend to distinguish, in distinguishing 'impression' vs 'perception of reality'?
Source: pp 15-16, What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy (1987) by Prof. Thomas Nagel
According to this view, the idea of a dream from which you can never wake up is not the
idea of a dream at all: it is the idea of…
user8572
8
votes
3 answers
Which contemporary philosophers deal with the concept of honour without dismissing it out of hand?
Whenever I read about honour (the evaluation of a person's social status as judged by that individual's community), it is usually in a negative context (e.g., honour killings) or strictly comparative (e.g., cultures of guilt versus cultures of…
Ruben
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