The papers in this section are cover philosophy as a whole. In particular, the library has an ongoing series of essays introducing philosophy to those wanting to learn what the subject is all about. These are intended for beginners, explaining the many aspects of philosophy in plain terms and from the ground up while the attendant dialogues give another way to understand the points at issue. We also have more advanced discussions of specific areas of philosophy or famous thinkers for those wishing to extend their knowledge or challenge our contributors.
Latest Academy Discussions
Some philosophers claim that it is possible to argue from simple premises that anti-realism positions which adhere to the knowability principle are mistaken. The knowability…
In his 2007 book A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism (Knowing the Unobservable), Anjan Chakravarty provides an analysis of the current state of Scientific Realism, and…If we are to grant the infallibility of fallibilism, that is, knowing with absolute certainty that absolutely certain knowledge is an impossibility, if there are…Perhaps there is a level of shallowness in her critique, but Camille Paglia certainly knows how to draw a strong conclusion, and in this example,…I have never known firsthand the depths of our capability for experiencing physical pain until I developed, as I have now, an abscessed tooth. Like…A Little Background To Philosophy
Feed by the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates and developing agriculture, it appears that our roots started around the Middle East and…I take it that the world out there, in which these words appear and are being read by you now, is a real world; the…Richard Feldman, in the best introduction to epistemology I have stumbled across, in Epistemology, states that coherentists endorse the following two basic ideas:
C1. Only…I hope to some extent this writing will be informative and perhaps even educative.
Part 1 – The Post-Modern Condition
During the nineteenth century there…It is true that our (mine at least) interests in various philosophic issues wax and wane. I used to be interested in free will, and… The Manuscripts
Before we can move on to consider some of the questions studied by philosophy it makes sense to ask what philosophy is in the first…We looked at what philosophy is and found it difficult to say exactly what we mean when we talk about it. Perhaps it will help…In the first instalment of our series we described metaphysics as the study of reality. In this article, we'll expand on these remarks and consider…Logic comes up often in philosophical discourse and even more frequently in informal discussions, typically involving a claim that “logic says x”. Logic, however, is…In this section of our series we'll consider epistemology, starting with an outline of what we mean by the term and moving on to look…In the last article we looked at the sources, scope and—in general—the theory of knowledge. Given that much of the information we have about our…In this article we'll look at Aesthetics, starting with what it is and why it should concern us before moving on to some historical ideas…In this article we'll expand on the second discussion in our series on Doing Philosophy and take a look at reading. Although we can all…In this article we'll discuss Political Philosophy, from what we mean by the term and what it's good for, through some historical ideas and perspectives,…The notion of truth comes up in many contexts, not just philosophical, but very often a discussion can come to a grinding halt when it…In this installment of our series we'll consider ethics, looking at what we mean by this term, what use we have for it and thereby…In the study of philosophy we eventually come up against postmodernism, however hard we may try to avoid it. Typically the context is someone uttering…In this article we'll consider the problems associated with free will and determinism, starting by explaining the terms involved, the difficulty (if there is one),…The philosophy of mind has been a hot topic for several thousand years and over that time almost every philosopher has had something to say…In this discussion we'll look at the philosophy of religion, along with some aspects of theology. The importance of this area of philosophy needs little…Expanding on our fourth discussion, we'll now look at the kinds of moves—rhetorical or otherwise—that can be made when setting out or defending an idea…Just like philosophy as a whole, explaining what analytic philosophy is (and isn't) unfortunately isn't straightforward. To help us understand the matter we'll begin by…History may not seem to have much to do with philosophy but—just as we have already seen with science, politics and art—it relies on philosophical…In this discussion we’ll look again at metaphysics, covering (in more depth) some of the same ground as the previous instalment but also considering some…In our earlier discussion of epistemology we looked at what the term means, some basics of the historical development of the subject, the idea that…In this essay we look at rhetoric, introducing the subject and some of its traditional divisions before providing a guide to common rhetorical figures and…In The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer spoke as a Teutonic philosopher, with mighty prose and thunderous proclamations from the lofty heights of…This paper aims to determine whether human free will can exist in the presence of a divine, omniscient being. In doing so, the Foreknowledge Dilemma…It would not be amiss to compare the mystery of time with the mystery of the divine (should any such thing exist). On the one…Oct. 3, 1991, San Francisco
A day like any other. I got up early, went downstairs, had my morning coffee at the little Chinese restaurant…It is Jan. 1, 2007. All night, my inconsiderate neighbor has been throwing a raucous New Year's Eve Party. What is especially galling is that…In Part I of my response to Robert P. Taylor's dissertation on the philosophical problem of theological fatalism, I introduced my noisy neighbor – let's…In the third chapter of his dissertation, Robert considers the Molinist solution to the alleged foreknowledge/free will incompatibility. It is proposed that God has Middle…My subject, as you know, is Ethics and I will adopt the explanation of that term which Professor Moore has given in his book Principia…- By Brian Morton, (2009)
Introduction
A colleague once asked if I could give him “a taxonomy of ‘forms of ontology’ and where properties fit…- By Brian Morton, (2009)
2.1 Substance-Ontologies
Probably the most familiar ontology in my typology, and the most natural to English speakers, is a substance-ontology.…- By Brian Morton, (2009)
3.1 Fundamental Historicism
Another position one could take is that being in its most fundamental nature is different in different…
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