Unanswered Questions
2,915 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Has Spinoza been disproved by modern physics?
As I understood it Spinoza claims everything has Extension, it occupies space.
But in physics there are things called point particles which are zero dimensional, they don't occupy space.
So for ...
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Kierkegaard and identity?
Kierkegaard defines the self as the "relation of relation to oneself in relation" to which this means a relation of ideas is a dialectic of individual opposites. Infinity and finitude (this ...
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Where does Carnap discuss "entelechy" (rather) extensively?
I remember reading a paper or text by Carnap where he gave a rather extensive treatment of the theory of a biologist (his contemporary, if I remember correctly) who posited an "entelechy" as ...
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Two questions about possible worlds
What I'm thinking about here are the functional aspects of possible worlds as used in models, not their metaphysical aspects.
First, why are possible words totalizing in the sense that every ...
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How does Husserl explain the common perception of an object?
Husserl considers that the intentional term, the noema, is within the immanence of intentional consciousness. (Here, I will not distinguish between noema and object, as some Fregean readings do.) In ...
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Trying to understand 4P26 of Spinoza's Ethics: Why is reason the foundation of virtue?
The text of the proposition is:
All efforts which we make through reason are nothing but efforts to understand, and the mind, in so far as it uses reason, adjudges nothing as profitable to itself ...
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Are there any examples of an analytic proposition that can only be stated with the full the predicate calculus?
I'm using a variation on the old meaning of "analytic" where an analytic proposition represents a relationship between concepts and doesn't directly reference objects at all. For convenience,...
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What are some noteworthy consequences of a deontic logic extended with the axiom “Ob(A) → Ob(◊A)”?
I think one unsuccessful attempt to construct a form of deontic logic in which the “ought” modal operator implies the “can” modal operator was to include the axiom OBA → ◊A, for an “obligation” ...
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What is the history of the idea of conscience as a homunculus?
What is the historical origin of the mental categorization or anthropomorphization of conscience as a kind of semi-person distinct from, subordinate to, and constitutive of the self?
To clarify: as ...
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How is W. James' "pure experience" any better than the "diaphaneity" he says that he rejects?
This is not actually a tangent: I remembered the question (which I'd thought of posting) while critiquing Gilbert Ryle's anti-dualism, which goes back to my issues with the notion of category mistakes,...
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Position on postmodern philosophy in modern society
Let's say, there's some author. Baudrillard or Deleuze or whatever. A lot of people read them. Some of them more or less can understand what they write about.
And there's a university system that ...
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Descartes Statement in Second Meditation is illogical?
In the second paragraph of Meditation Two: Concerning the Nature of the Human Mind: That it is better known than the Body, Descartes writes
“Therefore I suppose that everything I see is false. I ...
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Would presentism and vagueness of the present imply that every event has borderline existence?
Would presentism and the vagueness of the present imply that every event that occurs is in a borderline state of existence? Since vagueness is characterized as having borderline cases.
I take ...
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Is the conceptual possibility of amorphous infinite sets "evidence against" countabilism?
Countabilism is, roughly, a family of standpoints inclusive of:
There is one infinite proper set, of size ℵ0, and one infinite proper class, ℵ0ℵ0. (See about e.g. "pocket-sized" and ...
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Does the anticlass principle solve the Burali-Forti problem?
The text Abstract and Concrete Categories: The Joy of Cats makes much of the class/set distinction, including as a foundational matter, and situates this distinction relative to another such notion, ...
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