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Gettier Problem
The Gettier problem, in the field of epistemology, is a landmark philosophical problem concerning the understanding of descriptive knowledge. Attributed to American philosopher Edmund Gettier, Gettier-type counterexamples (called "Gettier-cases") challenge the long-held justified true belief (JTB) account of knowledge. The JTB account holds that knowledge is equivalent to justified true belief; if all three conditions (justification, truth, and belief) are met of a given claim, then we have knowledge of that claim. In his 1963 three-page paper titled "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", Gettier attempts to illustrate by means of two counterexamples that there are cases where individuals can have a justified, true belief regarding a claim but still fail to know it because the reasons for the belief, while justified, turn out to be false. Thus, Gettier claims to have shown that the JTB account is inadequate because it does not account for all of the necessary and sufficient con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony. The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naturalism (philosophy)
In philosophy, naturalism is the idea that only Scientific law, natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe. In its primary sense, it is also known as ontological naturalism, metaphysical naturalism, pure naturalism, philosophical naturalism and antisupernaturalism. "Ontological" refers to ontology, the philosophical study of what exists. Philosophers often treat naturalism as equivalent to materialism, but there are important distinctions between the philosophies. For example, philosopher Paul Kurtz argued that nature is best accounted for by reference to Matter, material principles. These principles include mass, energy, and other Physical property, physical and Chemical property, chemical properties accepted by the scientific community. Further, this sense of naturalism holds that spirits, Deity, deities, and ghosts are not real and that there is no "Teleology, purpose" in nature. This stronger formulation of naturalism is commonly ref ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Definition Of Knowledge
Definitions of knowledge aim to identify the essential features of knowledge. Closely related terms are conception of knowledge, theory of knowledge, and analysis of knowledge. Some general features of knowledge are widely accepted among philosophers, for example, that it involves cognitive success and epistemic contact with reality. Despite extensive study, disagreements about the nature of knowledge persist, in part because researchers use diverging methodologies, seek definitions for distinct purposes, and have differing intuitions about the standards of knowledge. An often-discussed definition asserts that knowledge is justified true belief. Justification means that the belief fulfills certain norms like being based on good reasons or being the product of a reliable cognitive process. This approach seeks to distinguish knowledge from mere true beliefs that arise from superstition, lucky guesses, or flawed reasoning. Critics of the justified-true-belief view, like Edmund G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Material Conditional
The material conditional (also known as material implication) is a binary operation commonly used in logic. When the conditional symbol \to is interpreted as material implication, a formula P \to Q is true unless P is true and Q is false. Material implication is used in all the basic systems of classical logic as well as some nonclassical logics. It is assumed as a model of correct conditional reasoning within mathematics and serves as the basis for commands in many programming languages. However, many logics replace material implication with other operators such as the strict conditional and the variably strict conditional. Due to the paradoxes of material implication and related problems, material implication is not generally considered a viable analysis of conditional sentences in natural language. Notation In logic and related fields, the material conditional is customarily notated with an infix operator \to. The material conditional is also notated using the i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counterfactual Conditional
Counterfactual conditionals (also ''contrafactual'', ''subjunctive'' or ''X-marked'') are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here." Counterfactuals are contrasted with indicatives, which are generally restricted to discussing open possibilities. Counterfactuals are characterized grammatically by their use of fake tense morphology, which some languages use in combination with other kinds of morphology including aspect and mood. Counterfactuals are one of the most studied phenomena in philosophical logic, formal semantics, and philosophy of language. They were first discussed as a problem for the material conditional analysis of conditionals, which treats them all as trivially true. Starting in the 1960s, philosophers and linguists developed the now-classic possible world approach, in which a counterfactual's truth hinges on its consequent holding at certai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disjunction Introduction
Disjunction introduction or addition (also called or introduction) is a rule of inference of propositional logic and almost every other deduction system. The rule makes it possible to introduce disjunctions to logical proofs. It is the inference that if ''P'' is true, then ''P or Q'' must be true. An example in English: :Socrates is a man. :Therefore, Socrates is a man or pigs are flying in formation over the English Channel. The rule can be expressed as: :\frac where the rule is that whenever instances of "P" appear on lines of a proof, "P \lor Q" can be placed on a subsequent line. More generally it's also a simple valid argument form, this means that if the premise is true, then the conclusion is also true as any rule of inference should be, and an immediate inference, as it has a single proposition in its premises. Disjunction introduction is not a rule in some paraconsistent logics because in combination with other rules of logic, it leads to explosion (i.e. everyt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interlocutor (linguistics)
In linguistics, discourse analysis, and related fields, an interlocutor is a person involved in a conversation or dialogue. Two or more people speaking to one another are each other's interlocutors. The terms ''conversation partner'', ''hearer'', or ''addressee'' are often used interchangeably with ''interlocutor''. According to Paul Grice, the behavior of interlocutors in ordinary conversation is governed by the cooperative principle. See also * Addressee honorific * Clusivity *Common ground (linguistics) * Conversation analysis *Discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. F ... References Linguistics Pragmatics {{pragmatics-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Entailment
Logical consequence (also entailment or logical implication) is a fundamental concept in logic which describes the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically ''follows from'' one or more statements. A valid logical argument is one in which the conclusion is entailed by the premises, because the conclusion is the consequence of the premises. The philosophical analysis of logical consequence involves the questions: In what sense does a conclusion follow from its premises? and What does it mean for a conclusion to be a consequence of premises?Beall, JC and Restall, Greg, Logical Consequence' The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). All of philosophical logic is meant to provide accounts of the nature of logical consequence and the nature of logical truth. Logical consequence is necessary and formal, by way of examples that explain with formal proof and models of interpretation. A sentence is said to b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plato
Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He influenced all the major areas of theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, a philosophical school in History of Athens, Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism. Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms, theory of forms (or ideas), which aims to solve what is now known as the problem of universals. He was influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself. Along with his teacher Socrates, and his student Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Western philosophy. Plato's complete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theory Of Justification
Justification (also called epistemic justification) is a property of beliefs that fulfill certain norms about what a person should believe. Epistemologists often identify justification as a component of knowledge distinguishing it from mere true opinion. They study the reasons why someone holds a belief. Epistemologists are concerned with various features of belief, which include the ideas of warrant (a proper justification for holding a belief), knowledge, rationality, and probability, among others. Debates surrounding epistemic justification often involve the ''structure'' of justification, including whether there are foundational justified beliefs or whether mere coherence is sufficient for a system of beliefs to qualify as justified. Another major subject of debate is the sources of justification, which might include perceptual experience (the evidence of the senses), reason, and authoritative testimony, among others. Justification and knowledge "Justification" involves the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
If And Only If
In logic and related fields such as mathematics and philosophy, "if and only if" (often shortened as "iff") is paraphrased by the biconditional, a logical connective between statements. The biconditional is true in two cases, where either both statements are true or both are false. The connective is biconditional (a statement of material equivalence), and can be likened to the standard material conditional ("only if", equal to "if ... then") combined with its reverse ("if"); hence the name. The result is that the truth of either one of the connected statements requires the truth of the other (i.e. either both statements are true, or both are false), though it is controversial whether the connective thus defined is properly rendered by the English "if and only if"—with its pre-existing meaning. For example, ''P if and only if Q'' means that ''P'' is true whenever ''Q'' is true, and the only case in which ''P'' is true is if ''Q'' is also true, whereas in the case of ''P if Q ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions
In logic and mathematics, necessity and sufficiency are terms used to describe a conditional or implicational relationship between two statements. For example, in the conditional statement: "If then ", is necessary for , because the truth of is guaranteed by the truth of . (Equivalently, it is impossible to have without , or the falsity of ensures the falsity of .) Similarly, is sufficient for , because being true always implies that is true, but not being true does not always imply that is not true. In general, a necessary condition is one (possibly one of several conditions) that must be present in order for another condition to occur, while a sufficient condition is one that produces the said condition. The assertion that a statement is a "necessary ''and'' sufficient" condition of another means that the former statement is true if and only if the latter is true. That is, the two statements must be either simultaneously true, or simultaneously false. In ordinary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
