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Sorites Paradox
The sorites paradox (), sometimes known as the paradox of the heap, is a paradox that results from vague predicates. A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are removed individually. With the assumption that removing a single grain does not cause a heap not to be considered a heap anymore, the paradox is to consider what happens when the process is repeated enough times that only one grain remains and if it is still a heap. If not, then the question asks when it changed from a heap to a non-heap. Original formulation The word ''sorites'' () derives from the Greek word for ''heap'' (). The paradox is so named because of its original characterization, attributed to Eubulides of Miletus. The paradox is as follows: consider a heap of sand from which grains are removed individually. One might construct the argument from the following premises: :'' grains of sand is a heap of sand'' (Premise 1) :''A heap of sand minus one grain is still a heap.'' (Premise 2) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tannin Heap
Tannins (or tannoids) are a class of astringent, polyphenolic biomolecules that bind to and precipitate proteins and various other organic compounds including amino acids and alkaloids. The term ''tannin'' is widely applied to any large polyphenolic compound containing sufficient hydroxyls and other suitable groups (such as carboxyls) to form strong complexes with various macromolecules. The term ''tannin'' (from scientific French ''tannin'', from French ''tan'' "crushed oak bark", ''tanner'' "to tan", cognate with English ''tanning'', Medieval Latin ''tannare'', from Proto-Celtic ''*tannos'' "oak") refers to the abundance of these compounds in oak bark, which was used in tanning animal hides into leather. The tannin compounds are widely distributed in many species of plants, where they play a role in protection from predation (acting as pesticides) and might help in regulating plant growth. The astringency from the tannins is what causes the dry and puckery feeling in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic philosophy.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"Bertrand Russell", 1 May 2003. He was one of the early 20th century's prominent logicians and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore, and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British "revolt against British idealism, idealism". Together with his former teacher Alfred North Whitehead, A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote ''Principia Mathematica'', a milestone in the development of classical logic and a major attempt to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic (see logicism). Russell's article "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy". Russell was a Pacifism, pacifist who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Timothy Williamson
Timothy Williamson (born 6 August 1955) is a British philosopher whose main research interests are in philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics. He is the former Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of New College, Oxford. Education and career Born on 6 August 1955, Williamson's education began at Leighton Park School and continued at Henley Grammar School (now the Henley College). He then went to Balliol College, Oxford University. He graduated in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honours in mathematics and philosophy, and in 1980 with a doctorate in philosophy (DPhil) for a thesis entitled ''The Concept of Approximation to the Truth''. Williamson was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh (1995–2000), fellow and lecturer in philosophy at University College, Oxford (1988–1994), and lecturer in philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin (1980–1988). He took up the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Wiggins
David Wiggins (born 1933) is an English moral philosopher, metaphysician, and philosophical logician working especially on identity and issues in meta-ethics. Biography David Wiggins was born on 8 March 1933 in London, the son of Norman and Diana Wiggins (née Priestley). He attended St Paul's School before reading philosophy at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he obtained a first-class degree. His tutor was J. L. Ackrill. After completing his National Service, he joined the Civil Service and was appointed Assistant Principal in the Colonial Office, 1957–8. He left the Civil Service and was Jane Eliza Proctor Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in 1958–9. Returning to Oxford, he was Lecturer, 1959, then Fellow and Lecturer, 1960–7, at New College. After that, he was Chair of Philosophy at Bedford College, London, 1967–80; Fellow and Praelector in Philosophy at University College, Oxford, 1981–9; and Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synthese
''Synthese'' () is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the epistemology, methodology, and philosophy of science, and related issues. The name ''Synthese'' (from the Dutch for '' synthesis'') finds its origin in the intentions of its founding editors: making explicit the supposed internal coherence between the different, highly specialised scientific disciplines. Jaakko Hintikka was editor-in-chief from 1965 to 2002. The current editors-in-chief are Otávio Bueno (University of Miami), Wiebe van der Hoek (University of Liverpool), and Kristie Miller (University of Sydney). Editorial decision controversies In 2011, the journal became involved in a controversy over intelligent design. The printed version of the special issue ''Evolution and Its Rivals'', which appeared two years after the online version, was supplied with a disclaimer from the then editors of the journal that "appeared to undermine he authorsand the guest editors". The journal engendered controversy a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Unger
Peter K. Unger (; born April 25, 1942) is a contemporary American philosopher and professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University. His main interests lie in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. Biography Unger attended Swarthmore College at the same time as David Lewis, earning a B.A. in philosophy in 1962, and Oxford University, where he studied under A. J. Ayer and earned a doctorate in 1966. – dead link, seeInternet Archive copyof May 22, 2009, access: May 29, 2023. Unger has written a defense of profound philosophical skepticism. In ''Ignorance'' (1975), he argues that nobody knows anything and even that nobody is reasonable or justified in believing anything. In ''Philosophical Relativity'' (1984), he argues that many philosophical questions cannot be definitively answered. In the field of applied ethics, his best-known work is '' Living High and Letting Die'' (1996). In this text, Unger argues that the citize ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denying The Antecedent
Denying the antecedent (also known as inverse error or fallacy of the inverse) is a formal fallacy of inferring the inverse from an original statement. Phrased another way, denying the antecedent occurs in the context of an indicative conditional statement and assumes that the negation of the antecedent implies the negation of the consequent. It is a type of mixed hypothetical syllogism that takes on the following form: :If ''P'', then ''Q''. :Not ''P''. :Therefore, not ''Q''. which may also be phrased as :P \rightarrow Q (P implies Q) :\therefore \neg P \rightarrow \neg Q (therefore, not-P implies not-Q) Arguments of this form are invalid. Informally, this means that arguments of this form do not give good reason to establish their conclusions, even if their premises are true. The name ''denying the antecedent'' derives from the premise "not ''P''", which denies the "if" clause (antecedent) of the conditional premise. The only situation where one may deny the an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vagueness
In linguistics and philosophy, a vague predicate is one which gives rise to borderline cases. For example, the English adjective "tall" is vague since it is not clearly true or false for someone of middling height. By contrast, the word " prime" is not vague since every number is definitively either prime or not. Vagueness is commonly diagnosed by a predicate's ability to give rise to the Sorites paradox. Vagueness is separate from ambiguity, in which an expression has multiple denotations. For instance the word "bank" is ambiguous since it can refer either to a river bank or to a financial institution, but there are no borderline cases between both interpretations. Vagueness is a major topic of research in philosophical logic, where it serves as a potential challenge to classical logic. Work in formal semantics has sought to provide a compositional semantics for vague expressions in natural language. Work in philosophy of language has addressed implications of vagueness for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crispin Wright
Crispin James Garth Wright (; born 21 December 1942) is a British philosopher, who has written on neo-Fregean (neo-logicist) philosophy of mathematics, Wittgenstein's later philosophy, and on issues related to truth, realism, cognitivism, skepticism, knowledge, and objectivity. He is Professor of Philosophical Research at the University of Stirling, and taught previously at the University of St Andrews, University of Aberdeen, New York University, Princeton University and University of Michigan. Life and career Wright was born in Surrey and was educated at Birkenhead School (1950–61) and at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in Moral Sciences in 1964 and taking a PhD in 1968. He took an Oxford BPhil in 1969 and was elected Prize Fellow and then Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, where he worked until 1978. He then moved to the University of St. Andrews, where he was appointed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics and then the first Bishop Wardlaw University ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Connective
In logic, a logical connective (also called a logical operator, sentential connective, or sentential operator) is a logical constant. Connectives can be used to connect logical formulas. For instance in the syntax of propositional logic, the binary connective \lor can be used to join the two atomic formulas P and Q, rendering the complex formula P \lor Q . Common connectives include negation, disjunction, conjunction, implication, and equivalence. In standard systems of classical logic, these connectives are interpreted as truth functions, though they receive a variety of alternative interpretations in nonclassical logics. Their classical interpretations are similar to the meanings of natural language expressions such as English "not", "or", "and", and "if", but not identical. Discrepancies between natural language connectives and those of classical logic have motivated nonclassical approaches to natural language meaning as well as approaches which pair a classi ... [...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] |
Jonathan Barnes
Jonathan Barnes, FBA (born 26 December 1942 in Wenlock, Shropshire) is an English scholar of Aristotelian and ancient philosophy. Education and career Barnes, born on December 26, 1942, he was educated at the City of London School and Balliol College, Oxford. He taught at Oxford University for 25 years before moving to the University of Geneva, where he served as Professor of Ancient Philosophy from 1994 to 2002. A Fellow of the British Academy since 1987, Barnes is recognized for his expertise in ancient Greek philosophy and has edited significant works on Aristotle and pre-Socratic thinkers. He received an honorary doctorate from Humboldt University in 2012 and took his éméritat in 2006 after teaching at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. Philosophical views Barnes holds that our modern notion of the scientific method is "thoroughly Aristotelian." He emphasizes the point in order to refute empiricists Francis Bacon and John Locke, who thought they were breaking with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
