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Logical Determinism
Logical determinism is the view that a proposition about the future is either necessarily true, or its negation is necessarily true. The argument for this is as follows. By excluded middle, the future tense proposition (‘There will be a sea-battle tomorrow’) is either true now, or its negation is true. But what makes it (or its negation) true is the present existence of a state of affairs – a truthmaker. If so, then the future is determined in the sense that the way things are now – namely the state of affairs that makes ‘There will be a sea-battle tomorrow’ or its negation true – determines the way that things will be. Furthermore, if the past is necessary, in the sense that a state of affairs that existed yesterday cannot be altered, then the state of affairs that made the proposition ‘There will be a sea-battle tomorrow’ true cannot be changed, and so the proposition or its negation is necessarily true, and it is either necessarily the case that there will be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Excluded Middle
In logic, the law of excluded middle (or the principle of excluded middle) states that for every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true. It is one of the so-called three laws of thought, along with the law of noncontradiction, and the law of identity. However, no system of logic is built on just these laws, and none of these laws provides inference rules, such as modus ponens or De Morgan's laws. The law is also known as the law (or principle) of the excluded third, in Latin ''principium tertii exclusi''. Another Latin designation for this law is ''tertium non datur'': "no third ossibilityis given". It is a tautology. The principle should not be confused with the semantical principle of bivalence, which states that every proposition is either true or false. The principle of bivalence always implies the law of excluded middle, while the converse is not always true. A commonly cited counterexample uses statements unprovable now, but provable in the futu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Of Affairs (philosophy)
In philosophy, a state of affairs (german: Sachverhalt), also known as a situation, is a way the actual world must be in order to make some given ''proposition'' about the actual world true; in other words, a state of affairs is a ''truth-maker'', whereas a proposition is a ''truth-bearer''. Whereas states of affairs either ''obtain'' or ''fail-to-obtain'', propositions are either ''true'' or ''false''. Some philosophers understand the term "states of affairs" in a more restricted sense as a synonym for "fact". In this sense, there are no states of affairs that do not obtain. David Malet Armstrong is well known for his defence of a factualism, a position according to which the world is a world of facts and not a world of things. Overview States of affairs are complex entities: they are built up from or constituted by other entities. Atomic states of affairs are constituted by one particular and one property exemplified by this particular. For example, the state of affairs that Socr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Truthmaker
Truthmaker theory is "the branch of metaphysics that explores the relationships between what is true and what exists". The basic intuition behind truthmaker theory is that truth depends on being. For example, a perceptual experience of a green tree may be said to be true because there actually is a green tree. But if there was no tree there, it would be false. So the experience by itself does not ensure its truth or falsehood, it depends on something else. Expressed more generally, truthmaker theory is the thesis that "the truth of truthbearers depends on the existence of truthmakers". A perceptual experience is the ''truthbearer'' in the example above. Various representational entities, like beliefs, thoughts or assertions can act as truthbearers. Truthmaker theorists are divided about what type of entity plays the role of ''truthmaker''; popular candidates include states of affairs and tropes. ''Truthmaker maximalism'' is the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker. An alternat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moritz Schlick
Friedrich Albert Moritz Schlick (; ; 14 April 1882 – 22 June 1936) was a German philosopher, physicist, and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. Early life and works Schlick was born in Berlin to a wealthy Prussian family with deep nationalist and conservative traditions. His father was Ernst Albert Schlick and his mother was Agnes Arndt. At the age of sixteen, he started to read Descartes' ''Meditations'' and Schopenhauer's ''Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik''. Nietzsche's ''Also sprach Zarathustra'' especially impressed him. He studied physics at the University of Heidelberg, the University of Lausanne, and, ultimately, the University of Berlin under Max Planck. Schlick explained this choice in his autobiography by saying that, despite his love for philosophy, he believed that only mathematical physics could help him obtain actual and exact knowledge. He felt deep distrust towards any metaphysical speculation. In 1904, he completed his PhD the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen. It is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation, and prohibition. Traditionally, only actions that are freely willed are seen as deserving credit or blame. Whether free will exists, what it is and the implications of whether it exists or not are some of the longest running debates of philosophy and religion. Some conceive of free will as the right to act outside of external influences or wishes. Some conceive free will to be the capacity to make choices undetermined by past events. Determinism suggests that only one course of events is possible, which is inconsistent with a libertarian model of free will. Ancient Greek philosophy identified this issue, which remains a major focus o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duns Scotus
John Duns Scotus ( – 8 November 1308), commonly called Duns Scotus ( ; ; "Duns the Scot"), was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher, and theologian. He is one of the four most important Christian philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and William of Ockham. Scotus has had considerable influence on both Catholic and secular thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the "univocity of being", that existence is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing between different aspects of the same thing; and the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual. Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued for the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Duns Scotus was given the scholastic accolade ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diodorus Cronus
Diodorus Cronus ( el, Διόδωρος Κρόνος; died c. 284 BC) was a Greek philosopher and dialectician connected to the Megarian school. He was most notable for logic innovations, including his master argument formulated in response to Aristotle's discussion of future contingents. Life Diodorus was the son of Ameinias of Iasus in Caria. He lived in the court of Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy I Soter, who is said to have given him the surname of Cronus ("old fogey") on account of his inability to solve at once some dialectic problem proposed by Stilpo, when the two philosophers were dining with the king. Diodorus is said to have taken that disgrace so much to heart that after his return from the meal, and writing a treatise on the problem, he died in despair. However, according to Strabo, Diodorus himself adopted the surname of Cronus from his teacher, Apollonius Cronus. Diodorus is thought to have died around 284 BC; his date of birth is unknown. It was once thought tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called nondeterminism) or randomness. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible.For example, see Determinism is often used to mean ''causal determinism'', which in physics is known as cause-and-effect. This is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state of an object or event is completely determined by its prior states. This meaning can be distinguished from other varieties of determinism mentioned below. Debates about determinism often concern the scope of determined systems; some maintain that the entire universe is a single determina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen. It is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation, and prohibition. Traditionally, only actions that are freely willed are seen as deserving credit or blame. Whether free will exists, what it is and the implications of whether it exists or not are some of the longest running debates of philosophy and religion. Some conceive of free will as the right to act outside of external influences or wishes. Some conceive free will to be the capacity to make choices undetermined by past events. Determinism suggests that only one course of events is possible, which is inconsistent with a libertarian model of free will. Ancient Greek philosophy identified this issue, which remains a major focus o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Problem Of Future Contingents
Future contingent propositions (or simply, future contingents) are statements about states of affairs in the future that are ''contingent:'' neither necessarily true nor necessarily false. The problem of future contingents seems to have been first discussed by Aristotle in chapter 9 of his ''On Interpretation'' (''De Interpretatione''), using the famous sea-battle example. Roughly a generation later, Diodorus Cronus from the Megarian school of philosophy stated a version of the problem in his notorious ''master argument''. The problem was later discussed by Leibniz. The problem can be expressed as follows. Suppose that a sea-battle will not be fought tomorrow. Then it was also true yesterday (and the week before, and last year) that it will not be fought, since any true statement about what will be the case in the future was also true in the past. But all past truths are now necessary truths; therefore it is now necessarily true in the past, prior and up to the original statement ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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