Philosophical logic

1. (Summary) List and Describe or Define the different “Lies” Ericsson discusses. (Response) Would you add any? List and describe them. In the ways we lie, Ericsson discusses roughly ten lies, but there are much more that can be added to this list. She describes the main ones we continuously use on a regular basis and the reasons for lying. The white lie, Facades, Ignoring the plain facts, Deflecting, Omission, Stereotypes & Clichés, Groupthink, Out & out lies, Dismissal, and Delusion. When…

The ontological status of non spatiotemporal entities is often a controversial issue among philosophers. Fictional characters are discussed in particular because of their prominence in our ? culture. Amie L. Thomasson and Alexius Meinong address this ontological controversy surrounding fictional characters found in literature through different positions. Amie L. Thomasson’s paper, “If We Postulated Fictional Objects, What Would They Be?” introduces the artifactual theory in which fictional…

Russell had FOL in mind, and expressed quantifier logic such that if you want to know what the sentence says, then you must translate it to FOL (Kaplan). Russell holds that since denoting phrases do not represent denoting concepts, they cannot have a meaning in isolation and that the meaning of denoting phrases only contributes to the meaning of the whole sentence. For Russell, denoting phrases stand for universal and existential quantifiers in logic. Since there is no way of symbolizing…

In Phaedo, Socrates claims, in his second argument, that learning is essentially the art of recollecting things we knew before we were born. He goes on to give a definition of recollection, that states that true knowledge is found in the eternal forms that exists outside of perceptible reality. Socrates insists that the process of recollection works in a way that if you see a “lyre” or an article of clothing of a beloved, you will immediately be reminded of whose lyre or clothing it belongs to.…

In order to tease apart the puzzle, Haslanger defines possible meanings of "should believe" (Haslanger, 73-74). There are two senses of "should believe" involved in this puzzle. There is an epistemic "should believe", where one should believe something because it is the truth; and, there is a moral "should believe", where one should not believe something because of moral reasons (Haslanger, 73-74). Haslanger argues that once these two senses of "should believe" are distinguished, the puzzle…

Aristotle’s Teleology The world teleology has two parts: telos, meaning end or goal, and logos, meaning a reason. For Aristotle, this “teleological” view on nature played an important part in understanding why objects in nature behave a certain way or possess certain characteristics. In this essay, I will discuss the characteristics of Aristotle’s teleological view and its relevance to modern science and understanding. I will also argue that while his emphasis on the importance of function, or…

In 1961 Daniel Ellsberg developed the Ellsberg paradox. The Ellsberg paradox shows us that people choose to bet on known chances rather than unknown ones. Ellsberg provided this as evidence for “ambiguity aversion,” a general preference for taking known chances over unknown ones. In his experiment, Ellsberg used the following choice problem: There are two urns each containing black and red balls. Urn 1 has 100 balls and the amount of black balls and red balls is unknown. Urn 2 has 50 black and…

Moral ambiguity, strategic, and expressive voting can be understood as facets of the “problem of consensus” and the exclusion of religious arguments (or the inclusion of the duty of civility) from PJP. Firstly, he considers the case of Hawaiian voting, from which he argues that since the contribution and reasoning behind a vote are morally vague, the duty of civility is not directly derivable and religious arguments should be accepted. (Gaus 8-9) This is tested by formulating the Shared Reasons…

Thoreau An Effective Argument Thoreau presents and effective argument in his work Resistance to Civil Government. Evidence of this is provided by use of reasoning to explain whether these events deserve support of defiance, use of specific detail about the issues, and use of strategies to appeal to the reader's emotion and imagination. Thoreau has countless instances in his work that prove effective in persuading his readers to favor his ideals, and each individual that study his work should…

Nguyen 1 Randy Nguyen Ancient Philosophy Rev. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J 12/6/17 Metaphysics, What is Metaphysics? In a world where the study of philosophy combines with the principles of things, which includes abstract concepts such as substance, knowing, cause, identity, space, and time. All of these concepts are very important since they are used to determine the real nature of things, and identify the meaning, and how structured thing exist in the world. Aristotle develops what he…