Unanswered Questions
113 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Is this a solution to the disjunction problem of causal representation?
As I understand it, the disjunction problem is how could a causal theory of inner representation account for mistaken identification of external objects or object types. For example, if I see a fox ...
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Difference between Carnap and Quine's views
Could someone explain to me, in easy language, what the main differences are between Carnap and Quine's views regarding internal / external questions and realism? Quine called Carnap a Platoist, yet I ...
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What are some ways of understanding plural predication (and what are some academic resources on the matter)?
The particular case I'm thinking about has to do with existence. Peter Van Inwagen writes:
'When I say that affirmation of existence is denial of the number zero, I
mean only that to say that Fs exist ...
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3
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1
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Can vague concepts have a modality?
Can vague concepts, which I am thinking of as concepts without boundaries, though there are I assume other ways of thinking about them, be necessary, especially if that modality changes?
Supposing it'...
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Does anyone distinguish linguistic univocity/analogy from metaphysical univocity/analogy?
Classical Theists (and other Realists) inherit Plato's Theory of Forms, and posit the existence of Forms such as Goodness, Truth, Beauty, Justice, and so on. Non-Christian Realists might say these ...
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Grice: Comparing Natural Meaning, Non-Natural Meaning, Conventional Implicature and Generalized Conversational Implicature
I am currently reading "Meaning" and "Logic and Conversation" by Paul Grice.
I find it a little difficult to differentiate clearly between his concepts "natural meaning", "non-natural meaning", "...
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Kripke's Puzzle Confusion
I'm not convinced that the Fregean rebuttal has been successfully repelled by Kripke in Kripke's puzzle. Don't Londres and London have two different senses in that Pierre associates Londres with being ...
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Parsing the actionable in standpoint theory
A recent Hugo Schwyzer article laid out the following explanation of "Strong Objectivity":
We can never adopt a true “view from nowhere.” We can defy gravity in outer space, but we can never slip ...
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Why is identifying Frege's indirect sense with customary sense problematic?
In Miller's Philosophy of Language, it is explained that the identification of an expression's indirect sense (i.e. its referent in a doubly indirect context) with its customary sense (i.e. its ...
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Is the mass/count-noun distinction the same as the continuous/discrete one?
Justification for this as a PhilosophySE questions: there are two SEP articles concerning this topic:
The Logic of Mass Expressions (Nicolas[18]).
The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions (Steen[22]).
...
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A refutation of Kripke's Feynman-Gellman case?
McGinn explains Kripke's Feynman-Gellman problem as follows (Philosophy of Language: The Classics Explained)
Most people are not experts in physics and will not be able to tell you what Feynman's ...
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1
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Does a definite description such as "the train" or "the student" always signal uniqueness of the referent?
Some authors claims that a definite description such as "the king" does not necessarily signal uniqueness. Examples given:
(1) I’ve got this data from the student of a linguist. — Poesio (...
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5
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Can all words be self-denoting?
When we 'mention' a word in a sentence e.g:
'Car' has three letters.
We denote it by writing it in apostrophes or quotation marks, however, we still write the word to specify the word, is it in some ...
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What are the formal semantics of the word "really"?
(This question involves semantics, epistemology, and empirical studies of speaker judgements - wasn't sure if I should post in philosophy or linguistics, hope this is an OK place for it.)
I've been ...
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Derivation in Stalnaker's letter to van Fraassen
In Stalnaker's letter to van Fraassen, he claims the following:
Where the referenced assumptions are:
(1) Stalnaker's thesis: if P(A) > 0 then P(A -> B) = P(B | A)
(5) that the conditional ...
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