Fallacies - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The argumentum ad hominem, as Locke defined it, has subsequently developed into three different fallacies His original description was that it was a way “to press a man with consequences drawn from his own principles or concessions ”
Atheism and Agnosticism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1 Definitions of “Atheism” The word “atheism” is polysemous—it has multiple related meanings In the psychological sense of the word, atheism is a psychological state, specifically the state of being an atheist, where an atheist is defined as someone who is not a theist and a theist is defined as someone who believes that God exists (or that there are gods)
Argument and Argumentation - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Argument is a central concept for philosophy Philosophers rely heavily on arguments to justify claims, and these practices have been motivating reflections on what arguments and argumentation are for millennia
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy organizes scholars from around the world in philosophy and related disciplines to create and maintain an up-to-date reference work
Epistemic Paradoxes - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1 The Surprise Test Paradox A teacher announces that there will be a surprise test next week It will be a surprise in that the students will not be able to know in advance on which day the exam will be given
Ambiguity - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1 Introduction Ambiguity is generally taken to be a property enjoyed by signs that bear multiple (legitimate) interpretations in a language or, more generally, some system of signs
Francis Bacon - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1 Biography Francis Bacon was born January, 22, 1561, the second child of Sir Nicholas Bacon (Lord Keeper of the Seal) and his second wife Lady Anne Cooke Bacon, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to Edward VI and one of the leading humanists of the age
The Hole Argument - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2 The Freedom of General Covariance Newton’s first law states that force-free bodies move on straight-line trajectories through spacetime Clearly, this law as stated cannot be true in all coordinate systems, for imagine such a system accelerating with respect to one in which the law holds true: in the accelerating coordinate system, the force-free bodies will also appear to accelerate!
Morality and Evolutionary Biology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy An article in The Economist (21 February 2008, “Moral thinking”), sporting the provocative subtitle “Biology Invades a Field Philosophers Thought was Safely Theirs”, begins with the following rumination: Whence morality? That is a question which has troubled philosophers since their subject was invented Two and a half millennia of debate have, however, failed to produce a