Epistemic Justification We often believe what we are told by our parents, friends, doctors, and news reporters. We often believe what we see, taste, and smell. We hold beliefs about the past, the present, und die Zukunft. Do we have a right to hold any of these beliefs? Are any supported by evidence? Should we continue to hold them, or should we discard some? Diese

Demonstratives and Indexicals In the philosophy of language, an indexical is any expression whose content varies from one context of use to another. The standard list of indexicals includes pronouns such as “I”, “you”, “he”, “she”, “it”, “this”, “that”, plus adverbs such as “now”, “then”, “today”, “yesterday”, “here”, and “actually”. Other candidates include the tenses of verbs, adjectives such as “local”, and a range of

Desert Desert is a normative concept that is used in day-to-day life. Many believe that being treated as one deserves to be treated is a matter of justice, fairness, or rightness. Although desert claims come in a variety of forms, generally they are claims about some positive or negative treatment that someone or something ought to receive. One might claim that a hard-working employee deserves

Feminism and Race in the United States This article traces the history of U.S. mainstream feminist thought from an essentialist notion of womanhood based on the normative model of middle-class white women’s experiences, to a recognition that women are, Tatsächlich, quite diverse and see themselves differently. It begins with the question of the social construction of gender and the mainstream feminist assumption that ‘woman’

Jules Henri Poincaré (1854—1912) Poincaré was an influential French philosopher of science and mathematics, as well as a distinguished scientist and mathematician. In the foundations of mathematics he argued for conventionalism, against formalism, against logicism, and against Cantor’s treating his new infinite sets as being independent of human thinking. Poincaré stressed the essential role of intuition in a proper constructive foundation for mathematics. He believed

Albert Camus (1913—1960) Albert Camus was a French-Algerian journalist, playwright, novelist, philosophical essayist, and Nobel laureate. Though he was neither by advanced training nor profession a philosopher, he nevertheless made important, forceful contributions to a wide range of issues in moral philosophy in his novels, reviews, articles, Aufsätze, and speeches—from terrorism and political violence to suicide and the death penalty. He is often described as