Plato: Organicism Organicism is the position that the universe is orderly and alive, much like an organism. According to Plato, the Demiurge creates a living and intelligent universe because life is better than non-life and intelligent life is better than mere life. It is the perfect animal. In contrast with the Darwinian view that the emergence of life and mind are accidents of evolution, the Timaeus

Immanuel Kant At the foundation of Kant’s system is the doctrine of “transcendental idealism,” which emphasizes a distinction between what we can experience (the natural, observable world) and what we cannot (“supersensible” objects such as God and the soul). Kant argued that we can only have knowledge of things we can experience. Entsprechend, in answer to the question, “What can I know?” Kant replies that

Cynosarges A gymnasium near Athens and the site where Cynic philosophers taught. Speicherort des Inhaltsverzeichnisses, Strukturen, and Layout of Cynosarges Bridge Heracleion Other Sanctuaries Gymnasium Palaistra Peripatos Groves History of the Use of Cynosarges References and Further Reading 1. Standort, Strukturen, und Grundriss von Cynosarges Cynosarges lag am Südufer des Flusses Ilissos, nicht weit von der alten Stadtmauer entfernt (Diogenes Laertius

Bertrand Russell: Logic For Russell, Aristotelian syllogistic inference does not do justice to the subject of logic. This is surely not surprising. It may well be something of a surprise, Jedoch, to learn that in Russell’s view neither Boolean algebra nor modern quantification theory do justice to the subject. For Russell, logic is a synthetic a priori science studying all the kinds of structures there.

David Hume: Causation David Hume (1711-1776) is one of the British Empiricists of the Early Modern period, along with John Locke and George Berkeley. Although the three advocate similar empirical standards for knowledge, das ist, that there are no innate ideas and that all knowledge comes from experience, Hume is known for applying this standard rigorously to causation and necessity. Instead of taking the notion

Freges Problem: Referenzielle Undurchsichtigkeit Das Problem der referenziellen Undurchsichtigkeit besteht darin, zu erklären, warum eine bestimmte Schlussfolgerungsregel der klassischen Logik manchmal zu ungültig erscheinenden Schlussfolgerungen führt, wenn sie auf Zuschreibungen mentaler Zustände angewendet wird. Die Regel betrifft die Ersetzung von Begriffen für denselben Gegenstand, und hier ist eines der kontroversen Beispiele. Es geht um die Geisteszustände von Lois Lane, Wer glaubt, dass Superman fliegen kann?. Aber, sie