The Lucas-Penrose Argument about Gödel’s Theorem In 1961, J.R. Lucas published “Minds, Machines and Gödel,” in which he formulated a controversial anti-mechanism argument. The argument claims that Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem shows that the human mind is not a Turing machine, c'est, a computer. The argument has generated a great deal of discussion since then. The influential Computational Theory of Mind, which claims that the

The Theory-Theory of Concepts The Theory-Theory of concepts is a view of how concepts are structured, acquired, and deployed. Concepts, as they will be understood here, are mental representations that are implicated in many of our higher thought processes, including various forms of reasoning and inference, categorization, planning and decision making, and constructing and testing explanations. The view states that concepts are organized within and

Modern Morality and Ancient Ethics It is commonly supposed that there is a vital difference between ancient ethics and modern morality. Par exemple, there appears to be a vital difference between virtue ethics and the modern moralities of deontological ethics (Kantianism) et le conséquentialisme (utilitarianism). At second glance, cependant, one acknowledges that both ethical approaches have more in common than their stereotypes may suggest. Oversimplification, fallacious

d'Aquin: Metaphysics Metaphysics is taken by Thomas Aquinas to be the study of being qua being, c'est, a study of the most fundamental aspects of being that constitute a being and without which it could not be. Aquinas’s metaphysical thought follows a modified but general Aristotelian view. Primarily, for Aquinas, a thing cannot be unless it possesses an act of being, and the thing

Pejorative Language Some words can hurt. Slurs, insults, and swears can be highly offensive and derogatory. Some theorists hold that the derogatory capacity of a pejorative word or phrase is best explained by the content it expresses. In opposition to content theories, deflationism denies that there is any specifically derogatory content expressed by pejoratives. As noun phrases, ‘insult’ and ‘slur’ refer to symbolic vehicles designed

Martin Heidegger (1889—1976) Martin Heidegger is widely acknowledged to be one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century, while remaining one of the most controversial. His thinking has contributed to such diverse fields as phenomenology (Merleau Ponty), existentialisme (Sartre, Ortega y Gasset), herméneutiques (Gadamer, Ricoeur), political theory (Arendt, Marcuse, Habermas), psychologie (Boss, Binswanger, Rollo May), and theology (Bultmann, Rahner, Tillich). His critique