Transmission and Transmission Failure in Epistemology An argument transmits justification to its conclusion just in case, roughly, the conclusion is justified in virtue of the premises’ being justified.  An argument fails to transmit justification just in case, roughly, the conclusion is not justified in virtue of the premises’ being justified.  An argument might fail to transmit justification for a variety of uncontroversial reasons, such as

Michel Foucault: Ethics The French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (1926-1984) does not understand ethics as moral philosophy, the metaphysical and epistemological investigation of ethical concepts (metaethics) and the investigation of the criteria for evaluating actions (normative ethics), as Anglo-American philosophers do.  Instead, he defines ethics as a relation of self to itself in terms of its moral agency.  More specifically, ethics denotes the intentional

Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness Integrated Information Theory (IIT) offers an explanation for the nature and source of consciousness. Initially proposed by Giulio Tononi in 2004, it claims that consciousness is identical to a certain kind of information, the realization of which requires physical, not merely functional, integration, and which can be measured mathematically according to the phi metric. The theory attempts a balance between

Thomas Aquinas: Political Philosophy The political philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), along with the broader philosophical teaching of which it is part, stands at the crossroads between the Christian gospel and the Aristotelian political doctrine that was, in Aquinas’ time, newly discovered in the Western world. In fact, Aquinas’ whole developed system is often understood to be simply a modification of Aristotelian philosophy in light

Inconsistent Mathematics Inconsistent mathematics is the study of commonplace mathematical objects, like sets, numbers, and functions, where some contradictions are allowed. Tools from formal logic are used to make sure any contradictions are contained and that the overall theories remain coherent. Inconsistent mathematics began as a response to the set theoretic and semantic paradoxes such as Russell’s Paradox and the Liar Paradox—the response being that