Artistotle on Final Causes and Necessity in Nature
To explain something by reducing it to the matter (physicism) is an old style of presocratic philosophy. Empedocles explained things in this way. He looked at ‘becoming’ and using ‘becoming’ explained ‘being’. Aristotle rejects this method as life cannot be explained by material terms. He is trying to combine goals, necessity with the matter. If […]
Aristotle on Nature
According to Aristotle, nature is an internal principle of motion. No production thing has within itself the principle of its own production. In some things (for instance, a house or any other product of handicraft) the principle comes from outside, and it is withing other things. In other things (those that might turn out to […]
Aristotle on Causality
According to Artistotle, there are 4 types of causes: Consider the production of an artifact like a bronze statue. The bronze is the material cause in the production of the statue. The bronze is also a subject to change, the thing that undergoes the change and results in a statue. The bronze is melted and […]
The Stoics on fate
By Stoics, everything happens by fate. Everything is causally determined, which is fate. Fate is the connecting cause of the things which exist, or a rational principle according to which the cosmos is arranged. Cosmos is a chain of events, a chain which is inescapable. It is determined by God. Then what I am doing […]
The Stoics on Agent Autonomy
There were two opinions of the older philosophers regarding the fate. One belonging to those men who believed that everything occured by fate in such a way that everything necessitated (The Fate Principle Argument). The others held that there were voluntary motions of the mind without fate. Chrysippus, a Greek Stoic philosopher, rejected necessity but […]
Universals and Abstract Entities
One of the ancient problems of metaphysics is about whether universals exist. Universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. For instance, two pieces of chalk have in common a quality of color, namely “whiteness”. There are many philosophical positions regarding universals. The main contemporary ones are: Realism which postulates that […]
Mind-Body Problem
Philosophers has been argued for some centuries now whether minds really do act on the organisms, or whether organisms do act on the minds. Are mind and body two distinct things or they take part of the same realm? I. Dualistic Interactionism Dualistic interactionism is the position that there are mental phenomena distinct from, and […]
Scientific Realism vs. Antirealism
Scientific realism states that science aims to give us in its theories a literally true story of what the world is like, and acceptance of scientific theory involves the belief that it is true. Constructive empiricism holds that science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves a […]
Realists vs Antirealists
Realism is being understood as the view that regardless of how we think of things they are what they are. Metaphysical realism is the view that there is a mind-independent reality. Contrary to realism, anti-realism postulates that the physical world does not exist outside the mind. There is no such thing as mind-independent reality or […]
Arguments for the existence of God
1. The ontological argument (1) Since God is conceived to be omnipotent, he is a perfect being. (2) A perfect being is defined as one whose essence or nature lacks no attributes or properties in every respect. ∴ Thus, God exists. For if God lacked the attribute of existence, he would be lacking at least […]