On the aesthetic sense of life
In his work On the tragic sense of life, Miguel de Unamuno speaks of the tragic history of human thought, consisting of the struggle between reason and life. Any position of agreement and lasting harmony “between reason and life, between philosophy and religion becomes impossible” (1). The reason wants life to come to terms with […]
Biases
Bias is an erroneous reasoning at the level of perception, judgement and memory. Some biases stem from the way our senses work (perceptual biases), others are the effects of how we judge, believe and expect (cognitive biases). Repetition effect People tend to judge claims they hear more often as likelier to be true. In other […]
Heidegger on Meaning of Life
According to Heidegger, the question of metaphysics and being has been lost, since we can know nothing about metaphysical entities. So, Heidegger proposes to elaborate on a metaphysical question that would not posit anything as being. Science is concerned with beings, but not nothing. Avoiding the presence of entities, Heidegger construes the following question “What […]
Strawson’s Concept of a Person
In this paper, I will lay down the main argument presented by Strawson in the third chapter “Persons” in his book Individuals. Before getting involved into the Strawson’s abstract world, I will cover some parts of the method that Strawson uses for an investigation of our thinking about how we are different from what we […]
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 […]
Free will problem
“Do we have free will?” is one of the principal metaphysical questions which philosophers are focused on. Let’s consider what we mean by free will. One can say that free will iff it is a voluntary act. In other words, we chose to do it. However, there are voluntary acts but they are not free, […]