Perception of the whole
Here I will consider one aspect of the whole, that is, its perception. The whole, we mean as something ultimate, complete and overcoming. It does not lead to the emergence of anything new. In this sense, the whole is opposed to the infinity which has no end or to the finitude which implies a continuation. […]
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 […]
Logical Fallacies
Logical fallacies are some forms of unreliable reasoning or misleading arguments. Any structurally invalid argument is logically fallacious, but there are some recognized patterns of how a logical fallacy is committed. The following list will review some illustrative examples of them. Affirming the consequent: If P then Q QTherefore, P Denying the Antecedent: If […]
Valid argument forms
Argument is the basic unit of our reasoning and communication. The most idealized form of argumentation is a deductive reasoning according to which a good argument: is a valid argument (there is no way for a conclusion to be false if all the premises are true) and has all true premises. An argument that is […]
Doubting Descartes’ Doubt
Meditations of Descartes presents a series of arguments about a thinking thing and a God’s existence. In this essay, I will doubt his reasoning by pointing out at some fallacies. In search of a foundation of knowledge, Descartes starts from the scratch by undermining everything that he knows. He asks himself what could ground his […]
Galileo on Secondary Qualities of the Matter
Is heat a quality of the matter which we feel when it is heated or it is in a sensation of a body? In The Assayer, Galileo starts with the proposition “Motion is the cause of heat”. So, he wants to undermine a commonly held conception that heat is a quality which resides in the […]
Bacon’s Idols of the Mind
Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was a successful English lawyer, politician, scientist, orator and philosopher. His works were enormously influential during a scientific revolution, in which Bacon proposed a great reformation of all process of knowledge. He popularized a scientific knowledge, often called the Baconian method, based only upon inductive and careful observation of events in […]
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 […]
Aristotle on Infinite Motion
Aristotle starts his argument about the impossibility of the infinite motion with the statement: “Everything that is in motion must be moved by something”. Let’s consider that there is something that is not moved by something. It has the source of its motion in itself. Then, let’s imagine this thing at rest. Aristotle supposes that […]