Tuesday, January 26, 2010

“Philosophy - Summary of Karl Popper's The Problem of Induction - Associated Content” plus 3 more

“Philosophy - Summary of Karl Popper's The Problem of Induction - Associated Content” plus 3 more

Philosophy - Summary of Karl Popper's The Problem of Induction - Associated Content

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 09:21 AM PST

Karl Popper is a staunch critic of logical positivism and the positivists' goal of using verifiability as a criteria of demarcation between pseudoscience and actual science. In his essay, "The Problem of Induction", Popper asserts that there can be no scientific theory proven or made probable by the evidence. Popper points out that theories are not proven or made likely by experimentation or prediction. Instead, these theories are simply further corroborated. Popper proceeds to outline several reasons why, for him, inductive reasoning cannot be a valid "proof" of scientific theory or knowledge.

First, inductive logic leads to an infinite regress of more inductive reasoning. In order to avoid a fallacy like begging the question when arguing inductively, one might introduce a new inductive principle. This principle, however, will be synthetic and necessitate a justification from experience, leading to more inductive reasoning. According to the commentary in the textbook, Popper also raises an argument that is subtly different from Hume's: he rejects Kant's contention that induction is an a priori synthetic truth. If something is knowable a priori, then it would not require justification based upon experience. Popper also agrees with Hume that inductive reasoners might argue that, while we cannot prove something to be true inductively, we might be able to demonstrate that it is probable or likely. However, Popper like Hume argues that this also leads to a circular infinite regress.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

A Brief Overview of Descriptive Philosophy - Associated Content

Posted: 25 Jan 2010 11:53 AM PST

Descriptive philosophy has a long history in Western philosophy, and has evolved, been critiqued, evolved again, and then been rebuilt. Descriptivism can be a confusing concept in philosophy, but is vitally important to much of metaphysics as well as cognitive science and philosophy of science. This overview is by no means exhaustive but should provide a good starting point. There are many different versions of descriptive philosophy, so if you came here looking for the answer to a test or paper, you may not be in the right place!

Descriptivist philosopy has its origins in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. Mill argued that names that have no referent (Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, etc) cannot be used in a meaningful way in sentences. A referent is, simply put, the thing to which a name refers to. The referent of "my dog" would be the dog that lives with me. Mill is essentially arguing that imaginary objects with no real life referent cannot be spoken about in a logically constructed sentence. The obvious problem that arises here is that, following Mill's philosophy, we cannot speak intelligently about things that do not exist or about things whose existence we are unsure of.

Gottlieb Frege recognized these issues and attempted to devise a solution via the concepts of sense and reference. In short, the sense is the way in which a speaker thinks about an object or name- in the case of santa claus it could be something like, "the fat man with the beard who gives gifts to children." The sense amounts to something like a speaker's description of the word. The reference is the actual object that this description refers to; however, an object need not have a referent in the real world in order to be a useful word that composes meaningful sentences.

While Frege helped to resolve some of the issues associated with Mill's philosophy, we are still left with the conception of objects as being defined by and interchangeable with their descriptions has become known as descriptivism. For descriptivists, the most important demarcation criteria of objects is whether they match all of most of their description.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

NIXON'S HARD-WON CHANCE TO LEAD - Time

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 10:18 AM PST

COVER STORY

I know some of you have been through defeats, as I have, and had your hearts broken. It has been said that a great philosophy is not won without defeat. But a great philosophy is always won without fear.

SO said Richard Nixon to his party workers during the campaign. So he said again when he appeared before his followers to accept and savor his victory. Now he could forget the defeats, both the hairbreadth miss of 1960 and the humiliating rebuff of 1962. Now he could put behind him the fear that maybe he was, after all, a born loser. Now he could relish the fruits of unremitting labor for his party, of countless fund-raising dinners and victory banquets and formula speeches in remote towns. Now he could demonstrate to the nation—and perhaps to himself— just what his "great philosophy" is. Now, at last, he had achieved a goal that, six and eight years ago, seemed to have eluded him forever.

But Richard Milhous Nixon became President-elect of the U.S. by the narrowest of margins—so narrow that it may even impede his conduct of the office. At the beginning of his campaign, Nixon held a seemingly unassailable lead. By the time Illinois' 26 electoral votes put him over the 270 mark, it was clear that his lead had been whittled almost to the vanishing point, and that he had come close to the most bitter defeat of his career.

What had kept him from the major, decisive victory that had been so widely (and perhaps too optimistically) expected by many of his followers? In addition to his choice of Maryland's inept Governor Spiro Agnew as his running mate, it was probably his closed, negative campaign. That, and a personality that has simply never come close to captivating the U.S. voter. Nixon was so far in front that his overriding concern was to avoid a serious error—hardly the sort of strategy designed to fire imaginations. But it can also be argued that the Democrats—the majority party—were bound to recover from their low point, and that Nixon had to play it safe. His aides certainly take this view. They insisted even after Nixon's narrow electoral escape that if they had to do it again, they would change nothing—including the surely damaging decision not to debate Democratic Candidate Hubert Humphrey.

Once the campaign got under way, Nixon's standing in the polls froze at the mid-40% mark, despite the Democrats' Job-like troubles. All the while, Humphrey was gaining on him, chipping away at the Wallace vote among the blue-collar workers of the big industrial states, rallying the once indifferent blacks, bringing antiwar dissidents back into the fold after they had sulked for a suitable time. When the vote tallying began, it swiftly became apparent that the Vice President had scored enough of a comeback to make the election as breathtakingly close as the 1960 cliffhanger. With more than 92% of the total popular vote counted, in fact, Nixon's plurality was fewer than 250,000 votes out of 68 million (v. Kennedy's 119,000 out of 69 million).

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

James Heafield Wins Tartan for London Design Competition - Dexigner

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 11:37 AM PST

A philosophy student from Dorset has won a competition to design London's first official tartan.

James Heafield's design was selected by judges including Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane and his compatriot, the poet Jackie Kay.

Mr Coltrane described it as "really handsome and warm" while Ms Kay said it was "classic and classy."

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
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