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Philosophers
Mortimer Adler Rogers Albritton Alexander of Aphrodisias G.E.M.Anscombe Thomas Aquinas Aristotle David Armstrong Augustine A.J.Ayer Mark Balaguer William Belsham Isaiah Berlin Bernard Berofsky Susanne Bobzien George Boole F.H.Bradley C.D.Broad C.A.Campbell Joseph Keim Campbell Carneades Ernst Cassirer Roderick Chisholm Chrysippus Cicero Randolph Clarke Samuel Clarke Donald Davidson Democritus Daniel Dennett René Descartes Richard Double Fred Dretske John Earman Laura Waddell Ekstrom Epictetus Epicurus John Martin Fischer Owen Flanagan Philippa Foot Alfred Fouilleé Harry Frankfurt Richard L. Franklin Carl Ginet Nicholas St. John Green Ian Hacking Ishtiyaque Haji Stuart Hampshire Georg W.F. Hegel Martin Heidegger R.E.Hobart Thomas Hobbes David Hodgson Shadsworth Hodgson Ted Honderich Pamela Huby David Hume William James Robert Kane Immanuel Kant Tomis Kapitan Christine Korsgaard Keith Lehrer Gottfried Leibniz Leucippus C.I.Lewis David Lewis John Locke John R. Lucas Lucretius Hugh McCann Colin McGinn Michael McKenna Alfred Mele John Stuart Mill Dickinson Miller G.E.Moore Thomas Nagel Friedrich Nietzsche P.H.Nowell-Smith Robert Nozick William of Ockham Timothy O'Connor Charles Sanders Peirce Derk Pereboom Steven Pinker Plato Karl Popper H.A.Prichard Willard van Orman Quine Frank Ramsey Ayn Rand Thomas Reid Charles Renouvier Nicholas Rescher Josiah Royce Bertrand Russell Paul Russell Gilbert Ryle T.M.Scanlon Moritz Schlick Arthur Schopenhauer John Searle Henry Sidgwick Walter Sinnott-Armstrong J.J.C.Smart Saul Smilansky Michael Smith Galen Strawson Peter Strawson Eleonore Stump Richard Taylor Kevin Timpe Peter van Inwagen Manuel Vargas John Venn Kadri Vihvelin G.H. von Wright R. Jay Wallace Ted Warfield Roy Weatherford Alfred North Whitehead David Widerker David Wiggins Ludwig Wittgenstein Susan Wolf Scientists Margaret Boden Neils Bohr Ludwig Boltzmann Max Born Stephen Brush Arthur Holly Compton Abraham de Moivre John Eccles Arthur Stanley Eddington Albert Einstein Richard Feynman A.O.Gomes Joshua Greene Jacques Hadamard Martin Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg Pierre-Simon Laplace David Layzer Ernst Mach Henry Margenau James Clerk Maxwell Ernst Mayr Jacques Monod Steven Pinker Max Planck Henri Poincaré Erwin Schrödinger Herbert Simon B. F. Skinner William Thomson (Kelvin) John von Neumann Daniel Wegner Steven Weinberg |
Part Five - Problems of Philosophy
Here we review the great questions of philosophy for which modern physical science and an information philosophy now provides us with the possibility of fuller understanding.
These are several of the problems that 20th-century philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein labelled "philosophical puzzles" or Bertrand Russell called "psuedo-problems." Analytic language philosophers thought many of these problems could be "dissolved" by revealing them to be caused by the misuse of language. They are now back under consideration as genuinely important problems, analyzable in terms of information and with some aspects subject to experimental testing.
Classic Problems
Free Will Mind-Body Consciousness Other Minds Ought from Is Evil Epistemology Immortality Induction Metaphysics Universals One or Many
The Problem of Free Will - Solved by our Cogito model.
The Mind-Body Problem - Solved in part by our Sum model, which explains how abstract information, an idea, or knowledge is incorporated into a human mind, and how pure ideas act on the physical world.
Consciousness - Neuroscience is homing in on this least tractable problem in philosophy and psychology. We can attempt a definition based on selective awareness, private access to stored information, and the focus of attention to external and internal communication of new information.
The Problem of Other Minds - Solved by understanding information transmission (communication) between minds, the intersubjective agreement of a community of inquirers, and the relationship between communal ideas and objects in the physical world.
You Can't Get Ought from Is - Descriptions cannot lead to prescriptions. Science can have no bearing on ethics. Man is the measure of all things. Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so. The information philosphy moves the source of ultimate value beyond man and his created gods, beyond life and the Earth, to its origins in a cosmic Providence.
The Problem of Evil - If God is Good he is not God. If God is God he is not Good. The question is not "Does God exist?" The question is "Does Goodness exist?" The solution lies in a dualist world with both bad and good.
Immortality - Information philosophy implies two kinds of immortality, the material survival of genetic information and survival of ideas in the sum of all knowledge and human artifacts. The survival of parts of the genetic code in DNA is the longest immortality known in living things.
The Problem of Knowledge - Epistemology - More correctly the problem of certain knowledge when our means of perception is limited and fallible.
The Problem of Induction - We now understand why Hume is right that induction does not lead to certain truth, but like experiments, induction can count as evidence for and against our hypotheses and theories.
Metaphysics - Are there unavoidable a priori first principles of philosophy and thus of science? There are definitely axioms or starting assumptions for all thought and reasoning. We will see they are exercises in information minimalism - the least that can be said about things.
The Problem of Universals - Porphyry's fateful question, "Do the categories exist?" is seen to be a question of informational isomorphism between our ideas and things in the world.
One or Many - Is the world a unity? We will see this is part of the great dualism between ideal and material, being and becoming,
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