Useful Philosophy Concepts
Just a handful of useful concepts.
52 flashcards · Philosophy · by lakesare
What is Socratic Questioning?
Form of cooperative dialogue, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking. Can be used in psychology.
Name 3 Socratic questions.
1. Questions for clarification: Why do you say that? How does this relate to our discussion? 2. Questions that probe assumptions: What could we assume instead? How can you verify or disapprove that assumption? "Why are neglecting radial diffusion and including only axial diffusion?" 3. Questions that probe reasons and evidence: What would be an example? What is....analogous to? What do you think causes ... to happen? 4. Questions about Viewpoints and Perspectives: What would be an alternative?…
What is an Occam's razor principle?
Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case, the simpler one is usually better.
What's lying by omission?
When a person tells most of the truth, but leaves out a few key facts that therefore completely change the story.
What's a thick concept? Give an example.
Concept that both has a: significant degree of descriptive content, and is evaluatively loaded. Whore: doesn't only signify a woman who has sex with a lot of people, but also carries a connotation of it being bad.
What's this principle called: Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case, the simpler explanation is usually better.
Occam's razor principle.
Epicureans broke pleasure down into two categories: the physical and the mental. What other 2 categories did they divide pleasure into?
kinetic pleasure - comes about from action or change. Such an action could be satisfying a desire or removing a pain, as that very sort of act is pleasurable in itself. katastematic pleasure - comes about from the absence of pain. Freedom from physical disturbances, such as simply being in the state of not being thirsty
Aponia VS ataraxia?
aponia - freedom from physical disturbances. ataraxia - freedom from mental disturbances.
Describe Russell's paradox.
Most sets commonly encountered are not members of themselves. For example, the set of all squares in the plane. This set is not itself a square in the plane, thus it is not a member of itself (of its own definition). Let us call a set "normal" if it is not a member of itself, and "abnormal" if it is a member of itself. The set of squares in the plane is normal. In contrast, the complementary set that contains everything which is not a square in the plane is itself not a square in the plane, and…
What's the name for 'suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships'?
Dunbar's number
What's Peto's paradox?
Peto's paradox is the observation that at the species level, the incidence of cancer does not appear to correlate with the number of cells in an organism. For example, the incidence of cancer in humans is much higher than the incidence of cancer in whales. This is despite the fact that a whale has many more cells than a human. If the probability of carcinogenesis were constant across cells, one would expect whales to have a higher incidence of cancer than humans.
Name 2 examples of logographs. Or logograms.Logograph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Alphabets and syllabaries are distinct from logographies in that they use individual written characters to represent sounds directly. Such characters are called phonograms in linguistics. Unlike logograms, phonograms do not have any inherent meaning. Writing language in this way is called phonemic writing or orthographic writing.
Chinese characters In modern Chinese, most words are compounds written with two or more characters.[7] Unlike an alphabetic system, a character-based writing system associates each logogram with an entire sound and thus may be compared in some aspects to a syllabary. A character almost always corresponds to a single syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this general correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes (written with two characters), bimorphemic sylla…
What does anno Domini mean in Medieval Latin?
In the year of the Lord. The term anno Domini is Medieval Latin and means "in the year of the Lord" but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord", taken from the full original phrase "anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi", which translates to "in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ". This calendar era is based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus of Nazareth, with AD counting years from the start of this epoch and BC denoting years before the start of…
What do BC and AD stand for?
BC - before Christ AD - anno Domini The term anno Domini is Medieval Latin and means "in the year of the Lord" but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord", taken from the full original phrase "anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi", which translates to "in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ".
Who's Johannes Gutenberg?
Gutenberg was a German goldsmith, inventor, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe with his printing press. His work started the Printing Revolution and is regarded as a milestone of the second millennium, ushering in the modern period of human history.
Why is this symbol ⊢ called a turnstile?
Because it resembles a turnstile. In mathematical logic and computer science the symbol ⊦ has taken the name turnstile because of its resemblance to a typical turnstile if viewed from above.
What's the difference between a turnstile A ⊢ B and double turnstile A ⊨ B?
⊢ - A is a syntactic consequence of B ⊨ - A is a semantic consequence of B
What's Molyneux's problem? William Molyneux (17 April 1656 – 11 October 1698, born in Dublin, Ireland)
Would a blind man, given sight, differentiate between a sphere and a cube?
Why is prior called a prior?
It's a ~prior~ probability, your prior estimate of how probable something is without considering the current effect.
Why is this undecidable?
There is no math to know what the line will be at iteration 200. For all purposes 'undecidable' just means 'unpredictable'.
McCulloch&Pitts VS Huebel&Wiesel?
McCulloch&Pitts - created the first artificial neuron The first computational model of a neuron was proposed by Warren MuCulloch (neuroscientist) and Walter Pitts (logician) in 1943.Huebel&Wiesel - tortured a cat He was co-recipient with Torsten Wiesel of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared with Roger W. Sperry), for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system.Hubel, D. H.; Wiesel, T. N. (1959). "Receptive fields of single neurones in the cat's st…
Finite automaton vs cellular automaton.
Finite automaton - finite-state machine that accepts or rejects a given string of symbols. Cellular automaton - a cellular automaton consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as on and off.
Wolfram's elementary cellular automata VS Conway's Game of Life?
Wolfram cellular automata - 256 1-dimensional elementary cellular automata, with simple rules. Stephen Wolfram systematically studied 1-dimensional cellular automata in the 1980s. There are 22^3 = 256 possible elementary cellular automata. His research assistant Matthew Cook showed that one of these rules is Turing-completeElementary cellular automaton is a one-dimensional cellular automaton where there are two possible states (labeled 0 and 1) and the rule to determine the state of a cell in t…
Propositional logic VS (also called zeroth-order logic and sentential logic)Predicate logic? (also called first-order logic and predicate calculus)
What's this called?
Ebbinghaus forgetting curve Hermann Ebbinghaus, 1850-1909 (Germany)
[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland] What game is a theme for: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll, 1865Through the Looking-Glass Lewis Carroll, 1871
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - cards Through the Looking-Glass - chess While the first Alice novel took playing cards as a theme, Through the Looking-Glass instead used chess; most of the main characters are represented by chess pieces, with Alice being a pawn.
[Analytic–synthetic distinction] What's the difference between: analytic proposition and synthetic proposition.
Analytic propositions - true or not true solely by virtue of their meaning. E.g ."All bachelors are unmarried.", "All triangles have three sides."Synthetic propositions - true or not true depending on the state of the world. E.g. "All bachelors are alone.", "All creatures with hearts have kidneys."
What are the objects like this called?
Skeuomorphs (spelled skiamorphs). A skeuomorph is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original.
What's Gottlob Frege famous for? Gottlob Frege (Germany, 1848 – 1925)
He introduced quantifiers (∀, E) and predicate logic.
Give an example of 2 functions that are extensionally equal, but intensionally not equal.
A similar extensional definition is usually employed for relations: two relations are said to be equal if they have the same extensions.In set theory, the axiom of extensionality states that two sets are equal if and only if they contain the same elements. In mathematics formalized in set theory, it is common to identify relations—and, most importantly, functions—with their extension as stated above, so that it is impossible for two relations or functions with the same extension to be distingui…
Intentional VS intensional?
intentional - done on purpose; deliberate. intensional - [logic] relating to the internal content of a concept.
Give an example of back-formation. In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889.
Previously: resurrection Now: resurrect For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb resurrect was then back-formed hundreds of years later from it by removing the -ion suffix.
[Probability Theory] Give a nice example for when the usual probability fails, and measure theory comes to save us? Measure theory provides a consistent language and mathematical framework unifying these ideas, and indeed much more general objects in stochastic theory. It removes any necessity to distinguish between fundamentally similar objects, and crystallizes the relevant points out, allowing much deeper understanding of the theory.
Experiment: X is randomly uniform on [0, 1] in half the cases, exactly 5 in half the cases. X is neither discrete nor continuous! A coin is thrown.
[AI] What does AlphaFold do?
Predicts the structure of the protein from its genetic sequence. In 2020, Google DeepMind announced that their ANN AlphaFold produced a solution to the protein folding problem with the unprecedented levels of accuracy.Protein structure, along with its other features, like the distribution of electrical change in a protein molecule, is essential to its function (as a reminder - proteins are a building block of the cell). When we say protein structure, we mean the arrangement of the atoms of a pr…
What are the 3 estates of the realm?
Traditional orders of social hierarchy (from the Middle Ages to early modern Europe): Those who pray - clergy Those who fight - nobles Those who work - commoners A 13th-century French representation of the tripartite social order of the Middle Ages – Oratores ("those who pray"), Bellatores ("those who fight"), and Laboratores ("those who work").
What's the fourth estate?
The term Fourth Estate or fourth power refers to the press and news media both in explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issue.
Give an example of stigmergy. Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination, through the environment, between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an individual action stimulates the performance of a succeeding action by the same or different agent.
Ants lay the pheromone trails and then follow those pheromone trails.
What's systems theory?
An interdisciplinary field of science which studies the nature of complex systems in nature, society and science, and studies complex parts of reality as systems.
What's stigmergy? Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, seemingly intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even direct communication between the agents.
Stigmergy is indirect coordination, where an agent leaves a trace in the environment, and that trace stimulates another agent. Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination, through the environment, between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an individual action stimulates the performance of a succeeding action by the same or different agent. Stigmergy is derived from the Greek words στίγμα stigma "mark, sign" and ἔργον ergon "work, action", and ca…
Name what idea David Chalmers is famous for. David Chalmers
For formulating the hard problem of consciousness. Chalmers is best known for formulating what he calls the "hard problem of consciousness," in both his 1995 paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" and his 1996 book The Conscious Mind. He makes a distinction between "easy" problems of consciousness, such as explaining object discrimination or verbal reports, and the single hard problem, which could be stated "why does the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exis…
What's a hard problem of consciousness?
Why does it feel like anything at all. The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how humans have qualia or phenomenal experiences.
Who is this?
Haskell Curry United States (1900 – 1982)Haskell Brooks Curry was an American mathematician and logician. Curry is best known for his work in combinatory logic.
What's a monad tutorial curse?
When you finally understand them, you lose the ability to explain it to others
Name 2 ways to implement syntax highlighting.
regular expressions parser Some text editors and code formatting tools perform syntax highlighting using pattern matching heuristics (e.g. Regular expressions) rather than implementing a parser for each possible language. This can result in a text rendering system displaying somewhat inaccurate syntax highlighting and in some cases performing slowly. A solution used by text editors to overcome this problem is not always parsing the whole file but rather just the visible area, sometimes scanning…
Why were these named so white noise VS pink noise VS brown noise?
white noise - its spectrum resembles white light pink noise - its spectrum resembles pink light brown noise - discovered by Robert Brown White noise was named because its wave spectrum resembles white light. Pink noise was named because its wave spectrum resembles pink light. Brown noise was named after Robert Brown, who helped discover it. This is one of my least favorite facts.
Give an example of: ontology VS epistemology.
ontology - e.g. you're a feminist & an atheist epistemology - how you get to know things
Visually imagine tropism.
A tropism is a biological phenomenon, indicating growth or turning movement of a biological organism, usually a plant, in response to an environmental stimulus. The Cholodny–Went model, proposed in 1927, is an early model describing tropism in emerging shoots of monocotyledons, including the tendencies for the stalk to grow towards light (phototropism) and the roots to grow downward (gravitropism). In both cases the directional growth is considered to be due to asymmetrical distribution of auxi…
What's Pareto optimality?
When you can't make one thing better without making another thing worse. Pareto efficiency or Pareto optimality is a situation where no individual or preference criterion can be made better off without making at least one individual or preference criterion worse off. The concept is named after Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Italian civil engineer and economist, who used the concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution.
Visually imagine modal logic.
It's usual logic + modalities: "p is necessary" □p This notation means that the statement "p" is necessary. For example, we might use this notation to represent the statement: "It is necessary for the sun to rise every morning.""p is possible" ◇p This notation means that the statement "p" is possible. For example, we might use this notation to represent the statement: "It is possible for humans to fly."
Visually imagine a knowledge soup.
"Knowledge soup" is a term J. Sowa, computer scientist and inventor of conceptual graphs, introduced about back in 2004 to characterize “the fluid, dynamically changing nature of the information that people learn, reason about, act upon, and communicate.” (ref. The Challenge of Knowledge Soup by John F. Sowa). The most important requirement for any intelligent system, argues Sowa, is the flexibility to accommodate and make sense of the knowledge soup. And that is a tough task to tackle.
Visually imagine Janus.
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus (/ˈdʒeɪnəs/JAY-nəs; Latin: Ianvs[ˈi̯aːnʊs]) is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces. The month of January is named for Janus (Ianuarius). Pronounced as: Джейнус
Name a stereotype for: partial order equivalence
partial order - hierarchy equivalence - = The word hierarchy, which originally referred to the nine orders of angels, is now used as an informal term for any partial order. The term tangled hierarchy is sometimes used for a partial order that differs from a tree by having cross links.