In “A Critique of Underdeterminism,” Larry Laudan argues that both scientists and philosophers of science speak much too loosely when they talk about “underdeterminism.” Laudan argues that there is really a whole range of versions of underdeterminism, and these versions …

To this point in our seminar, we have been leading to this present discussion at the core of philosophy of science: What exactly is the so-highly-vaunted “scientific method?” To further describe “what science is,” we will now build upon concepts …

David Hume can rightly be called The Empiricist. He more carefully and thoroughly explicated the implications of empiricism than anybody before or since. Even the mighty Immanuel Kant (whom we will repeatedly reference as we continue in this course) …

At long last, we are finally able to start pulling some smaller pieces of the puzzle into some larger, more defined shapes.

For example, given the logical relations we have discussed, we are now able to talk rigorously about one …

The driving question is: How can we know what the world is really like? At core, philosophy is about metaphysics. If philosophers (and most people) study anything, they study how the world really is! From our simplest questions of how …

The Conditional truth table has the most potential to be counterintuitive. Also, the conditional relation is arguably the most fundamental one of all the logical connectives. In fact, in most axiomatic systems, the first axioms are stated as conditionals. So, …

We will employ so-called “classical logic” as we move forward. One of the key defining characteristics of classical logic is that it is bivalent, which means: Two truth values. Obviously, these are true and false.

There are other logics …

Review of Arguments

We have said that analytic philosophy proceeds via argument analysis. And we have said that both form and content must be carefully and charitably analyzed.

We charitably analyze content by being as crisp and clear about propositional …