Curated playlist
Concepts in epistemology
- Problem of other mindsHow do you know anyone else has a mind? All you ever see is behavior, never what is inside.
- Frame problemHow does a machine know what stays the same when something changes? McCarthy and Hayes posed this frame problem in 1969.
- ReasonThe word reason once also meant an account of money handled. It comes from Greek logos and Latin ratio.
- KnowledgeA driver stops at the only real barn on a road of fakes. They guess right, yet many philosophers say they don't know.
- ThoughtIs thinking silent speech, a parade of images, or a quiet machine shuffling symbols?
- ConsciousnessThe word conscious first meant knowing a secret together with another person.
- TruthPhilosophers still disagree about what makes "the carrot is orange" true.
- TimePhysicists define time as what a clock reads. They chose it because other definitions tend to go in circles.
- BeliefLois Lane believes Superman is strong but not that Clark Kent is strong.
- Cultural appropriationThe mayor of Kyoto wrote Kim Kardashian an open letter about her "Kimono" shapewear line.
- CausalityA mistranslation from ancient Greek has muddied the idea of causality ever since Aristotle.
- UncertaintyIn 1921, economist Frank Knight split uncertainty from risk. Risk has odds you can estimate. Uncertainty does not.
- PramanaA man is fat but never eats by day, so he must eat at night. That is the classic example of pramana in Indian logic.