Philosophical Problems

This lecture continues the discussion of scepticism introduced in the preceding lecture. There is discussion of different views about what the consequences would be for someone who accepted scepticism, and of some of the arguments that have been given for rejecting scepticism.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture continues the discussion of scepticism introduced in the preceding lecture. There is discussion of different views about what the consequences would be for someone who accepted scepticism, and of some of the arguments that have been given for rejecting scepticism.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture deals with philosophical scepticism about the physical world. This is the idea that we do not really have any evidence (at all!) for any of our ordinary beliefs about the world around us, because we cannot rule out the possibility that all our experience is some sort of massive illusion. We look at the detail of the argument for this startling view, and at one of the responses that may be made to it. The lecture refers to Chapter 3, "Brain-Snatched", in Stephen Law's book, The Philosophy Gym.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture deals with philosophical scepticism about the physical world. This is the idea that we do not really have any evidence (at all!) for any of our ordinary beliefs about the world around us, because we cannot rule out the possibility that all our experience is some sort of massive illusion. We look at the detail of the argument for this startling view, and at one of the responses that may be made to it. The lecture refers to Chapter 3, "Brain-Snatched", in Stephen Law's book, The Philosophy Gym.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture builds a more sophisticated response to the demarcation problem (over and above Popper’s response) that includes ideas from Kuhn, Lakatos and Thagard. I outline some of the weakest points in the creationists’ arguments and conclude by mentioning a couple of recent points of interest in the debate.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture builds a more sophisticated response to the demarcation problem (over and above Popper’s response) that includes ideas from Kuhn, Lakatos and Thagard. I outline some of the weakest points in the creationists’ arguments and conclude by mentioning a couple of recent points of interest in the debate.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture looks at what creationism is all about and some of the arguments that proponents of creationism use to argue that it is science. I ask what it is about science that makes it ‘science’. I outline an Popper’s theory of falsification as a response to the demarcation problem and finish by looking at a possible creationist response to the issue of falsification.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture looks at what creationism is all about and some of the arguments that proponents of creationism use to argue that it is science. I ask what it is about science that makes it ‘science’. I outline an Popper’s theory of falsification as a response to the demarcation problem and finish by looking at a possible creationist response to the issue of falsification.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture provides some advice about writing essays in philosophy.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Does it make sense to think we can duplicate persons, so that people can divide just like cells? Since splitting means dividing one person into two people, the obvious answer seems to be that persons are unable to undergo fission. By looking at the old example of the Ship of Theseus we find that it is possible to think of artefacts dividing, in that one ship can become two. More precisely, a set of time-slices that constitute one ship can be shared by two different future sets of time slices that constitute two different ships. Exactly the same can be said of person fission of the sort that could happen using Star-Trek-style teleporter technology.

Copyright 2013 Jack Reynolds / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.