Logical Fallacies (compiled by Brian McGroarty) Ad Hominem: This is the best logical fallacy, and if you disagree with me, well, you suck. Appeal to False Authority: Your logical fallacies aren’t logical fallacies at all because Einstein said so. Einstein also said that this one is better. Appeal to Emotion: See, my mom, she had […]
Logical Fallacies — McGroarty’s fun list Read More »
2026 is the 40th anniversary of this important publication on the foundations of epistemology. “This book is a highly original defense of realism. David Kelley argues that perception is the discrimination of objects as entities, that the awareness of these objects is direct, and that perception is a reliable foundation for empirical knowledge. Kelley’s argument
David Kelley’s *The Evidence of the Senses* Read More »
David Kelley’s The Evidence of the Senses (LSU Press, 1986) is a modern classic defense of direct realism in perception. I reviewed it for the journal Auslegung in 1989. Here is a 10-minute audio version of the review in MP3 format or at YouTube. Related: My review of Professor Tara Smith’s Cambridge University Press book
Review of David Kelley’s *The Evidence of the Senses* Read More »
(A list received via email, originally credited to Brian McGroarty.) Ad Hominem: This is the best logical fallacy, and if you disagree with me, well, you suck. Appeal to False Authority: Your logical fallacies aren’t logical fallacies at all because Einstein said so. Einstein also said that this one is better. Appeal to Emotion: See,
What is the best logical fallacy? A competition Read More »
In an 1846 review of Grote’s History of Greece, John Stuart Mill makes this claim: “The Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings.” My first reaction to Mill’s sentence was agreement. My second reaction was to the audacity of the claim and to wonder
Audacious historical cause-and-effect claims Read More »
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on a camping trip. In the middle of the night Holmes wakes up and gives Watson a nudge. “Watson,” he says, “look up in the sky and tell me what you see.” “I see millions of stars, Holmes,” says Watson. “And what do you conclude from that, Watson?” Watson
Philosophy humor — Logical inference Read More »
From Jack D. Flam’s Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Friendship (2003): ‘Picasso characterized the arbitrariness of representation in his Cubist paintings as resulting from his desire for “a greater plasticity.” Rendering an object as a square or a cube, he said, was not a negation, for “reality was no longer in
Artistic representation: Picasso versus Matisse Read More »
David Hume topped the 2009 PhilPapers survey of most influential and admired philosophers (scroll down to bottom of the page to “Non-living philosophers most identified with”). Aristotle came in second and Kant third. I’ve been thinking much about Nietzsche and Heidegger recently: eleventh and eighteenth, respectively. Overall, the list was still dominated by thinkers in
David Hume’s current influence Read More »