I’d like to get anyone’s opinion about what he or she believes to be the single worst understood philosophical concept. Feel free to mention why you think so if you want. Also feel free to interpret the meaning of ‘worst’: across the general public, academia, grad students, old codgers, whatever (but do identify your target, please).
What is the Single Worst Understood Philosophical Concept?
2 thoughts on “What is the Single Worst Understood Philosophical Concept?”
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I don’t think the general public understands why it’s important to ask/answer some of the more convoluted questions of logic, epistomology, and so one. People seem fairly content to leave it to hand waving.
Agreed. It’s very hard to connect subtle logical issues to everyday ones.
If I tell you that De Morgan’s 1847 discovery that it was (near?) impossible to prove that ‘All heads of horses are heads of animals’ from ‘All horses are animals’ given the logic of the day was Earth-shaking and go on to mention how Frege’s theory of logical quantification solved this problem, there is no way I can really expect someone without at least some history of philosophy to even appreciate why this is important.
But imagine me waving my hands very vigorously to indicate that this is very important.