Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Impossible to prove or demonstrate.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Not demonstrable; incapable of being demonstrated.
- Immediately evident; axiomatical; not capable of being made more evident.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Incapable of being demonstrated.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective That cannot be
demonstrated orproved ;unprovable
Etymologies
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Examples
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… IDers, time and time again, hoist themselves royally by hitching themselves to the indemonstrable low probability argument.
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The premisses must be primary and indemonstrable; otherwise they will require demonstration in order to be known, since to have knowledge, if it be not accidental knowledge, of things which are demonstrable, means precisely to have a demonstration of them.
Locke's Philosophy of Science Kochiras, Hylarie 2009
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In the later Prize Essay (1764), he would judge the Christian notion of immaterial souls as indemonstrable
Kant's Philosophical Development Schönfeld, Martin 2007
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He had his doubts about Leibniz and Spinoza, because their systems rested upon questionable and indemonstrable first principles.
August Wilhelm Rehberg Beiser, Fred 2007
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However, induction (or something very much like it) plays a crucial role in the theory of scientific knowledge in the Posterior Analytics: it is induction, or at any rate a cognitive process that moves from particulars to their generalizations, that is the basis of knowledge of the indemonstrable first principles of sciences.
Aristotle's Logic Smith, Robin 2007
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But there are several first indemonstrable principles.
The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas Dino Bigongiari 1997
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Thus, in speculative matters, the indemonstrable principles are not the habit itself whereby we hold those principles, but are the principles the habit of which we possess.
The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas Dino Bigongiari 1997
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Wherefore the first indemonstrable principle is that the same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time, which is based on the notion of “being” and “not-being”; and on this principle all others are based, as it is stated in Metaphysics iv. text.
The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas Dino Bigongiari 1997
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Just as nothing stands firm with regard to the speculative reason except that which is traced back to the first indemonstrable principles, so nothing stands firm with regard to the practical reason unless it be directed to the last end which is the common good; and whatever stands to reason in this sense has the nature of a law.
The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas Dino Bigongiari 1997
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Accordingly we conclude that just as, in the speculative reason, from naturally known indemonstrable principles we draw the conclusions of the various sciences, the knowledge of which is not imparted to us by nature, but acquired by the efforts of reason; so, too, it is from the precepts of the natural law, as from general and indemonstrable principles, that the human reason needs to proceed to the more particular determination of certain matters.
The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas Dino Bigongiari 1997
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