Philosophy
Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Wikipedia
"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is a canonical essay by analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951. According to University of Sydney professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith, this "paper [is] sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy". The pap…
added Jul 20, 2026
Read article →The Sleeping Beauty Problem: Sleeping Kelly is a Thirder
Here, show that Sleeping Beauty maximizes the expected growth rate of her wealth as a “thirder” sizing bets using the Kelly Criterion under multiplicative dynamics. Furthermore, this position is shown to be impervious to Dutch books. By contrast, the “halfer” position is shown to be ...
added Jul 19, 2026
Read article →China brain - Wikipedia
Block's goal is to show how unintuitive ... of thoughts and feelings. The China brain argues that consciousness is a problem for functionalism. Block's Chinese nation presents a version of what is known as the absent qualia objection to functionalism because it purports to show that it is possible f…
added Jul 17, 2026
Read article →Leviathan | Thomas Hobbes, Summary, Social Contract, Sovereign Authority, & Facts | Britannica
What Hobbes calls the “laws of nature,” the system of moral rules by which everyone is bound, cannot be safely complied with outside the state, for the total liberty that people have outside the state includes the liberty to flout the moral ...
added Jul 15, 2026
Read article →Utility monster - Wikipedia
Nozick writes: Utilitarian theory is embarrassed by the possibility of utility monsters who get enormously greater sums of utility from any sacrifice of others than these others lose ... the theory seems to require that we all be sacrificed in the monster's maw, in order to increase total utility. T…
added Jul 14, 2026
Read article →Swampman Argument | Argument | Philopedia
Davidson’s primary aim is to challenge certain intuitions about first-person authority (our special access to our own mental states) and to defend a broadly externalist view of mental content.
added Jul 12, 2026
Read article →Teletransportation paradox - Wikipedia
The teletransportation paradox or teletransport paradox (also known in alternative forms as the duplicates paradox) is a thought experiment on philosophy of identity that challenges common intuitions on the nature of self and consciousness. It was formulated by Derek Parfit in his 1984 book ...
added Jul 11, 2026
Read article →Famine, Affluence, and Morality - Wikipedia
One of the core arguments of this essay is that, if one can use one's wealth to reduce suffering—for example, by aiding famine-relief efforts—without any significant reduction in the well-being of oneself or others, it is immoral not to do so. Singer raises a drowning child analogy in his ...
added Jul 10, 2026
Read article →René Descartes’ Meditations
This line of thought culminates in what’s known as the evil demon hypothesis. Descartes asks us to imagine a powerful deceiver who tricks us into believing that everything we see, hear, and feel is real, when in fact it might all be an illusion.
added Jul 8, 2026
Read article →Moral Luck (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Even though “moral luck” seems ... Nagel defines it, “Where a significant aspect of what someone does depends on factors beyond his control, yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an object of moral judgment, it can be called moral luck” (Nagel 1979, ...
added Jul 7, 2026
Read article →New riddle of induction - Wikipedia
Willard Van Orman Quine discusses an approach to consider only "natural kinds" as projectible predicates. He first relates Goodman's grue paradox to Hempel's raven paradox by defining two predicates F and G to be (simultaneously) projectible if all their shared instances count toward confirmation ..…
added Jul 6, 2026
Read article →Buridan's ass - Wikipedia
Buridan's ass is an illustration of a paradox in philosophy in the conception of free will. It refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass (or donkey) that is equally hungry and thirsty is placed precisely midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes the ass wil…
added Jul 4, 2026
Read article →Hempel’s Ravens Paradox | Platonic Realms
The grass is green, the sky is ... isn't it? (Isn't it?) But by the laws of logic, if I accept inductive hypotheses and confirmation by experiment, then every observation except one that refutes my hypothesis—confirms it....
added Jul 4, 2026
Read article →Zeno's paradoxes - Wikipedia
Zeno's work, primarily known from ... against motion and change. Of these, only a few are definitively known today, including the renowned "Achilles Paradox", which illustrates the problematic concept of infinite divisibility in space and time. In this paradox, Zeno argues that a swift runner like A…
added Jul 3, 2026
Read article →Mere addition paradox - Wikipedia
The mere addition paradox (also known as the repugnant conclusion) is a problem in population ethics identified by Derek Parfit and discussed in his book Reasons and Persons (1984). The paradox identifies the mutual incompatibility of four intuitively compelling assertions about the relative ...
added Jul 2, 2026
Read article →Molyneux's problem - Wikipedia
Molyneux's problem is a thought experiment in philosophy concerning immediate recovery from blindness. It was first formulated by William Molyneux, and notably referred to in John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). The problem can be stated in brief, "if a man born blind can fee…
added Jul 2, 2026
Read article →Philosophical zombie - Wikipedia
Philosophical zombie arguments ... of consciousness, which is the problem of accounting in physical terms for subjective, intrinsic, first-person, what-it's-like-ness experiences. Proponents of philosophical zombie arguments, such as the philosopher David Chalmers, argue that ...
added Jun 30, 2026
Read article →Twin Earth thought experiment
This is the essential thesis of semantic externalism. Putnam famously summarized this conclusion with the statement that "'meanings' just ain't in the head."
added Jun 27, 2026
Read article →Logical Problem of Evil | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The fact that these free creatures ... (Plantinga 1974, pp. 166-167) According to his Free Will Defense, God could not eliminate the possibility of moral evil without at the same time eliminating some greater good....
added Jun 26, 2026
Read article →Theodicy - Wikipedia
A theodicy (from Ancient Greek θεός theos, "god" and δίκη dikē, "justice"), meaning 'vindication of God', is an argument in the philosophy of religion that attempts to resolve the problem of evil, which arises when all power (omnipotence) and all goodness (omnibenevolence) are attributed ...
added Jun 26, 2026
Read article →1 ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION? BY NICK BOSTROM
More generally, if we knew that a fraction x of all observers with human‐type · experiences live in simulations, and we don’t have any information that indicate
added Jun 25, 2026
Read article →Ring of Gyges - Wikipedia
The Ring of Gyges /ˈdʒaɪˌdʒiːz/ ... ring mentioned by the philosopher Plato in Book 2 of his Republic (2:359a–2:360d). It grants its owner the power to become invisible at will....
added Jun 24, 2026
Read article →Habit and embodiment in Merleau-Ponty - PMC - NIH
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added Jun 24, 2026
Read article →Münchhausen trilemma - Wikipedia
It must either start with some knowledge, as with dogmatism, not start at all, as with infinite regress, or be a circular argument, justified only by itself and have no solid foundation, much like the absurdity of Münchhausen pulling himself out of the mire without any independent support. In contem…
added Jun 23, 2026
Read article →Sorites Paradox (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
If that’s right, then apparent soriticality may be best viewed as a temporary symptom of vagueness, or perhaps as an element of its “surface characterization” (Smith 2008, e.g., 132; see Smith’s third chapter for insight as to what vagueness is). As with any paradox, four broad types of response app…
added Jun 22, 2026
Read article →Newcomb's problem - Wikipedia
In philosophy and mathematics, ... problem in which a player must decide whether to choose one of two or both boxes under conditions in which a being, often called the "predictor", decides in advance what they contain, and is able to predict the player's choices with ...
added Jun 22, 2026
Read article →Frankfurt cases - Wikipedia
Therefore, an agent is responsible for an action only if causal determinism is false. Traditionally, compatibilists (defenders of the compatibility of free will and causal determinism, like A. J. Ayer, Walter Terence Stace, and Daniel Dennett) reject premise two.
added Jun 21, 2026
Read article →Naturalistic fallacy - Wikipedia
Moore's naturalistic fallacy is closely related to the is–ought problem, which comes from David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (1738–40); however, unlike Hume's view of the is–ought problem, Moore (and other proponents of ethical non-naturalism) did not consider the naturalistic fallacy ...
added Jun 21, 2026
Read article →Jean-Paul Sartre Existentialism, Freedom, and Radical Responsibility (pdf) - CliffsNotes
Radical Freedom and Bad Faith: Sartre's philosophy of radical freedom is accompanied by his concept of "bad faith," which refers to the self-deceptive strategies that individuals employ to evade their responsibility and evade the existential demands of freedom.
added Jun 21, 2026
Read article →Euthyphro dilemma - Wikipedia
The second horn of the dilemma (i.e. that which is right is right because it is commanded by God) is sometimes known as divine command theory or voluntarism. Roughly, it is the view that there are no moral standards other than God's will: without God's commands, nothing would be right or wrong.
added Jun 21, 2026
Read article →Plato’s Allegory of the Cave Explained - 2026 - MasterClass
The allegory essentially demonstrates the conflicts between knowledge and belief and what happens to a person once they’ve been enlightened. It is an examination on the nature of humanity, and fear of the unknown. Plato’s cave allegory has influenced philosophy as well as media and filmmaking, ...
added Jun 20, 2026
Read article →Pascal’s Wager (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Pascal’s Wager vies with Anselm’s Ontological Argument for being the most famous argument in the philosophy of religion.
added Jun 20, 2026
Read article →Knowledge argument - Wikipedia
In philosophy of mind, the knowledge ... (1986). The thought experiment describes Mary, a scientist who exists in a black-and-white world where she has extensive access to physical descriptions of color, but no actual perceptual experience of color....
added Jun 20, 2026
Read article →Eichmann in Jerusalem - Wikipedia
Arendt's subtitle famously introduced the phrase "the banality of evil." In part the phrase refers to Eichmann's deportment at the trial as the man displayed neither guilt for his actions nor hatred for those trying him, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply "doing his job."
added Jun 19, 2026
Read article →Chinese room - Wikipedia
Searle argues that, without "understanding" (or "intentionality"), we cannot describe what the machine is doing as "thinking" and, since it does not think, it does not have a "mind" in the normal sense of the word. Therefore, he concludes that the strong AI hypothesis is false: a computer running ..…
added Jun 19, 2026
Read article →Categorical imperative - Wikipedia
The categorical imperative (German: Kategorischer Imperativ) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant's 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, it is a way of evaluating motivations for action.
added Jun 18, 2026
Read article →Nietzsche's Idea of Eternal Recurrence
It is significant, however, that the philosopher never insists on the idea's literal truth in any of his other published writings. Rather, he presents eternal recurrence as a sort of thought experiment, a test of one's attitude toward life.
added Jun 18, 2026
Read article →Original position - Wikipedia
In Rawls's theory the original position plays the same role as the "state of nature" does in the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The original position figures prominently in Rawls's 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. It has influenced a variety of thinkers from a broad spectr…
added Jun 17, 2026
Read article →Gettier problem - Wikipedia
In his 1963 three-page paper titled ... that there are cases where individuals can have a justified true belief regarding a claim but still fail to know it because the reasons for the belief, while justified, turn out to be false. Thus, Gettier claims to have shown that the JTB account is inadequate…
added Jun 17, 2026
Read article →Private language argument - Wikipedia
Wittgenstein asks us to imagine each person has a box with a "beetle" no one else can see. Whatever is in the box plays no role in the use of the word "beetle"; the public practice determines its grammar.
added Jun 15, 2026
Read article →The Myth of Sisyphus: Full Work Summary | SparkNotes
Camus identifies three characteristics of the absurd life: revolt (we must not accept any answer or reconciliation in our struggle), freedom (we are absolutely free to think and behave as we choose), and passion (we must pursue a life of rich ...
added Jun 14, 2026
Read article →Nozick’s Experience Machine: Does it Refute Hedonism? | Philosophy Break
Sure, we might not want to plug into the machine – but that doesn’t mean not plugging in is the right answer, nor that hedonism is false; we are simply clouded by bias. Once we expose that bias, the argument goes, we can see how Nozick’s ...
added Jun 14, 2026
Read article →Experience machine - Wikipedia
If he can show that there is something other than pleasure that has value and thereby increases well-being, then hedonism is refuted. Nozick describes a machine that could provide whatever desirable or pleasurable experiences a subject could want. In this thought experiment, psychologists have ...
added Jun 14, 2026
Read article →Trolley problem | Definition, Variations, Arguments, Solutions, & Facts | Britannica
The trolley problem originated ... of her thesis that positive duties (duties to perform a certain action) are intuitively less important than negative duties (duties not to perform a certain action)....
added Jun 12, 2026
Read article →What is it Like to be a Butterfly? A Philosophical Interpretation of Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream: Asian Philosophy: Vol 17, No 2
This paper attempts to recast Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream within the larger normative context of the ‘Inner Chapters’ and early Daoism in terms of its moral significance, particularly in the way that it prescribes how a Daoist should live through the ‘significant symbol’ of the butterfly.
added Jun 11, 2026
Read article →Ship of Theseus: How to Solve the Ancient Paradox
It took more than ten years until I came across a satisfying solution for the paradox posed by Theseus’ ship. In a lecture by psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson. Speaking about facts, stories and values, Peterson concludes: You’re going from point A to point B and then things fall apart catastrophicall…
added Jun 10, 2026
Read article →Nicomachean Ethics - Wikipedia
Taking this approach, Aristotle proposes that the highest good for humans is eudaimonia, a Greek word often translated as "flourishing" or sometimes "happiness". Aristotle argues that eudaimonia is a way of taking action (energeia) that is appropriate to the human "soul" (psuchē) at its most ...
added Jun 9, 2026
Read article →Meditations Month at Daily Stoic – Daily Stoic Store
The timeless book of practical and philosophical wisdom for anyone seeking to lead a meaningful life, available in hardcover. ... Introduction by Gregory Hays that outlines Marcus’s life and career, the essentials of Stoic doctrine, the style ...
added Jun 7, 2026
Read article →Philosophy of mind - Wikipedia
The aggregates are form (body), sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. These are described as dynamic and ever-changing processes that together constitute what is referred to as a person. Nāgārjuna, an Indian philosopher in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, describes mind and bo…
added Jun 7, 2026
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