r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Jul 01 '23
Welcome to /r/askphilosophy! We're a community devoted to providing serious, well-researched answers to philosophical questions. We aim to provide an academic Q&A-type space for philosophical questions, and welcome questions about all areas of philosophy. This post will go over our subreddit rules and guidelines that you should review before you begin posting here.
/r/askphilosophy is moderated by a team of dedicated volunteer moderators who have spent years attempting to build the best philosophy Q&A platform on the internet. Unfortunately, the reddit admins have repeatedly made changes to this website which have made moderating subreddits harder and harder. In particular, reddit has recently announced that it will begin charging for access to API (Application Programming Interface, essentially the communication between reddit and other sites/apps). While this may be, in isolation, a reasonable business operation, the timeline and pricing of API access has threatened to put nearly all third-party apps, e.g. Apollo and RIF, out of business. You can read more about the history of this change here or here. You can also read more at this post on our sister subreddit.
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First, the native reddit app is lacks accessibility features which are essential for some people, notably those who are blind and visually impaired. You can read /r/blind's protest announcement here. These apps are the only way that many people can interact with reddit, given the poor accessibility state of the official reddit app. As philosophers we are particularly concerned with the ethics of accessibility, and support protests in solidarity with this community.
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While we previously participated in the protests against reddit's recent actions we have decided to reopen the subreddit, because we are still proud of the community and resource that we have built and cultivated over the last decade, and believe it is a useful resource to the public.
However, these changes have radically altered our ability to moderate this subreddit, which will result in a few changes for this subreddit. First, as noted above, from this point onwards only panelists may answer top level comments. Second, moderation will occur much more slowly; as we will not have access to mobile tools, posts and comments which violate our rules will be removed much more slowly, and moderators will respond to modmail messages much more slowly. Third, and finally, if things continue to get worse (as they have for years now) moderating /r/askphilosophy may become practically impossible, and we may be forced to abandon the platform altogether. We are as disappointed by these changes as you are, but reddit's insistence on enshittifying this platform, especially when it comes to moderation, leaves us with no other options. We thank you for your understanding and support.
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As with most disciplines, "philosophy" has both a casual and a technical usage.
In its casual use, "philosophy" may refer to nearly any sort of thought or beliefs, and include topics such as religion, mysticism and even science. When someone asks you what "your philosophy" is, this is the sort of sense they have in mind; they're asking about your general system of thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.
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Sure! We ran a Best of 2020 Contest, you can find the winners in this thread!
r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • 2d ago
Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:
This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. Please note that while the rules are relaxed in this thread, comments can still be removed for violating our subreddit rules and guidelines if necessary.
Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.
r/askphilosophy • u/Sudden_Instance_6264 • 2h ago
Hello! I have recently discovered the philosopher John mcdowell and my mind has been blown away. Are there philosophers that are similar to him?
r/askphilosophy • u/Kutluna • 16h ago
I started reading philosophy mostly as a kind of mental exercise. I enjoy seeing how different people think, and I like being exposed to ideas I wouldn't have come up with myself.
Like a lot of people, I started with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. But honestly... I don't think I got much out of them. In fact, the reason I stopped after reading one book from each of them was that I kept thinking, "They're basically saying things I already believe." Most of what they said just felt like common sense to me.
At the same time, I don't want to disrespect them. Maybe the reason they sound like common sense is because they've influenced civilization so much for thousands of years. I genuinely don't know, and I'm actually curious about this.
Were philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle so influential because they expressed ideas that almost everyone naturally finds reasonable? Or do they only seem like common sense to us today because they've been so influential for so long?
When I read them, nothing really surprised me. I don't think I encountered a single idea that made me stop and think, "Wow, I've never looked at it this way before."
After that, I read Kant. I actually liked Kant. Then I read Descartes, but I didn't enjoy him because I thought many of his ideas were just... dumb. Then I read Karl Marx. I also thought most of his ideas were dumb, but at least I appreciated that he approached things from a perspective I normally wouldn't. So even if I disagreed with him, it still felt like a better mental exercise because it wasn't just common sense to me.
The philosophers I've enjoyed the most so far are Stirner, Ayn Rand, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The reason is that they either presented ideas I hadn't thought about before, or at least they seemed willing to go against mainstream values. Whether I agreed with them or not, I found them interesting because they felt different.
But even then, I still haven't found the feeling I was hoping to get from reading philosophy.
Maybe this is something that only comes after reading philosophy for years. Maybe I'm just expecting too much too early. I don't know.
The main reason I'm posting here is this:
I'm guessing that if I keep reading the most famous philosophers, I'll probably keep running into ideas that mostly feel like common sense. So can you recommend philosophers who genuinely have unusual, unconventional, or even controversial ideas?
I'd actually prefer philosophers who aren't very famous. Even when I've watched YouTube videos about philosophers whose books I haven't read yet, I often came away thinking, "These ideas aren't really that different."
I'm specifically looking for philosophers who made you think, "I've genuinely never considered looking at the world this way before." That's the experience I'm after.
And finally, I want to ask the question I mentioned earlier:
Do philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle seem like common sense because their ideas really were obvious to most people? Or do they only seem obvious today because they shaped our civilization so much that we've internalized their way of thinking?
r/askphilosophy • u/Massive_Juice_9083 • 5h ago
I've been thinking a lot about the way we learn today, and I'm wondering if there are philosophers who have written about this? I don't study philosophy!
One thing I've noticed is that, although school and university taught me a lot of information, I often felt like my knowledge was very scattered. More importantly, I don't feel like I was really taught how to think critically. Most of my critical thinking skills came from reading and teaching myself outside of formal education. I actually had a deep moment where I realized I know just about nothing despite going to school for years.
I also want to be clear that I'm not trying to make the cliché "university is a scam" argument. I'm well aware that education is largely what you make of it, and that students have a responsibility for their own learning. At the same time, there were moments during my undergraduate degree when I genuinely questioned the intention of the educational system. Was the goal to teach me how to learn and think, or was it to teach me how to process and reproduce a large amount of information in a short period of time?
I guess I'm also fascinated by historical figures who were able to work across multiple demanding disciplines. People who studied philosophy, mathematics, physics, medicine, and they had a deep understanding of it.
Are there philosophers who criticize the modern education system? Have any philosophers argued that this way of learning shapes how we understand the world or ourselves?
I'm mainly looking for philosophers or philosophical works to challenge my own thoughts and beliefs.
r/askphilosophy • u/mathysdogso • 24m ago
Ever since I was very young, I have been convinced that the non-existence of the self (that is to say, the state of the self before birth and after death) is preferable to existence. Starting from the basic premise that we are all seeking our own happiness.
I would like to flesh out this line of thought with sound arguments, and to that end I am looking to see whether any philosophers have put forward arguments that could support this thesis: ‘non-existence is preferable to existence’.
I am aware that the definition of happiness is a subject of debate in itself, but I am not concerned with any particular philosophical definition on this matter.
It seems to me that anti-natalism may have arguments that could support this, but I also know that their thesis is different, as it aims to prove that natalism is immoral. Not that living beings should wish not to exist.
Ps: sorry for any possible text errors english is not my native language
r/askphilosophy • u/AppropriateSea5746 • 1h ago
I dont think this a formal argument of his, merely something he said in a lecture.
"I do not claim any ability to read God's mind. I am sure of only one thing. When we look at the glory of stars and galaxies in the sky and the glory of forests and flowers in the living world around us, it is evident that God loves diversity. Perhaps the universe is constructed according to a principle of maximum diversity. The principle of maximum diversity says that the laws of nature, and the initial conditions at the beginning of time, are such as to make the universe as interesting as possible. As a result, life is possible but not too easy. Maximum diversity often leads to maximum stress. In the end we survive, but only by the skin of our teeth. This is the confession of faith of a scientific heretic."
For Abrahamic theists this could also potentially align with the verses that suggest the purpose of creation is to display God's glory.
Obviously I could understand someone having a problem with God allowing suffering simply because it's existence is more interesting than not ha.
r/askphilosophy • u/IndependentIdeal5731 • 5h ago
This is question to those people who believe that there are such things as "moral facts" and that a statement like "murder is wrong" could be considered factually accurate. Are these moral truths true in all places at all points in history? Alternatively, are they true for you at this point in history?
Let me give an example of a fact:
In the continent of South America, there is at least one living tree.
This is a fact that I think no reasonable person can dispute. It is undeniably a fact. But it is not a fact that exists across all of time and space. Tomorrow, the human race may embark on a campaign of nuclear war against every tree in South America and eventually kill them all. The statement would no longer be a statement of fact, it would be a statement of error. A fact is "a piece of information about events that have actually occurred or things that exist".
Let us consider another statement which some people consider to be a fact:
Murder is wrong.
Personally, I do not believe that this is a fact, but I know that some people think it is. If it is a fact, has it always been a fact? Would that include before humans existed? Has it been a fact throughout all of human history, was it a fact for early humans engaging in primitive conflicts for territory, for Alexander the Great and Atilla the Hun? And will it always be a fact through every conceiveable circumstance?
r/askphilosophy • u/TheIncorporeal1 • 3h ago
I’m interested in whether contemporary philosophy of information treats information as something fundamentally real or merely as an abstract description of physical and cognitive processes.
If information is ontologically basic, what would that imply about the relationship between matter, consciousness, and meaning? Could information serve as a deeper explanatory layer beneath traditional categories of mind and matter, or does it always depend on an underlying substrate?
r/askphilosophy • u/Imaginary_Ad2618 • 5h ago
I am trying to write a paragraph about the ego forming the ideal I and the little other. I thought they were the same thing, but apparently they refer to different things. Can someone explain their difference please?
r/askphilosophy • u/Pirate-investor • 6h ago
I researched about scientific facts about death. What i have seen is there are some hallucinogenic like near death experiences such as seeing light or feeling "being one with universe" or feeling "timeless". These kind of hallucinogenic effects are reported scientifically by people who had near death experiences such as having cardiac arrest and getting come back to life after some seconds or minutes. I have found that this mostly causes by dmt created in brain. Then of course i researched more about dmt.
Firstly, in terms of evolutionary logic, near death experiences doesnt increase your survival chance because it happens when death is already inevitable. So why does it exist?
Secondly, i checked people's experiences when they get dmt as drug and their experiences were almost same as near death experiences they even feel "timeless" and they claim to see "higher entities". Scientifically there is no research that proves dmt production is increased near death on humans. It is not disproven too because dmt is highly small amount in body that it can be hardly measured and it is unethical to research on near death humans. However they did research measuring dmt levels on rats before and after cardiac arrest. They measured that dmt amount in different brain regions were increased especially in virtual cortex after cardiac arrest.
The effect of "timeless" is the key here. I think the hell and heaven concepts in religions or after life concept in philosophy like eternal recurrence idea of nietzsche might be real scientifically. After we die, if dmt is increased in brain and we get into a kind of timeless experience, even if they destroy our brain still we will be conscious in past timelessly. It is highly speculative concept but chemicals in brain makes you that specific moment feel timeless. That means we may feel that death moment for infinity at that time. It wont matter if our brain get destroyed and they measure 0 electricity activity on brain after a week. We may be trapped in that moment for eternity. We would kind of live in hell, heaven or some kind of other after life experience like nietzsche's eternal recurrence.
The most suspicisous part is there is no evolutionary logic behind dmt creating hallucinogens near death. It doesnt help to stay alive. It feels like it is developed or even "added" for another reason.
r/askphilosophy • u/PartySad2794 • 13m ago
John of St. Thomas wrote nearly 700 pages on Aristotle's less-than-20-pages manuscript named "Categories". This was his treatise on material logic. There is also formal logic, which took nearly 400 pages to discuss. There is so much to look, there is just so much, that I feel like throwing up with the desire to read Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. I cant move from the start. I try to begin, but there is so much before the beginning. I cant understand how can there be people who do not believe in the infinite and the eternal. The beginning is endless. Knowledge is endless and we know nothing.
I feel dizzy. Lies and low-level philosophy become popular for being so easy. Truth and actual philosophy seems to be locked behind Dante's Purgatoy Mountain.
r/askphilosophy • u/KNASCHTmusic • 18m ago
I know that there are arguments like the contingency argument which can explain the necessity for a supreme creator, and which most often is used inside a monotheistic narrative, but why can't the same argument also be used in favour of a polytheistic framework? Afterall, if a supreme creator exists, then that creator could have created a set of "lesser gods" which would bridge the gap between the supreme creator and us humans. This is f.ex seen in ancient greek mythology. What are other philosophical arguments that try to make the case for polytheism over monotheism, in the scope of a theological discussion. (i.e we do not assume atheism, but only focus on the question of mono- versus polytheism question)
r/askphilosophy • u/theomixedmedia • 22h ago
I am and always have been constantly engulfed in philosophical thought; it is part of my nature and a huge component of my life. I have always planned to pursue this area of study academically. However, I have deep trouble focusing, terrible procrastination, and a perfectionist nature that causes me to re-read pages over and over, sit on passages; I have to "get" what I read before continuing. I have to reread pages if I read them the day before. No joke: it took me ~3 hours to get through 6 pages of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which I am reading for a class. It might sound like I am intellectually deficient, but I insist that that is not the case.
Oddly, a year ago I could slowly but consistently manage to finish entire books by Freud, Dostoyevsky, etc. which were (mostly) as dense/academic as Hume, though very different (Hume and Freud have resemblance to me, though). Now, this simple intro to philosophy course, unchallenging as it may be, is a source of struggle due to the required 10-20 pages of reading per day... it feels absurd to even say that. I manage to do well on exams (so far) despite only having read half of the material. I have convinced myself that I "can no longer read" along with other unhelpful thoughts. The one advantage is that, of the parts of these books I can get through, I have an incredibly thorough understanding of the content. One thing I've thought about is just reading as much as I can and worrying less about such deep understanding...
However, I cannot help but wonder if this is a passion of mine that I won't be able to pursue. I am quite frightened for my future. So, I wonder, has anyone further along in their education had similar struggles early on? Do these struggles indicate that I should give up on philosophy, despite my passion and love for the field?
TLDR: I have trouble focusing on readings and deep perfectionism that causes me to take hours to read a few pages. However, I have a deep passion for philosophy and I would be devastated if I couldn't pursue it academically. Does anyone have any advice or reassurance? Or perhaps affirmation that this is not the field for me?
r/askphilosophy • u/Inevitable_Bid5540 • 4h ago
r/askphilosophy • u/New_Persimmon_6199 • 8h ago
I am currently working towards completing my undergraduate dissertation/thesis for the next academic year, I’m currently doing reading and research in preparation. My topic relates to the carnivore diet and the philosophical underpinnings of it; I’m very interested in bio politics, the development of power relations, contemporary constructions of masculinity and being conspiratorial and skeptic generally. Have read some of Foucault, Bourdieu, Carol J Adam’s. I’m interested in using Nietzsche’s concept of resentment too. I’m collecting a list of books I’m interested in reading for it and would like some more, I think that I would like some quite recent stuff on these topics because I’m writing about such a contemporary issue. Many thanks.
r/askphilosophy • u/RoastKrill • 8h ago
I wondered if anyone had any recommendations of papers/books on the view that there are multiple ways we should understand "X means Y"
r/askphilosophy • u/Eudaimonia1590 • 10h ago
Hello fellow philosophers, even though i majored in Philosophy (primary field was Political Philosophy) i am currently getting more into the field of aesthetics.
So, my question is simple, are there anyone who knows the aesthetics of Aristotle better than i (which is easy btw) to have a theory about the content of the lost second book of Poetics dealing with comedy?
And yes, i do know of a certain italian book and movie dealing with this subject.
r/askphilosophy • u/That_Illustrator4168 • 5h ago
Ive had a pretty common point of view on "what makes a person truly unique" and ive found nothing but, that a person is an amalgamation of the experiences they go through, those experiences being provided by their environment, whether from people like family or friends, or the place/country they were born in, so it saddens me that from the moment ur born; ur truly not unique as ur environment dictates who u are, so my question is: is there truly evidence or a way that can make a person change their already sealed personality, decisions, traits regardless of their environment, and have a unique trait that makes them truly special or are their fate sealed by the experiences that are in place for them?
its my first post here so please forgive me if i broke any unwritten rules or so and point out my mistakes so i can correct them in the future
r/askphilosophy • u/PresentationWest535 • 5h ago
There is always this opinion where the other person say "I do not think you deserve this", then if you cannot intrinsically deserve something, the deserving aspect of a prize will never be based on you as a person but the opinion that the other persons have about you. Am I wrong? How can I explore more about this?
r/askphilosophy • u/rightviewftw • 8h ago
So, what I am getting is wanting to delineate a difference between the two states — as to epistemic and ontological limitations and function.
Can you establish any principal differences between what can be tested and observed?
r/askphilosophy • u/TharsisRoverPets • 16h ago
I'm looking for some discussions/reading material about the ethics of virtual sentient beings.
In general on ethics, I'm some type of consequentialist/utilitarian, so I'd be most interested in those types of arguments, but I'd consider stuff from other ethical frameworks too. My main background is in economics (so I have a lot of familiarity with utility function stuff) and I have a minor in philosophy way back, but my courses were more on philosophy of science and religion than on ethics (plus it was a long time ago so I probably forgot a lot).
I've somewhat recently come across a piece of narrative that had me thinking about the ethics of virtual beings. (I won't name it for spoiler reasons, but if you have a strong guess or just trawl long enough through my comment history, it's probably what you're thinking of.)
Here's an altered example of what I'm thinking about:
Suppose there's a virtual world in a computer that has sentient beings in it (in this case, some type of "artificial" intelligence, but they are sentient, just "simulated" in a computer).
Our-world people can jack into the virtual world and affect it, through something like a virtual reality system. Virtual people can't visit or affect our world.
How should the lives of virtual people be valued relative to the lives of our-world people?
My intuition is that:
From the perspective of a virtual person, or someone strongly sympathizing with them, it would be natural that the lives of virtual people should be valued at least as much as the lives of our-world people.
From the perspective of an our-world person, it seems intuitive to me that the life of a virtual person should be valued qualitatively less than the life of an our-world person. Here are some reasons why:
Borrowing a thought experiment from the question of abortion: suppose there's a fire in a building. In one room is an our-world person. In another room is a computer with a virtual world filled with 1000 virtual persons. Firefighters can only save one of them. I think most (our-world) people would say the firefighters should save the our-world person over the computer, no matter how many virtual persons are in the computer.
If we value virtual people the same as our-world people, it could invite some problematic conclusions. For example, if it's easy to create more virtual people, a malicious actor could create a lot of virtual people (say, 1000x the our-world human population) and then force us to keep them alive, potentially at great cost to ourselves (say, our entire electricity capacity and all our resources building more). It feels intuitive most (our-world) people would balk at that, and that seems reasonable.
Intuitively, from the perspective of an our-world person, it seems like there is something fundamentally different about a virtual person. But I don't know what it is. Maybe that they can't affect our world, and thus interact/contract with us, and reciprocate any moral arrangements we extend to them? Or maybe it's something as simple as they don't have our DNA. (Actually, it probably requires both of these things or else there are some very easy counterexamples.) I'm out of my depth here.
If I hold that it's reasonable for virtual people to value their lives at least as much as our-world peoples' lives, but it's also reasonable for our-world people to value their lives much greater than they value virtual peoples' lives, am I now a moral relativist?
From the brief look at bioethics, it seems like it's hard to pin down some demarcation between things we have ethical obligations towards and things we don't, so it's very possible my intuition is wrong here.
r/askphilosophy • u/Secret-Dish-7925 • 14h ago
So I was reading a comment that went something like "the reason why slave morality debates are annoying is because the fanboy already assumes the Christian/religious are too inferior to understand due to their slave morals".
This made me want to ask then, what are some broader, more general criticism that the religious have said about Nietzsche, it's only fair to let the other respond to such accusations about their faith.
r/askphilosophy • u/noncommutativehuman • 23h ago
The question “Is there an external world independent of our experience?” seems to lead to a paradox.
Any possible answer to this question would necessarily rely on our own experiences, perceptions, or mental representations. However, by definition, we never have access to anything except these representations. We cannot step outside our own experience in order to compare our perceptions with a supposed reality “in itself.”
Therefore, it seems that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a mind-independent external world. Any argument claiming that the external world exists would already presuppose access to that world through experience, which is precisely what is in question.
Does this mean that the statement “There is an external world” is not false, but rather meaningless because it asks for something that cannot be answered from within our epistemic situation?
r/askphilosophy • u/Positive_Bicycle5408 • 20h ago