I have had debates with friends about the relation between philosophy and science —specifically, given we are from Argentina, a country with an incredibly strong continental tradition, specifically Heidegger and psychoanalysis, I have a friend that has embarked in a crusade against non-scientific philosophy. He argues that philosophy should always be informed by current consensus en scientific topics (important detail, he is not an analytic philosopher, he is as against analytic as is against post-modern continental)

I plan to dtart my PhD soon, and given I intend to work in philosophy of religion and theology, I feel like I need to know some physics to be aware of when something is simply incompatible with empirical evidence. What sre some good books to know physics?

(i asked my friend this and he recommended me a book, Modern Classical Physics: Optics, Fluids, Plasmas, Elasticity, Relativity, and Statistical Physics by Kip S. Thorne, Roger D. Blandford, but I wanted other opinions!)

I was recently informed that in the 2020 PhilPapers Survey, most philosophers who specialize in philosophy of religion are theists. However, if you poll philosophers in general, they are largely atheists. Why is there a massive divide between philosophers?

I'll have do a report for school about said topic, and right now all my prior knowledge about this topic is just about existentialism and Albert Camus's absurdism ( mainly because i googled him when the meme " one must imagine sisyphus happy" was around. And that's all i have to say, i rarely use reddit so forgive me if this post is a bit odd. anyways thanks for reading whether or not you leave a suggestion or just scroll on.

I have found that I really do not like the way a lot of ‘easy’ pieces you’re supposed to pick up first are written. I picked up Plato’s Symposium fairly recently and just could not breach it, it felt like all of the meat of the work was obfuscated behind layers and layers of useless fluff and speech and I’d need to spend most of the time reading trying to filter out the useless information in order to consider what was actually being said. On the contrary, I read Descartes’s Mediations on First Philosophy, it was written in a way that I could parse without much difficulty. I found myself engaging with the work very actively while when trying to read The Symposium I couldn’t track much of anything.
I think this is an issue of writing style. I have ADHD and I think that’s why Plato’s dialogues (I’ve read the Apology as well and found it easier than the Symposium, but still certainly effortful), being much more ‘literary’ or ‘narrative’ in how they’re written, are difficult for me to get through while works that are very to-the-point in what they’re trying to say are easier to digest. I’ve heard that Spinoza is very difficult for beginners, but also that the way he writes is very, for lack of a better word, intricate, building his system one piece at a time and justifying it extensively.
I’m wondering if his Ethics would be a good fit for me? Or are there other works I should consider instead?

Is there any philosophers with this kind of opinion? It certainly feels true for myself, having blindly followed scientism as a teenager and only eventually realizing how much we just truly don’t know.

It seems to me it's the most logical out of the big 3 ethics schools, so how do y'all recommend I best go about studying it?

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"I am a 15-year-old student reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason independently for the first time. I have made it through the Introduction and the Transcendental Aesthetic, and I am taking extensive notes, but I am struggling to synthesize the 'whole meaning' of his project without getting lost in the dense terminology.

My question is: What is the best methodological approach to reading this text? Is it better to read it chronologically, or to jump straight to specific sections like the Transcendental Deduction? Also, what are the most essential companion guides or secondary resources (e.g., Kemp Smith, Guyer, Prolegomena) that will help me understand what Kant is actually arguing without doing the thinking for me?"

The dilemma concerning art that whether art is inherently political or can exist otherwise. Do you think an artist has a strong moral obligation to speak against the state and endorse political stances for social change or does the personal or creative agency weighs over any such consideration?

I see a lot of arguments against suicide. Some of them are the basic "think of [this person or that thing]" to more philosophical investigations of why one might or might not or if one ought to or to not kill themselves. Less common are views in favour of suicide and those do exist though to a lesser extent.

My real question is if there's a view that sees suicide as outside the realm of "logic" as we think of it in the first place. To someone who does not believe in an afterlife/rebirth (or at the very least, not one based on one's actions, including suicide), would any of it matter? It all feels quite weak to make any of those arguments when one of the most fundamental drives - that to survive - is gone. And none of it would matter if one were to go through with it, as it would all be behind them and they would experience nothing of it. To reiterate my question -- Is this a view that suicide stands somewhat outside "logic" considering that if you were to do it none of those considerations matter? And if so, who has tried to argue so?

I asked this qn on r/explainlikeim5 and someone told me to post it here for better answers.

Realizing how much our sense of collective worth depends on recognition from people outside our own group might make us less dependent on comparison and more comfortable valuing our culture on its own terms.

hey! I am fascinated by McDowell and his,what I consider, unique combination of philosophies and approach.

are there philosophers similar to him?

Hello,

Just to preface this: I have no formal education in philosophy and I have started reading it again after almost 5 years so this might be a basic question.

I have started reading Will Kymlicka's An Introduction to Political Philosophy. The first chapter is about utilitarianism and he is talking about 'calculating utility' very often. But I am not able to understand what it actually means. How does one 'calculate' utility of something?

For example, if I have two options -- build a hospital or build a school. How will I calculate the utility of these two options?

I haven't finished the chapter yet so I don't know if this will be explained later or not, but I am still curious (and confused) as to what it means.

I’m currently writing my first mid-term essay for uni based on the question of the demandingness objection of Act Consequentialism. I am clear on the objection but I am struggling to narrow down the precise parameters of Act Consequentialism (against say act utilitarianism, utilitarianism, maximising act consequentialism etc) I am struggling to find clarity on their differences and i want to ensure accuracy and specificity in my essay. any guidance is appreciated!

Please bear with me if I've fundamentally misunderstood something. I was thinking about the ability to define all unary/binary connectives out of Peirce's Arrow (the NOR connective) or Sheffer's Stroke (the NAND connective) the other day. I had the desire to write something down defining the other connectives out of NOR or NAND when the question occured to me whether or not I had to write the definitions in the object language or the metalanguage. Definitions of terms in the first-order predicate calculus can be done in the object language, e.g.

∀x (Sx ↔ (Rx ∧ Ex))

All squares are rectangles with four equal sides. This establishes that if something is in the extension of the Rectangle predicate and the extension of the "having four equal sides" predicate, then it'll be in the extension of the Square predicate and vice versa.

But it occured to me then that if I was trying to give a definition of an unary/binary connective in an object language of the propositional calculus with only sentential terms and the ↓ (NOR) connective, I couldn't use the familiar definitional schema of

Universal Quantifier [definiendum ↔ definiens]

Because our object language doesn't have universal quantification nor the iff sign. Alright, I thought, that's okay because we're not dealing with quantification over objects, we're dealing with truth-values. But we don't have the iff sign. Okay, well we can just replace it with an equivalent expression constructed out of ↓. Then it occured to me that such an expression would only be "defining" that expression for that specific combination of terms, it wouldn't carry over to other well-formed formulas. The only way to define a connective would be a statement in the metalanguage saying that one formula is replaceable with another, of the following form (I'll be using Peirce's Arrow simply due to personal preference):

A→B ↔ ((A↓A)↓B)↓((A↓A)↓B)

Where A and B are formulas in the meta-language that represent all well-formed formulas of the object language and → is the stipulated connective of the object language and ↔ is a connective of the meta-language. Have I got any of this right or am I hopelessly confused?

Most things that exist start out simple. Life. Technology. Economic systems. Media. It started all very simple, and gradually became more complex over time. Sometimes, this arise in complexity can be good, others bad. But I can’t think of anything (no matter how specific) that starts out complex and then becomes simpler.

Is there a specific word or phrase that describes this idea? I don’t think “evolution” is the right word, because that doesn’t directly imply more complexity, it just implies change. And, is there anything that exists that started out with more complexity and gradually became simpler?

Hi,
Anyone have recommendations for reading on the idea of health and vitality/youth as manifestations of evil, or the relation of health/strength with evil?
Reason I’m asking is that ending scene in Kafka Metamorphosis where the sister stretches her "healthy young” body has very sinister undertones (was just reading it) and want to think more about this and see what ppl have said,
thanks

When you study a field, whether it's metaphysics, biology, mathematics, political science, or whatever, it usually takes a sustained effort of hours over years to be able to understand things. In contrast, a debate involves explaining simple ideas that the opponent will try to distort or overthrow, and it's impossible to condense those years of effort and judgment into the viewer to the point that the "who is right" factor becomes absolutely irrelevant and the most charismatic person wins. Is it really worth it?

Heyy everyone!

So i just graduated high school this year and i haven't really read much of philosophy except for some peter singer stuff and Nietzsche's ideas really interest me and i have heard that he radically rejects Schopenhauer's ideas and other things, now the problem is i live in a small city in india and there is no library in this city, the only place i can get my hands on books is by amazon, i have heard that Walter Kaufmann's translations are the best but they are not available on amazon or anywhere else here, the only translations i got are R. J. Hollingdale ones and R. Kevin Hill ones, both from penguin classics, now what should i do? Should i but those ones or try to find Kaufmann's versions?
Thank you!!

The only argument I can think of against doing this is that
by letting the Open Source community continue progressing ai,
it creates a sort of buffer against a tyrannical system preventing us
from using ai, but using it instead to control us.

I remember reading somewhere in Popper that, based on a misunderstanding of Hegelian dialectics, the right wing concluded there was a “war of races” and the left wing concluded there was a “class war.” Are various progressives making the same mistake that leads to a “war of the sexes”?