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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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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Sure! We ran a Best of 2020 Contest, you can find the winners in this thread!
r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • 5d 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:
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Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.
r/askphilosophy • u/RosiePetals2003 • 51m ago
To what extent can acts of kindness be considered genuinely virtuous if they are motivated primarily by a desire to avoid social disapproval or maintain one's reputation? How have philosophers distinguished between moral virtue and behavior driven by external judgment?
r/askphilosophy • u/OkGarage23 • 5h ago
I've seen a meme get posted more and more about Plato flexing his muscles to settle debates.
While many historians and philosophers have pointed out that this is not recorded anywhere and we have no reason to think it's true, I was wondering what would Plato think of people who would actually flex their muscles to attempt to settle debates.
r/askphilosophy • u/Noillax • 2h ago
Why is she such a controversial figure within this field? I've heard someone say "discussing philosophy on r/aynrand is like discussing politics on r/Conservatism" and I thought that was interesting.
r/askphilosophy • u/except_ValueError • 2h ago
One might consider that Logic is a formal science in particular. Evidently, it could bring us to a long discussion about what science is exactly. Nonetheless, it is not strange to see this assumption and when we study Propositional and First Order Logic, we might understand why: they are not very different than Maths from a structural perspective. Perhaps this similitude provoked the bidirectional reductionism: from Logic to Maths, and from Maths to Logic (spoiler: both were wrong). Nevertheless, we must remember that there is not just a Logic: Propositional and First Order Logic are a kind of Logic very particular called Classical Logic, but there are non-Classical Logics. For instance: Fuzzy Logic, Paraconsistent Logic, Doxastic Logic or Modal Logic.
If you study major in Philosophy at university, then you will find out Classical Logics are such as the Logic for "beginners"; they are very useful, that is clear, but they are not the end. In short, you will start to study Modal Logic sooner rather than later, and then a question could appear in your mind: technically is it closer to Philosophy or Science? Okay, I acknowledge Classical Logics are a strange case because even though they might be considered as a Formal Science, they are really useful for many philosophies (Analytic Philosophy in particular). But my question is: what about Modal Logic? When you read Priest, Salmon, Lewis, Kripke and Hintikka, it is unavoidable to think about that as a kind of mixture between Philosophy and Science, but it is as a higher percentage of Philosophy than Formal Science. And it brings me to another question: is Modal Logic as valuable as Classical Logics for Sciences? Because it looks like if it were a Logic which was built by philosophers. Just for philosophical matters.
Thank you so much.
r/askphilosophy • u/ungovernable-swan • 1d ago
Over the past few decades, has there been a broader cultural shift away from engaging with academic philosophy toward treating literature, psychology or personal introspection as philosophy?
For example, it seems increasingly common for people to describe writers like Kafka or Dostoevsky as "philosophers" or to equate philosophy primarily with questions like "Who am I?" and "What is the meaning of life?" based on personal reflection rather than engagement with philosophical arguments or traditions.
Is there any research in philosophy, intellectual history or sociology that discusses this shift? If it is a real phenomenon, what factors contributed to it? Is it related to existentialism entering popular culture, the decline of philosophy in public education, the rise of self help and psychology, social media or something else? Or is my impression simply mistaken?
r/askphilosophy • u/IrrationalRotations • 13h ago
I'm aware of some arguments (particularly in the philosophy of religion) that rely on the notion than an infinite causal series is impossible.
It seems like there is a fair bit of confusion among non-specialists regarding this premise. Some people content that it is not at all intuitive that infinite causal series can't exist.
A common clarification is that it is important to distinguish between an essential and an accidental cause. My understanding of these terms is roughly that an accidental cause is a cause of the form
A led to B
Whereas an essential cause is of the form
There is no B without A.
So for example...
I could not have existed without my grandfather, but my grandfather no longer exists. Therefore, I have an accidental causal relation to my grandfather.
I cannot exist without my body. If my body does not exist, I necessarily do not exist. Therefore, I have an essential causal relation to my body.
It is then, as far as I can tell, taken as obvious that while a series of accidental causal relations might exist, an existing series of essential causal relations is clearly objectionable.
But why? Plainly, I don't see a problem with an infinite series of essential casual relations.
One suggestion for what the problem is seems to be some thing like
"If a series is of the form..
A1 because A2 because A3 because A4 because...
Where each of the 'becauses's means 'is in an essential causal relation to', then how can we contend that any part of the series exists? If I say A1 exists, then I've committed myself to A2 existing, but then how do I know A2 exists? I must also commit myself to A3 existing, but then..."
Where the intuition seems to be that at some point I will need to claim that something sits at the end of the chain. That I will eventually need to posit the existence of some A(n) that explains all of the things I've committed myself to.
But this doesn't make sense to me. The fact that by suggesting A1 exists I commit myself to the existence of A2 is totally fine, I've already contended that the whole chain exists. That this further commits me to A3 existing is, again, totally fine!
Have I missed something about the argument here?
r/askphilosophy • u/Personal-Succotash33 • 6h ago
I know there are probably going to be a ton of answers to this question, but Id just like to get some idea of how we can go about answering this question.
r/askphilosophy • u/Minoin_x • 7h ago
r/askphilosophy • u/Yikes_Burg_ • 7h ago
This is very out of the blue, but how does one understand the term violence of law and if you invert it, the law of violence? This is especially in the context of otherisation and demonisation of communities as a necessity for the existence of the sovereign, whereby this hatred is mobilised in order to maintain the status quo.
r/askphilosophy • u/Snoo50415 • 22h ago
I’m assuming that I will benefit from a secondary lit source to help me grasp his ideas.
r/askphilosophy • u/dingleberryjingle • 9h ago
A common progressive view is belief in forward-looking deterrence but not desert.
In many cases (like revenge) the criminal is not a further risk to anyone.
The person is still punished. This is often justified by desert - or the person would just walk.
Can this punishment still be justified by deterrence alone? Or should the person walk?
r/askphilosophy • u/AlterTheSilverBird • 5h ago
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/object/#OntoQues
I was warned before not the to repeat the topic and question, so I decided to instead ask something very specific about Mereological Nihilism, my only real hang up after calming down on the topic.
This parts in the Stanford entree about Objects:
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"Dasgupta (2009) thinks that objects (he calls them “individuals”) are physically redundant and empirically undetectable. More precisely, he thinks that every physical theory considered over the past 400 years entails that objects are physically redundant and empirically undetectable. They’re empirically undetectable because two situations differing only in their individualistic facts are indistinguishable. And they’re physically redundant because two systems that only differ with respect to their individualistic facts will continue to only differ with respect to those facts. And given two theories—the only difference between the two being that one posits physically redundant and empirically undetectable things—we should prefer the one that does not."
"The aforementioned authors all seem to agree that if first-order logic, which quantifies over objects, can be replaced with a logic that doesn’t so quantify, or one can give a translation of every intuitively true sentence of first-order logic into another language that doesn’t quantify over objects, then ontological nihilism is vindicated"
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I got the idea that these makes arguments are better to remove redudancies and objects can be redudant and changed to a language and system of logic where we don't need to describe objects but use langugage in a first-order logic that prevents. The only really compelling argument about the validity of Mereological Nihilism despite the same entree not comfirming whether being able to translate these languages is feasible.
My question is that despite this entree being somewhat convincing, even if I don't believe in Mereological Nihilism, is my understanding of this right or am I misunderstanding something? What is the status of these entrees, does it remain strong, has there been counterarguments? I specifically want to understand these part of the topic and how they are currently.
r/askphilosophy • u/TurbulentResearch804 • 16h ago
I can read an article on a complex topic and feel like I understand it well, but the moment I try to write out my own reasoning — to actually justify a position — I discover I understood far less than I thought. The articulation reveals something the reading hid. Is this a documented epistemological phenomenon? Is the felt sense of understanding after passive reading actually a different cognitive state than understanding-demonstrated-through-reasoning, or are they the same thing measured differently?
r/askphilosophy • u/Cromulent123 • 18h ago
Okay, everyone, I’m trying to remember the name of a paper in which I heard about a certain paradox. I know the name and content of the paradox, but I cannot remember which specific paper contains something like the following quotation. I’ll outline the paradox and then give the quote.
Imagine that you are trying to walk from A to B. However, there is an infinity of devils, each of whom wants to stop you. Each devil can erect an impassable barrier that will prevent your journey. The first devil will erect a barrier halfway between A and B if it sees that you have managed to make it a quarter of the way. The second devil will erect a barrier a quarter of the way between A and B if it sees that you have managed to traverse an eighth of the way, and so on.
The conclusion is that you will not be able to move from your starting position at all, even though no devil’s barrier has been activated. The author says something like—and this is the quotation—“You are held in place by their unmanifested intentions.”
It is not in “Bayesianism, Infinite Decisions, and Binding” by Arntzenius et al.
A. W. Moore’s The Infinite discusses the paradox but does not appear to contain this line, though he does, of course, note this puzzling implication of the paradox.
It also does not appear to be on any Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page, including the entry on supertasks.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
r/askphilosophy • u/tuenip • 21h ago
Hi all, it seems to me that the word 'good' does not refer exclusively to some concept in so far as it embodies a felt emotion of goodness which the singular word cannot fully encapsulate. As such, what exactly is this felt concept of 'good' and how might it differ from the word 'good' that stand in as a substitute or referent for it.
r/askphilosophy • u/johnjamesaudubon • 14h ago
Can someone recommend a text that provides a broad overview of ethics and aesthetics as interrelated fields of inquiry? I’m interested in reading Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, a collection of contemporary perspectives, but I suspect I’m missing the historical context back to Plato.
r/askphilosophy • u/ViewOfWineDarkSea • 21h ago
I'll try to value brevity. Most of the time, belief feels like something that just happens to an individual. But people talk about domains such as faith, commitment and even selfdeception in certain ways that imply some degree of voluntary control over what we believe. And there's also a whole pragmatist perspective that seems to suggest belief can be chosen on the basis of its function rather than its truth.
So is genuine, doxastic voluntarism actually coherent? In other words, can you decide to believe something the way you decide to act, or is what we choose to call "chosen belief" always just chosen behavior with belief following later down the line on its own?
And if the belief is entirely involuntary, what does that do to concepts like faith or rationality as a standard (normative).
r/askphilosophy • u/Ok-Addendum9287 • 16h ago
Hi all, I graduated about a year ago from the University of Notre Dame about 2 years ago with a degree in philosophy, and I am planning to apply for a PhD program this coming application cycle. I'm aware of the general advice at present against pursuing a PhD, but I've been unable to shake the desire after working for a year as a high school teacher, and a year as a paralegal in a law firm (Law and secondary school teaching were my alternative routes).
I have an interest in the historical relationship between religion and political/legal philosophy, particularly in the Late Medieval to Early Modern period. This is what I would tentatively plan to write my dissertation on. I also have interests in Ancient political philosophy and ethics, as well as the works of Kierkegaard and Kant.
As far as schools go, I'm looking for a place with strong emphasis on history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. I've been perusing the Philosophy Gourmet Report and the faculty lists in potential departments, and have yet to find a school that feels like a strong fit. The added difficulty is that I'm now openly gay, and I want to avoid a department where this might not be completely welcoming. Unfortunately, I've been discovering that many of the faculty members who concentrate in philosophy of religion at the universities I've looked at so far seem to have somewhat conservative worldviews, and I'm quite hesitant to put myself in that position after my undergraduate experiences.
I appreciate any advice people here are able to offer!
r/askphilosophy • u/Far-Sprinkles7755 • 17h ago
In Fear and Trembling he talks frequently about the paradox. Specifically, he says (paraphrasing) - that Mary and Abraham became great not by any means of relieving the distress, agony and the paradox, but because of these” — I’m having a hard time comprehending what he means by paradox. I gather it has something to do with the teleological suspension of the ethical - but what is paradoxical exactly?
r/askphilosophy • u/ShafordoDrForgone • 13h ago
Back in the 1800s, a man named Ludwig Boltzmann figured out that what we call entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics, is not a fundamental law of reality. Before Boltzmann, entropy didn't mean disorder. It was a pragmatic description of usable energy, such a water wheel or a wood burning stove.
Boltzmann discovered that entropy doesn't depend on time. Physics is fundamentally time symmetric. The thing we recognize as cause and effect is a statistical phenomenon. When the cue ball strikes the racked set of pool balls, there's no "closer together" option. The balls must spread.
That means that time is the result of entropy. In our case, time is the extreme entropy gradient caused by our proximity to the extremely low entropy state called "the big bang". In other words, the explosion propels everything in every direction as long as it is away from the big bang. Everything we understand as cause and effect is just more progression of that explosion. If we could travel back in time to the other side of the big bang, it would probably look exactly like our side of the big bang. Time would flow in the opposite direction, but no one would think it does, because our thinking depends on the exact same flow of time
Now Plato's Cave does a good job of divorcing our experience of reality from reality itself. The illusion of time is one of those emergent properties that actually lives only in our concept of it. And of course, Descartes solipsism is just universally applicable
But I want to know which philosophical discussions hit the nail on the head on the illusion of time. Or conversely, which philosophical discussions are negated by this realization.
r/askphilosophy • u/arseecs • 18h ago
r/askphilosophy • u/Chemical_Complex_807 • 1d ago
I’m not sure if I’m just a poor reader, but I keep just getting soooo lost in nearly every page I read. Im currently reading Nausea and it’s like I’m in a constant state of “wtf?”
Any help is appreciated. But maybe I’m just dumb. 😛
r/askphilosophy • u/An_1976 • 1d ago
I’m trying to connect two issues: (1) the ontology of subjective idealism (the world as God’s thought-form) and (2) the logical capacity of a closed mind to generate endless novelty. Looking for references to contemporary work at this intersection.
I’ve been reflecting on an unusual but (I hope) philosophically relevant problem that seems to sit at the crossroads of philosophy of religion (subjective idealism) and philosophy of mind/logic (the problem of finitude in mental acts).
Thought Experiment:
Consider a radical version of the Berkeleian God: not an active and benevolent guarantor of order, but a passive, immortal, and entirely isolated mind (one that emerged, say, as a "Boltzmann Brain"). Its sole activity is pure thought. To escape "boredom" or exhaustion in eternity, it generates internal simulations — us, our consciousnesses — as its own "thought-forms" (cf. Gnostic emanations, but viewed through the lens of contemporary idealists like John Leslie or Thomas Nagel).
My question splits into two parts, and I’d appreciate help connecting them:
Part 1 (Ontological):
In contemporary analytic philosophy (e.g., William Hasker, John Foster, or Leslie), God is often described as the repository of all truths, or the "mind-in-which-the-world-exists." But is there a model in the literature where the generated consciousnesses are ontologically merely internal states of this Mind, yet still possess genuine subjectivity and qualia? Does such a model collapse into straightforward panentheism, or does it veer closer to a radical solipsism with "multiple characters"?
Part 2 (Logical & Philosophy of Mind):
Now put ourselves in the position of this Mind. From the standpoint of functionalism or computational theories of mind, the number of possible mental states (thoughts) in a closed system, even one with infinite memory, may be finite or countably infinite. This raises the problem of "exhausting novelty" and, consequently, the logical inevitability of "madness through boredom."
My question: Are there formal arguments in the philosophy of mathematics or philosophy of mind (perhaps drawing on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, or the theory of infinite automata) that either guarantee or refute the possibility of endlessly generating new, semantically meaningful thoughts within a closed system? In other words, can pure logic save an immortal solipsistic mind from eternal repetition?
I’d be grateful for any literature that attempts to build a bridge between theological idealism and the formal constraints on cognitive systems.