It's just an ordinary brick. As far as we know, it has no mechanism for any sort of perception and is completely inanimate.

Also by harmful I mean not necessarily to the brick itself.

Or rather, how does one imagine the soul?
I just caught myself thinking "if I didnt get born in this life, I would have been born sometime else", like there is a pool of souls that gets drawn upon when life is created.

So is there some form of reincarnation? Is a soul unique, or does it get "recycled"?

I think after we die, we just cease to exist, and even if something gets recycled, since we dont take the experience from this world with us, each life is basically unique.

But I wonder if I (whatever I means) would have seen the light of day, if my parents, or my grand parents, or their parents.... didnt meet each other.

If you think our souls are truly unique, its quite crazy how unlikely it is, that you would get to live.

So what are some good points and arguments from "famous" philosphers you read over the years?

I understand that evolutionary, sociologically and physiologically we can explain having morals and why humans developed moral codes/institutions. But I don't think this is a reason that force us or justifies why we ought to have morals. I'm not only talking about the things that have directly negative impact on people, like killing stealing etc. for example if I cheated my girlfriend in a way there is no way she learns about it, why shouldn't I do it if no one gets hurt? So, in a purely materialistic worldwiew, why should I have morals. Also having values is similar to this, I think it's required to have some kind of values and control one's desires but I'm really having trouble explaining why it's required from a philosophical point of view. And I think having no values causes people to feel less satisfied with life but can I say this for everyone, or make this a reasonable cause for having morals, don't think so

What are the best defenses of killing one person to save five in the trolley problem made by philosophers?

I'm a lay person I guess so what I'm about to say probably sounds corny. Im under the impression that skepticism and relativism have some negative reputations because it's essentially a dead end. My basic understanding is that skepticism wins traditionally if you see knowledge as absolute certainty, but its also a dead-end because it's self-defeating. Not sure if my interpretation is accurate. Based on what I've seen skepticism is kind of just the philosophy "larp".

But people seem to move past it. How? Do people just accept that they hold some dogma/postulates and work off of them knowing they're assumptions? Or do they just redefine knowledge itself instead of just saying knowledge is absolute certainty?

Hi!

I haven't read any of the critique other than the paralogisms (the B edition only, I don't know if there are major differences between A/B, I just know A is longer). My teacher assigned them to us, and I naturally didn't have time to go through the book. I did watch a series of lectures by Dan Robinson and they kind of helped.

When Kant says in A342/B400:

I, as thinking, am an object of inner sense, and am called "soul." That which is an object of outer sense is called "body."

He's not distinguishing between two "I"'s, right? Two different objects independent from each other? To perhaps put it more clear, he's nowhere near proposing something of a dualism? I know that the inner sense is something like my thoughts in relation with time, and the outer sense is what allows me to distinguish myself from other objects in space. As space and time constitute the non-empirical, necessary, universal framework that goes with every beholding we have of the sensible world, body and soul must be like principles of one thing, both of which necessary to experience reality.

With that said, could we also argue Kant is a monist?

There's a special passage that leads me to think this, in B420:

I first need something persisting[the body? but how come it is persisting? doesn't it undergo change? or is this just the constant flux of stimuli we receive from experience?], and, just insofar as I think myself, nothing of the sort is given to me in inner intuition, it is not possible at all through this simple self-consciousness to determine the way I exist, whether as substance or as accident. Thus if materialism will not work as a way of explaining my existence, then spiritualism is just as unsatisfactory for it, and the conclusion is that in no way whatsoever can we cognize anything about the constitution of our soul that in any way at all concerns the possibility of its separate existence.

I don't know if I'm missing something, but the way I read it, he's clearly stating that the soul cannot exist separately from the body. But then, if the soul and the body compose a single unity, then what is this unity? Does it circle back to the I??

Another question from A343/B401:

For this inner perception is nothing beyond the mere apperception I think, which even makes all transcendental concepts possible, which say "I think substance, cause, etc."

Is apperception, then, mere thought, consciousness? And when he talks about the (transcendental/absolute) unity of apperception, would that then be something like the necessary requirements for there to be any given thought?

Thanks!!1

imo, it can be read in two ways:

1) Metaphysical or mystical problems are superfluous because they can be neither answered nor even asked. or one can put it: Wittgenstein is believed to solve metaphysical problems by saying that there's nothing to solve, nothing to care about (the line that wat taken by the Vienna Circle neopositivists)

2) Even though the mystical cannot be expressed in language, in logical propositions, it never ceases to be a "problem" for us, being a kind of open question, unsolvable experience, apophatic absolute.

I know that Wittgenstein in his diaries often stated that the problems of ethics and aesthetics are of much greater importance than those of natural sciences. but at the same time, his real-life ethics seemed to have been conformist and close to a Stoic and Spinozist contemplative way of life.

do you think this distinction is valid, or is there only one way to interpret it? is there any way he believed art and religious experience were valid?

If God exists, then there is no unnecessary suffering.

God exists.

Therefore, there is no unnecessary suffering.

I have been learning about buddhism philosophy and it seems so interesting, but all I have read comes from occidental authors that study buddhism. Does anyone knows books written by oriental authors about this?, I am searching for the "classics" of buddhism. Maybe I would like to some contemporary author of some buddhist countries that explores this topic.

PS: All that I have read about it at the date is Brian Wallace.

Existentialism is traditionally contrasted with classical realism because existentialism rejects a fixed human "essence" or teleology. However, if virtue (arete) is understood not as an innate instinct, but as a discipline forged through intentional, repeated choices of the will, could classical virtue ethics be framed through an existential lens?

Specifically, if a person uses their radical freedom to actively choose the pursuit of objective wisdom and order, aren't they using existential agency to construct a Platonic essence? Has any major figure argued for this synthesis where human agency is the engine, but Platonic order is the chosen destination?

Our brains seems to "know" that consciousness exists. We can discuss consciousness and qualia and think about consciousness and qualia. For the brain to be able to "know" these things, wouldn't these things have to have a causal effect (or some other relation) on the brain? In other words, how could knowledge of qualia exist in physical matter if consciousness doesn't have causal effect on physical matter?

Hi all,

I am new to philosophy so please forgive me if I make any errors here. My question is pretty much as above. My personal favorite reading on this is definitely Dr Rachel Fraser's "Epistemic FOMO" in The Cambridge Humanities Review, she starts with Descartes and then breaks down the argument of Cassim Quassam in "Conspiracy Theories" and Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum in "A Lot of People are Saying". Personally, I find myself agreeing more with Muirhead and Rosenblum, I feel their arguments are more applicable to the modern world (they were also just fun to read and listen to on Ideas Podcast "Conspiracy theories are more dangerous than ever" episode). I'm going to focus on Muirhead and Rosenblum's argument here. They argue that the new era of conspiracy theories aims basically to disorient and confuse the general public as well as to attack the basis of political parties (to question their beliefs and legitimacy). I find that news outlets often do this and that this is definitely the case in the US right now (my mind is going to midterms advertisements, especially in swing states, I'm from one of the more volatile counties PA). So are modern conspiracies leading to indifference? In a way does it behave like a political tool? To disorient us as American citizens so much that it leads to that apathy? Is this true across the world? This is where I think that thinking slightly (not too much because the point of the meditations is to completely break down the way you think and I personally found that a bit heavy-handed) like Descartes would be very useful, in breaking down each thing we are exposed to. Or even thinking like Spinoza, taking everything as true until you have reasonable evidence to believe otherwise (I do think there are good conspiracy theories).

If there's any of them that are actually worth explaining ofc, since afaik they're kinda a hot topic

For my philosophy class we learned about Gettier problems, and I understand the argument but can't help but feel like a lot of the examples present our beliefs as very rigid and simple, when there's often more nuance to them.

For example the one where you see a sheep in a field and develop the belief "there is a sheep in the field", however the "sheep" was actually a rock painted to look like a sheep. Except there actually was a sheep just behind the rock, so "there is a sheep in the field" was technically correct. Except I think in this instance, the belief you develop is more like "there is a sheep in the field, and I am looking at it". In which case you weren't correct by accident, you were just wrong, so there is no problem.

I think even though we might summarise our beliefs in simple sentences, they're a lot more specific than a lot of Gettier problems claim. Same with the one in Gettier's original essay, where Smith and Jones both apply for a job. Smith develops a justified belief that both Jones will get the job and Jones has 10 coins in his pocket, and so develops the justified belief that "the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket". Then Smith gets the job, and realises he also has 10 coins in his pocket. Except again I think his belief is more specifically, "the man who I know has 10 coins in his pocket, will get the job".

Is this a good response to these Gettier problems? Obviously this doesn't apply to all Gettier problems, but for those it does apply to does it work? Or is there something I'm missing?

Im a senior high school student too. I have one of pruss' books and am only a third through in 2 months. It's a general question, is there any shot a senior high school student can so quickly gain an understanding and analytical engagement with such complicated works? Is there some way he did it, or something you would be willing to share that helped you get there? Is it more fundamentals, or just bulldozing through more? Oftentimes as little as 5-6 pages takes me a little under an hour.

By Joe Schmid I mean the owner of the majesty of reason youtube channel if not obvious.

Suppose a full emulation of my brain runs on hardware, connected to a robotic body with simulated senses. It has my memories and personality and says it’s me.

Under current law, I assume it would be treated as a machine and software, and the original me would be considered dead. I’m interested in what a legal system could or should do instead:

1. What is legal personhood based on? Is it being a biological human, or something like mind, interests, or the capacity to hold rights and duties? Corporations and some rivers and animals have gotten limited legal status, so it clearly isn’t purely biological.
2. Could a legal system treat the upload as the same legal person as the original (keeping property, marriage, citizenship, contracts), or would it have to be a new person with no claim to any of it?
3. If the original and the upload both exist, who holds the rights? And since software can be copied, paused, or deleted by whoever controls the hardware, would it need protections that human rights never had to cover?

I’m not asking whether it’s conscious, since that seems unanswerable for now. I’m asking whether law can or should grant status without settling that.

Are there standard positions in philosophy of law on this, such as theories of legal personhood or rights, and any existing writing on legal rights for AI or digital minds?

What did he really mean when said that classical art embodied the true ideal or the true manifestation of spirit? Also, if somebody can, provide some examples from the classical art to expound on this. 🙏

In the field of law , legal positivism is pretty much the default position that nobody bothers arguing against. Does positivism have any flaws that don't have an addequate conclusive answer ?

The philpapers survey states that it's slightly popular across all departments

I’ve been getting into late Wittgenstein for a while and it’s quite surprising to see his influence on neo-aristotelians despite not having read any Aristotle.

Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky are also two thinkers with plenty of overlap in existentialism despite no records of Dostoevsky reading Kierkegaard.

What are examples are there?

I've recently been thinking about the tension and potential bridge between Existentialism and Platonic Realism/Objective Idealism.

Existentialism often asserts that "existence precedes essence"—that we have no predetermined blueprint and must construct meaning through action. However, it seems to me that one's primary, authentic act of free will can be a deliberate commitment to seek objective order, wisdom, and the Good (in a Platonic sense). Under this view, objective forms or values are not static constraints imposed from the outside, but targets we freely choose to align our lives toward.

This seems to mirror Schelling's Naturphilosophie and his later Positive Philosophy, where the self-conscious human agent acts within a living, objective order, using free will to bring rational harmony out of chaotic raw existence.

My questions are:

Which historical philosophers or contemporary commentators have explicitly attempted to synthesize existential freedom with Platonic or Schellingian metaphysics?

Is it coherent within academic philosophy to hold that an individual's "essence" is existentially forged through an intentional commitment to objective Platonic forms?

I've always been given the definition of "love of wisdom" in class, but I feel it's a terrible definition. First of all, practically everyone loves learning about at least a few subjects, and besides, there are many disciplines like engineering, science, or even art that seek wisdom without necessarily being "philosophy." Another thing I don't understand about this definition is why "loving" something means practicing it. I can love animals and not be a biologist, or love cars without being a mechanic. So, what is philosophy?

Hey i have just started my journey into philosophy and while im reading marcus aurelius‘s meditations im noticing that in the beginning of book 2 he often warns not to waste ur time with books. Does he aim at entertainment books with this statement and warns not to waste ur time with leisure (which can be interpreted to stop using social media or watching endless tv shows in modern times) or is he really against reading books as a way to educate urself and learn from them? I cant really imagine that since hes also a philosopher and has likely read books from other philosophers himself but im not really sure.

The metaphysical version of correspondence theory can be stated as so: “A proposition is true if and only if reality is as the proposition represents it to be.”

The problem here is that mental representations ordinarily don’t represent things in reality very accurately.

Let’s grant that they can represent them enough. To what extent is this representation counted as enough?

Hi everyone,

I am currently researching the transition from traditional Aristotelian logic to modern mathematical logic. I know that Gottlob Frege played a crucial role in this shift, but I would like to better understand the specifics of his critique.

Specifically, I am interested in:

• The core problematic: What standard Aristotelian assumptions did Frege find most problematic?

• His novel contributions: What exactly did Frege introduce to logic to overcome these limitations (e.g., his system of quantifiers and predicates)?

• Examples: Are there any classic examples that illustrate how Frege's solutions work compared to the traditional syllogistic approach?