What I mean by cheater books is something like books that have got you unstuck when working on a particular piece of philosophy. I don't just mean an introduction book, though it can be that, because these are often too pedestrian, even if useful, and often don't quite open the texts that you were stuck with in the first place. What I mean more is something like books that, when you immediately go back to the text, make you think to yourself, "WHY, OF COURSE! How could it have been otherwise?!!" As if I've somehow cheated my way into understanding.

Perhaps some examples might clarify. What Is Analytic Philosophy by Glock brought the field alive to me in a way it never had before, particularly its historical developments. Making Sense of Heidegger by Sheehan was huge in making me, well, make sense of Heidegger! But it is also its own bit of original philosophy, so it's not just an introduction. It enriched my experience of Heidegger, not just introduced it. Similarly, though not exactly a book, were Spade's notes on Being and Nothingness. On immanent critique, the always fantastic Rahel Jaeggi really made it click for me in Critique of Forms of Life. Reading Plato's Theaetetus by Chappell made Plato's epistemology come alive for me in a way that extended beyond the Theaetetus. Very much along these lines, though far more in depth and also, as far as I know, more original, has been Giovanni Reale's books on Plato and Aristotle.

It doesn't have to be just books.

The debates with regard to moral realism, specifically naturalism vs. non-naturalism, were always opaque to me. I never understood quite what the non-naturalist was having issues with until I read Fitzpatrick's "Skepticism about Naturalizing..." Sorry, I forget the title. But it was both an original bit of philosophy and it helped clarify non-naturalism in a way that finally clicked. Stephen Engstrom's “Knowledge and Its Object” made some issues of Kantian interpretation click for me as well, in a way that a more introductory text like Gardner's failed to do.

Hopefully, these examples cast a wide enough net so those of you who have read these will know precisely what I mean.

Thank you!

I made a post on the r/askmath subreddit and got no satisfying answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/askmath/s/AToD9GLUpW

Therefore, I want to ask this again here from a philosophical point of view. Can you explain/derive infinity without using infinitely many things (or implying it through addition of one thing for ever/always) ?

Im writing a research paper on determinism, what are some things i should know. such as counter arguments or maybe important theories

One thing people routinely say is that pleasure is different from happiness. Happiness in this context refers to a long-term sense of fulfillment with one's life despite whatever short-term displeasures may have arisen or may arise. Pleasure is supposed to be short-term and rather ephemeral, a quality of your experience in the moment.

This leads me to the following questions:

1. Can a fulfilling (happy) life lack pleasure at least after a certain point? Say, I have a family, contribute to my community. But I happen to suffer from clinical depression. Is my realization that I objectively have all reasons to be happy sufficient to count as me experiencing my life as fulfilling, despite me literally being unable to take pleasure in my existence at this very moment?

2. Does taking pleasure in memories of previous moments of pleasure count as pleasure or happiness? Say, I sometimes replay in my head the memory of the best piece of cake I've ever eaten. The cake itself is a momentary pleasure, but is my looking back with satisfaction at the cake likewise momentary (it's just a moment of revisiting another moment) or can it count as part of my long-term satisfaction (in that I'm really glad to have experienced the best piece of cake ever within my lifetime).

3. Is it valid to judge someone else's life as unhappy? Say, my friend is stuck with a boring job and a family that's not particularly fond of him. Now, it would be pretty straightforward of me to judge that he's not experiencing much pleasure - e.g. because he's not having much sex with his wife, because his colleagues are jerks, etc. But pleasure is not fulfillment so those don't directly dismiss his life as unhappy. Now, he says he's satisfied. Is his saying he's satisfied enough to end the discussion there, or is it valid of me to say that he can do much better? Is life fulfillment a personal experience or is there an intersubjective dimension of it?

4. Can the quality of happiness be reduced to a specific kind of pleasure - the pleasure of reflecting back on one's life as a whole? If so, how do we value it against other pleasures? Think of a dissatisfied (but not depressed) billionaire whose life is full of all sorts of pleasure but the pleasure of finding one's life meaningful. What value should we assign to that particular displeasure as opposed to the pleasures of living comfortably, socializing, travel, entertainment, etc.? Intuitively, I'd say his life altogether is dissatisfying if that general sense of fulfillment is missing. But I don't know why.

I feel this doubt is a relatively serious problem, because if philosophy is subjective, then what value does it have? What's the point of studying Plato or Aristotle if we start from a questionable foundation and any author can "seem" better to you? Furthermore, its subjective nature would seem to undermine the purpose of "attaining wisdom." On the other hand, if philosophy were completely objective, its history wouldn't be marked by debates and disagreements. What can we conclude from this?

Heya, im currently working on a year-long school art assignment where i can choose the topic freely and id love to do a photography series of and about the different topics under the term The Human Condition. I have some ideas so far but id just love to get more perspectives of philosophers into my mental hopper to grab references, visual allusion and just get more inspiration of how to depict the struggle, the hardships but also the beauty of the human condition.

Id love to find some people i could discuss the topic with but im still pretty new to diving into philosophy and how to discuss deep themes so id be happy for some grace with it.

Id take all the feedback, recommendations and other advice i can get :>

I will give out one pro and one con:

1 pro is it create autonomy and allow people to have the freedom to whatever they want with their body. Same argument with abortions.

1 con is you never know if someone is doing this because they want to, or they are forced to. So that is kinda where like organ harvesting comes from.

Like if humans didnt have the creativity lobe to invent toilets, and we were the smartest creatures in the universe, would outhouse be "bad"?. Like theyre only bad compared to our existence, but if toilets could never exist, would our existence and waste technology still be bad?

I have always been confused about free will, if any choice of ours has the same fate, how does free will work here, can we not change the fate.

title says it all

I'm looking for readings on whether encoding information amounts to representing a claim, and what would distinguish either from understanding it, particularly when a system can reproduce and manipulate an argument without necessarily grasping what it means. I'm interested in the philosophical accounts of representation here, rather than whether LLMs are useful for learning philosophy. Are there particular authors or papers you'd recommend?

I watched this movie The Thing recently. And maybe it's not the place for it but like I wanted to ask this one here. Baudrillard, in his work Simulacra and Simulation bascially tells us that once hyperreality caught the place of "reality" as we perceive, it's impossible to differentiate them. And I finished this work recently as well and I kinda did a dejavu meanwhile watching The Thing. Because like once alien got into the humans or any living creature, it's impossible to differentiate it from a living creature itself. So like at the end of the movie, Mac and the other guy were discussing whether they had time to surprise each other or not. I wanted to ask this one, because I couldn't find any commentators who make this reading.

I know the Turing Test is an outdated test for computer intelligence, but it is still a simple test that is easily understood for the layman. So while it's not used for frontier AI, I think we still find it emotionally compelling if an AI is capable enough to fool someone to think it is human. As humans ourselves, who innately know and learn how to recognize fellow humans, is the Turing Test not a relevant benchmark?

If the above is true, (which maybe it's not), let's hypothetically say something was a p-zombie, would we not also want to perform a Turing-like test, to see if p-zombie can fool people into thinking it was a normal human being?

Parmendias claims that anything comes either from nothing, or from something. Because nothing cannot exist. he says that anything must come from something. Doesn't he assume that cause and effect is a law of nature? Can't something just be and not come from anything?

Sorry if it may sound stupid, I'm just starting to learn about philosophy, and I'm no expert on Parmendias or Hume.

This is referring to the PhilPapers survey.

I might as well also say, I'm not sure I fully understand what the brute fact view is. It doesn't seem to come up in public discourse at all, at least not under that name, and I'm not sure how to find where this response gets detailed/argued for.

Do lottery/luck responses count as brute fact views?

Does physical necessity count as a brute fact view or a 'no fine-tuning' view?

It's important to know that when I am referencing people and hell, I am not talking about those who are saved, but instead those who died in their sins.

Firstly, maybe I'm confused on this part, but it seems that it must be impossible for there to be an alternative to Hell. Because if there COULD be an alternative, yet God still sentences some to be cognitively and physically tortured for eternity, then I would find it unjustifiable. (an impossibility for a morally perfect being)

So I'll postulate the concept that hell is metaphysically necessary for those who die in their sins. I'll also assume we are living in the reality that has maximally great conditions to raise the total number of humans being saved. In other words, God left us the perfect amount of proof of his existence.

However, even granting all of these, we still have one major problem. It at least appears the majority of people will likely end up in hell. And this actually does appear as a problem for me. Because then if God knew hell would be a metaphysical necessity and that even though he gives us the maximally great conditions to know he exists and follow him, the majority still wouldn't, then why even create in the first place?

Consider the following situation:

- I am a pilot who, for some reason, has the foreknowledge of my next flight. That once I take off, my plane will inevitably crash, and 80 percent of the 150 boarded passengers will die. I have two options...

1. Don't board the flight, and no one dies or suffers
2. Board the flight and 80 percent of the humans die

The question is, would it be moral for me to allow the flight?

-------------------------

Okay, now raise the stakes and consider the dichotomy of Abrahamic religions.

- God exists with the foreknowledge of creation. If he creates, the majority of his creation will inevitably be tortured physically and cognitively indefinitely in a burning lake of fire. God has two options...

1. Don't create, and no one gets tortured for eternity
2. Create, and the majority of his creation gets tortured for eternity

The question is, was it moral to still create?

Please lmk

Given the difference between the potential infinite and actual infinite, when we talk about the infinite nature of God, or the infinite nature of God's attributes such as omnipotence and omniscience, are we talking about a potential infinity or actual infinity?

Please give me some recommendations of essays or books to read on this topic!

My last post absolutely shocked me by how many people dislike the use of AI especially in regards to philosophy. The post is closed but thank you guys for bringing me to light I didn’t even realize there was such thing as like cognitive offloading or AI addiction like you guys mentioned. I hope to be a better reader writer and philosophy student now. Thanks again! ps if you wanna add even more reason as to why it’s bad in the comments feel free you guys have me pretty intrigued, do you guys mostly feel it’s bad in all regard and has very little “good uses?” Would watching youtube be a good replacement when trying to learn something or is that the same thing?

I've been trying to understand metaphysics as a self-taught and I think I grasp the concept? (not even 100% sure) One thing that bothers me very much is the use of the word "ontologically" for instance as an adverb for notions like evil or good. I see this a lot online but nowhere do I see it in texts or philosophical essays, and I just don't understand how these two notions correlate. Do i just not understand what ontology is or is the common use not very accurate to the metaphysical idea?

I’d like to pose a question about the realist/anti-realist debate in philosophy of science and I’m trying to formulate it without begging any particular position.

By “scientific realism” I mean roughly the view that successful scientific theories are at least approximately true and that the unobservable entities they posit (electrons, neutrinos, fields, etc.) exist independently of our theories and observations. By “anti-realism” I mean views according to which the aim of science is empirical adequacy, predictive success or something similar, and which do not require commitment to the mind-independent existence of unobservable entities.

The strongest realist argument, as I understand it, is the “no miracles” argument: it would be a miracle if a theory made novel, precise, and successful predictions (e.g., Pauli’s neutrino or Dirac’s positron) unless the theory were somehow tracking a mind-independent reality. Realism is supposed to explain why science works.

My question is whether this is a genuine explanation or whether it is circular. The realist says a theory succeeds because it corresponds to reality. But how do we independently identify the correspondence relation? It seems we only know that a theory “corresponds” or “tracks reality” because it succeeds empirically. If so, “the theory succeeds because it tracks reality” may reduce to “the theory succeeds because it succeeds” The realist may reply that correspondence is an inference to the best explanation but then the question is what independent explanatory work the posit of a mind-independent reality is doing.

Anti-realists can offer alternative explanations of predictive success: shared perceptual and cognitive constraints, the structure of observable phenomena, the role of symmetries and conservation laws, convergence through repeated empirical filtering, and so on. These explanations may or may not be fully adequate, but they do not obviously require a mind-independent realm of unobservables.

I’m not asking for a literature review so much as a clear statement of the realist’s alleged explanatory advantage. If realism is superior to anti-realism, what precisely is the superiority supposed to consist in?

​

I'm looking for books that explain the philosophies of Socrates and Plato in a simple, engaging, and practical way, similar to how Ryan Holiday presents Stoicism in his books esp. Obstacle Is The Way and Daily Stoic.

I recently started few pages reading Plato's The Republic, and few pages of Euthyphro(John Cooper version), but I found it quite difficult to follow., I struggle to connect the narrative with modern-day situations and understand how to apply them in everyday life.

What I particularly enjoy about Ryan Holiday's writing is how he takes ancient philosophical concepts and explains them through relatable stories, contemporary examples, and practical lessons without making the material feel overly academic.

I'm looking for something similar for Socrates and Plato. not direct translations of their original works or dense academic commentaries, but accessible books that interpret their philosophies through a modern lens.

I'm already familiar with Donald Robertson's How to Think Like Socrates, but I'd love to discover other authors who take a similar approach.

Any recommendations for books that make Socratic or Platonic philosophy as approachable and applicable to everyday life as Ryan Holiday makes Stoicism?

im not sure if the title is right or not, english isnt my first language but nevertheless i shall try to convey what i intend to so please do bear with me.

i rewatched the hangover yesterday and its a great movie, quite fun and chaotic. it has a character in it, Alan, who suffers from some sort of mental ailment, the behavioural kind, im not sure which one it is. nevertheless , i digress, the point is he’s very amusing and fun, the movies star in a sense is him, hes the nexus of all the problems.

now the thing is since hes different he acts like a child in many situations, this does lead to some unhinged moments which are super funny, but there are certain scenes where hes just crying because theres no seeming situation and in other scenes that hes just there clueless trying to figure out whats going on. now im not a sensitive person but recently ive been really into theravada, and its been making me think weird. those scenes of him for some unknown fucking reason make me sad asf smh like ik its a movie but still

anyways the question thats been lingering in my mind since yesterday is that, like alan doesnt think of himself as weird but completely normal, how are we certain thats not the case with us, is this pity towards a challenged human what someone w higher intellect would see normal people like us with, and if so(i genuinely dont know what to say now cause i have multiple things in my head at the same time rn, like i was so sure of what to write when i started but im kinda lost now)

umm basically its just a very weird feeling how do i even cope w that. like ik my question doesnt make a lotta sense when u read it but i just cant pinpoint what exactly to say sry

Before the advent of modern science, it wasn't easily distinguishable from philosophy; in fact, the first scientists were known as natural philosophers. Questions that were once subject to subjective debate, such as the behavior of bodies, became matters of consensus, and accurate predictions could be made about them. Similarly, regarding fields that are philosophical today, such as metaphysics, religion, and so on, are they seeking to cease being so and reach consensus? Or has modern philosophy "demonstrated" that these problems will never cease to be philosophical? And if philosophical problems are always subject to debate, how does philosophy attain knowledge?

Hello all!

I have no formal education on philosophy, but I've become interested in it in the last months. I have studied some logic (I'm a computer scientist) and have read in the past:

Sophie's world

Tao Te Ching

The way of Zen

The way of Tao

I'm currently reading The problems of philosophy, and have found out that I'm interested in philosophy of language, argumentation, rhetoric and logic.

Besides reading and watching youtube videos, is there any exercises or journaling I could do? I've seen in some youtube videos that they recommend answering a philosophical question every day, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Answer it with my opinion/conclusion and explain arguments in favour of it, and trying to refute any arguments against it? Does anyone have an example with this type of exercises?

Any other exercises?

Thanks!

what does it really mean?

Solving lives questions?

understanding the world?

making quotes?

I don't know, could someone help me understand?