Questions tagged [reference-request]
This tag should be used when the question is asking for specific references.
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Is there any philosophical work on profanity? [closed]
Is there any philosophical work about profanity, f-words, dirty words?
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How is justifield Derek Parfit's Agony Argument in Subjectivism?
Derek Parfit in his book climbing the mountain, does argues that moral subjectivism[1] does no survive what he calls The Agony Argument:
Substantive subjective theories can have implausible ...
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The treatment of real numbers as 'objects'
In school we learn about numbers through physical amounts and we take two things and put them with two other things and call it four things in total.
Is this view of numbers as amounts slightly 'old ...
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What is process philosophy by Alfred North Whitehead?
What I am trying.
I want to know this process philosophy that Alfred North Whitehead is talking about.
Problem I am facing.
I read some articles and watched some videos on what this philosophy is. But ...
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Resources about critiques of Strong Rule Utilitarism
I would like to read critiques against Strong Rule Utilitarianism[1], but avoiding those that only treat it as another problematic Deontological Moral Theory.
[1]: Strong Rule Utilitarianism means: ...
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Why is no used the Utilitarian "And what?" answer?
Utilitarismus is very hated for going against things like the right to live, steal and so on.
Utilitarians typically have tried to reconcile the doctrine with this common-sense aspect of ethics.
But ...
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Reference request for the philosophy of meditation
I would like to read some texts on the philosophy of or the philosophy behind meditation. By meditation, I mean the contemplative practice in certain Eastern religions, where one pays close attention ...
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Philosophy of social media
I recently came across this Instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckv00Fuo7po/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
A person says, "thank you for ruining my life" and Instagram replies, "I'...
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Examples of inductivist theories of ethics?
In the "General Remarks" introduction to Mill's Utilitarianism, he distinguishes between "intuitive" and "inductive" schools of ethics. By "intuitive" I take ...
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Looking for a reference on Aristotle
I just started reading Mortimer Adler's "Aristotle for everybody". In chapter 1, Adler is discussing Aristotle's distinction between living and non-living bodies and plant and animal bodies. ...
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Have any contemporary political philosophers argued for autocracy?
Have any contemporary political philosophers argued for autocracy? I know that very few go near fascism anymore (I read this in an encyclopaedia twenty years ago: history completely disproved it all).
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Can the laws of mathematics and even logic change over time?
Can the laws of mathematics and even logic change over time? Like, maybe at one time there were finitely many prime numbers and now there are infinitely many? Or maybe at one time the laws of ...
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Non-Kantian answers to the Kantian question of representation
In his book “Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy” Robert Hanna says that the central concern of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is to answer the question of “how can the same judgment be at ...
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What is the definition of a set of "purely mathematical" objects?
I was originally planning to post this on Math Stack Exchange, but I decided this was a better stack exchange. According to the axioms of set theory, there exists a set containing just an apple, and ...
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Reference requests for the philosophical analysis of sentences
I am looking for texts that analyze the concept of sentences from a philosophical perspective. I know there is a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on propositions, but that is not exactly ...
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Are things "caused" by the butterfly effect actually caused by them?
I once read that even a humble medieval peasant merely had to sneeze to cause events hundreds of years in the future:
"Not just Napoleon but the humblest medieval peasant had only to
sneeze in ...
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Which philosopher said the fear of anticipating an evil is worse than the evil itself?
Which philosopher said the fear of anticipating an evil is worse than the evil itself?
Perhaps Aristotle (in Nichomachean Ethics?) said something along these lines?
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What is the difference between philosophical logic and the philosophy of logic?
Is there a difference between philosophical logic and the philosophy of logic? If so, can someone elucidate the distinction between the two? Also, what are some references on the philosophy of logic?
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Can even the laws of logic vary from one possible world to another?
In my previous question, here: Can truths about the natural numbers vary across possible worlds?, I started off by saying that "The truths of logic are the same in all possible worlds". But ...
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Are there in-depth theories of parentheses? [closed]
For example, mustache-emphasized set theories might be styled theories of parenthetical inclusion, extralogical in nature (so something like pairing conjunction with intersection and inclusive ...
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Looking for Marxist or Frankfurt-style critiques of advertising
There is undoubtedly a great deal of cultural criticism of advertising, but I'm looking for a certain angle on the topic. For Marx, the commodity is the primary "atom" of capitalist society ...
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Prohibitionism versus liberalism
What are some philosophical arguments in favor of against prohibitionism or liberalism? That is, in particular, whether a society should be more tolerant and allowing of certain behaviors, or people ...
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Which Philosophers Wrote Directly About Education?
I assume the list is short, so can someone please list which philosophers (not pure educationalists) wrote entire books or treatises dedicated to education? I can name a few, for example, John Dewey's ...
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Enantiodromia--How Do Symbols Undergo an Inversion of Meaning?
I am looking for writings in philosophy, semiotics, or psychology that deal with the shifts and ultimately the inversion of practical meaning in symbols. This would be something like Orwell's concept ...
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Is Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy a good place for beginners?
I have always been told that SEP is good place to start for any unfamiliar philosophical topic. However, I feel that many of its articles are too academic and unfriendly. One entry always leads to ...
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Are formal languages/systems as general as bounded, clear axioms and finding consequences?
I’ve tried searching PhilPapers for holistic accounts of formal/languages/systems and I’m not very successful, the best I’ve found being https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jafpos1956/12/1/12_1_15/...
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Philosophy books for mathematicians
Are there any books on philosophy that make relatively heavy use of math? I'm not looking for anything on formal epistemology, logic, or philosophy of math. Two examples of books that fall in the ...
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Which philosophers, if any, have claimed that a limited amount of evil is possible? [closed]
In Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, there is a footnote somewhere that quotes an unidentified source as saying something like, "The Messiah will not come until the Tears of Esau have ceased ...
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What do philosophers call the aspirational ideal of deliberative decision-making / governance?
I'm interested in the oldest and/or most notable articulation of what a potential ideal decision-making / governance approach would aspire to.
More concretely, consider an idealized decision-making ...
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Intelligence as a prerequisite for consciousness/sentience?
Google engineer Blake Lemoine recently made headlines by claiming that he thought Google's LaMDA conversational AI was sentient, based on his interactions with it. (E.g.: https://www.wired.com/story/...
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More about the relations between properties of parts and their wholes?
Hi I'm trying to discover any metaphysical necessities that connect the properties of a whole and the properties of its parts. I know the properties of the whole can be different than the properties ...
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Is there a second-order priority problem in deontology?
In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls brings up the notion of priority problems in ethics, and addresses (at length) two in particular: the definitional relation of the right and the good, and the ...
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Dialethic machines and incompatibilist free will
Preamble: although I believe in the LNC for Aristotelian/Quinean reasons and the argument from explosions to boot, and am not altogether adept at modal logic in general, much less counterpossible ...
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References for EPR and local realism
I am learning about EPR and local realism in physics. However, in that context, nobody talks about the philosophical implications and deeper meaning of local realism, objective reality, hidden ...
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Do concepts transcend reality?
I often come to wonder about a specific, quite abstract question. Since I am not used to writing about such thing, it is very difficult for me to explain, but I will try to present my reasoning by ...
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Where Can I Find Discussion on Paradoxes Within Philosophical Positions?
I have become interested in the idea of paradox recently. Not logical paradoxes though, but when philosophical ideas are pursued consistently, and end up arguing against that position. The most basic ...
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"All there is are cells" as a philosophical school of thought
Like atomists since Demokrit and Lucretius believe that all matter is made out of atoms, biologists since Schleiden and Schwann believe that all living matter is made out of cells.
But since atomism ...
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Ideas of a truth that sustains?
Question
Given the modern day age of misinformation, surely someone has pondered and tested their ideas of a truth that sustains (a truth that sustains refers to the ideas that sustain the confidence ...
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What are some of the best rebuttals or alternatives to Ted Kaczynski's (aka the Unabomber) philosophy of technology?
In his manifesto* "Industrial Society and its Future", the mathematician, philosopher, and terrorist Ted Kaczynski espouses a deeply pessimistic view of the effects of technology on society. ...
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Do any philosophers say surreal numbers are reason to doubt platonism?
Not trying to be inflammatory at all, this is a genuine (maybe dumb) question.
Especially in regards to the genesis of the surreals, which was Conway thinking about Go endgames. They seem among the ...
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Looking for an introduction to "possible worlds" aimed at the deeply skeptical
NB: this question is a reference request.
I have already read countless introductions to modal logic (the latest one being Chapter 10 of @PeterSmith's Beginning Mathematical Logic: A Study Guide1).
...
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Help finding a philosophy webpage that used Socratic dialogues
I'm looking for a page that had debates structured around a Socratic dialogue where one side was illustrated as an angel and the other as a machine or robot. It was quite minimalist in design. Hope ...
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Does the universe obey the laws of physics?
Is it the case that the universe obeys the laws of physics? I believe there is a misunderstanding about what the laws of physics actually is. I believe that the laws of physics merely describe what ...
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Where can I learn more about Ancient Egyptian philosophy?
So far, I've read the Ancient Egyptian philosophy article on wiki. Are there other sources where I can learn about this arcane and hazy subject?
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What secondary literature would you recommend to help me understand “The Sickness unto Death”?
I would like to know if there are any secondary literature that would help me understand main themes of this book and make it more understandable. So far I have read a few primary sources (Plato’s ...
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Is studying philosophy harder than medicine? [closed]
If anyone has some kind of experience studying both philosophy and medicine, I would like to know which one was more intimidating and hard to understand.
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Looking for the name of "if everyone is x, no one is x"
Usually when I browse this forum, I see many people ask for the names of fallacies. Currently, I'm looking for the name of the philosophical position that goes something like, "if everyone is x, ...
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Who first defined truth as "adæquatio rei et intellectus"?
António Manuel Martins claims (@44:41 of his lecture "Fonseca on Signs") that the origin of what is now called the correspondence theory of truth,
Veritas est adæquatio rei et intellectus.
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Book recommendation for introduction to analytic philosophy for math major
I am a second year pure math major at university. I took a class on social theory last semester, and did not enjoy it very much because the texts seemed lean toward obscurantism to the point of ...
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Is "A history of Philosophy - from the Pre-Socratics to Plotinus" by Frederick Copleston useful for a beginner?
I have read Plato' dialogues and have some general knowledge about philosophy thanks to Michael Sugrue's lectures on youtube. Is this book useful for a beginner like me?
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