Coordinates of Thought: topics
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Are possible worlds real, or just a bookkeeping device?
David Lewis, in On the Plurality of Worlds (1986), argued that other possible worlds are just as real as ours. "Actual" is indexical, like "here". Our world is actual only in the…
Started by Tomasz Wójcik1 reply0 views -
What’s the difference between deduction, induction and abduction?
My students know "deduction" and "induction" from school, though they often mix them up. I recently read that Charles Sanders Peirce added a third type of reasoning, abduction. Could someone explain all…
Started by Vikram Sethi1 reply0 views -
What’s the difference between a valid argument and a sound one?
I'm a literature student, completely new to logic. In a debate thread here someone said an argument was "valid but not sound" and I realised I didn't understand the difference. To me…
Started by Kavya Menon3 replies1 view -
Is “Islamic philosophy” a useful label?
Some colleagues prefer "Arabic philosophy". Others say "philosophy in the Islamic world". Each has problems. "Islamic philosophy" suggests that it's all religious, or that all of it was done by Muslims. But…
Started by Layla Haddad2 replies0 views -
What did Ibn Sina mean by the “internal senses”?
In my history of psychology course, Ibn Sina was mentioned for his theory of "internal senses", and the lecturer said it was an early version of cognitive psychology. I'd love a clear…
Started by Elif Yıldız2 replies0 views -
What does “intersectionality” mean philosophically, beyond the slogan?
In journalism the word "intersectionality" is everywhere, and it's often used just to list identities. I know Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term in 1989, but I'd like to understand the original argument…
Started by Sana Mir2 replies0 views -
Can you be religious and a philosophical skeptic at the same time?
This semester I took a module on scepticism, Pyrrhonism, Descartes' demon and so on, and I found some of the arguments hard to answer. Now I'm wondering whether serious scepticism is compatible…
Started by Aoife Brennan2 replies0 views -
What is longtermism, and what’s the main objection to it?
Everyone in tech talks about longtermism. I know it's connected to effective altruism and William MacAskill's What We Owe the Future (2022). But I've never seen a clear explanation of the core…
Started by Rohan Desai2 replies0 views -
How does Ibn Sina’s proof of the Necessary Existent avoid the infinite regress problem?
I understand the basic structure: things that exist are either necessary in themselves or possible (contingent) in themselves. Contingent things need a cause. So there must be a necessary being. But why…
Started by Omar Farouk2 replies0 views -
Can a translation of a poem be as beautiful as the original?
I translate my own Malayalam poems into English and they always lose something. Sometimes they gain something, which is stranger. Edward FitzGerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859) is a famous case: a…
Started by Kavya Menon3 replies0 views -
Is there a coherent left-wing case for private property?
On the left, private property is usually treated as the problem. But there are traditions that defend it on egalitarian grounds: the small farmer's land, the artisan's workshop, the home that can't…
Started by Javier Morales2 replies0 views -
Teaching the Euthyphro to sixteen-year-olds: what works and what doesn’t?
The central question (10a) is whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved by the gods. My students grasp the dilemma in…
Started by Giulia Ferrante4 replies0 views -
What were Mencius and Xunzi arguing about when they disagreed about human nature?
I'm writing an essay comparing moral development theories, and my tutor suggested the debate between Mencius and Xunzi as a classical example. I understand Mencius said human nature is good and Xunzi…
Started by Elif Yıldız2 replies0 views -
What’s the difference between “deep ecology” and environmental ethics in general?
In my field, "deep ecology" is used both as a compliment and an insult. I know it comes from the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, but I'm not sure how it differs from…
Started by Anand Pillai2 replies0 views -
What does Merleau-Ponty mean by the “lived body”?
I am reading Phénoménologie de la perception (1945) in French and I keep circling the expression le corps propre, usually translated "one's own body" or "the lived body". I understand that he…
Started by Claire Dubois3 replies0 views -
Does an engineer’s training help or hurt in metaphysics?
I spent thirty-five years as an electrical engineer. When I read metaphysics, I notice my habits. I want to know the system boundary, the inputs and outputs, the failure modes. Sometimes this…
Started by Arjun Iyer4 replies0 views -
Did Indian epistemologists anticipate the Gettier problem?
In 1963 Edmund Gettier's three-page paper showed that justified true belief isn't sufficient for knowledge. You can have a justified belief that's true by luck. Indian philosophers seem to have discussed cases…
Started by Meera Kulkarni2 replies0 views -
Does a constitution need a shared conception of the good?
Rawls, in Political Liberalism (1993), argued that a just constitution should not be based on any single comprehensive doctrine, religious or secular. Citizens can support it from within their own views through…
Started by Hamza Qureshi3 replies0 views -
Is evolution compatible with objective morality?
Darwin argued in The Descent of Man (1871) that our moral sense evolved from social instincts. Sharon Street, in "A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value" (2006), turned this into a…
Started by Emeka Nwosu3 replies0 views -
Rumi and Spinoza: are they describing the same God?
People sometimes say Rumi and Spinoza are describing the same reality. Everything in God, God in everything, the self dissolving into a larger whole. But Rumi's God is a beloved who longs…
Started by Reza Tehrani3 replies0 views -
What is the “alignment problem” in philosophical terms?
At work people use "alignment" to mean very different things: making a chatbot polite, making it follow instructions, or making sure future systems don't pursue goals harmful to humans. What's the core…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman3 replies0 views -
Should judges interpret constitutions by their original meaning?
Originalism, defended in the US by Antonin Scalia (for example, in A Matter of Interpretation, 1997), says the meaning of a constitutional text is fixed at the time it was adopted. Judges…
Started by Deepa Nair2 replies0 views -
What are the pramāṇas, and how do the schools disagree about them?
I grew up hearing words like "pramāṇa" in family discussions without really knowing what they meant. I've started reading Indian philosophy properly and keep running into lists of pramāṇas that differ between…
Started by Rohan Desai3 replies0 views -
Is it irrational to want to be remembered after you die?
Founders talk a lot about "legacy". I've caught myself thinking about it too: building something that lasts after me. But I won't be around to enjoy being remembered. Epicurus argued that death…
Started by Rohan Desai3 replies0 views -
Is the fine-tuning of physical constants evidence for design?
Physicists say that if some constants of nature, like the strength of gravity or the cosmological constant, were even slightly different, no stars, chemistry or life could exist. Some philosophers and theologians…
Started by Omar Farouk4 replies0 views -
What is functionalism, and why do people think it supports machine consciousness?
People in AI discussions often say that "on a functionalist view" a machine could be conscious. I have a vague sense of what that means but I'd like to understand it properly.…
Started by Pieter de Jong3 replies0 views -
Did the Stoics really think all emotions are bad?
I keep hearing that the Stoics wanted us to feel nothing, to be like robots. But when I read Seneca's letters, he clearly feels grief, friendship and even joy. He writes very…
Started by Elin Lindqvist4 replies0 views -
Is the liar paradox a problem about language or about truth itself?
Take the sentence: this sentence is false. If true, it's false; if false, it's true. Tarski's response (1933) was that a language can't consistently contain its own truth predicate, so we need…
Started by Tomasz Wójcik3 replies0 views -
Does translating philosophy change the philosophy?
I translate for a living, and philosophical texts are the ones that keep me up at night. Heidegger's Dasein is left untranslated in English. Sartre's pour-soi becomes "for-itself", which sounds nothing like…
Started by Claire Dubois5 replies0 views -
Did Indian mathematicians have a philosophy of zero?
Brahmagupta's Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta (628 CE) gives rules for arithmetic with zero as a number: adding zero to a number leaves it unchanged, multiplying by zero gives zero, and so on. He also tried…
Started by Vikram Sethi3 replies0 views