Category
Metaphysics
What exists, and what is it to be? Time, causes, freedom and necessity.
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What does “primacy of existence” (asalat al-wujud) mean in plain terms?
I've read that Mulla Sadra's central doctrine is the primacy or "fundamentality" of existence over essence. I've also read that this is the opposite of a view held by Suhrawardi, or Mir Damad, or both. I understand the words but not the…
Started by Reza Tehrani3 replies -
When I stir stock the surface dips. What did Newton’s spinning bucket prove?
I run a kitchen in Dubai. When I stir a big pot of stock, the surface goes down in the middle and up at the sides. I never thought about it until I read that Newton used a bucket of water doing…
Started by Joel D'Souza3 replies -
Bent when sitting, straight when standing: what is the problem of temporary intrinsics?
I hit a passage in my weekend metaphysics reading I could not follow, about something David Lewis called the problem of temporary intrinsics. The example: I am bent when I sit and straight when I stand. Both are true of me. But…
Started by Vikram Sethi3 replies -
Why did the Vaiśeṣikas count direction as a substance?
I teach physics and spend weekends exposing miracle tricks for a rationalist association, so I like the Indian schools that tried to describe the world piece by piece. The Vaiśeṣika list of nine substances is a favourite of mine: earth, water, fire,…
Started by Arvind Poojary3 replies -
Dōgen’s “being-time”: is time something things have, or something they are?
Dōgen (1200–1253), founder of the Sōtō Zen school in Japan, wrote a short and very strange essay in 1240 called "Uji", usually translated "Being-Time", which became part of his Shōbōgenzō. Its central claim is that time is not a container things exist…
Started by Reza Tehrani2 replies -
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 sense that we are in it. Almost nobody follows him…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak1 reply -
Karma as moral causation: does the theory hold together?
The doctrine of karma says that actions have consequences for the agent that go beyond their visible effects, ripening in this life or future lives. It is shared, in different forms, by Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. As an engineer I want…
Started by Arjun Iyer1 reply -
Follow-up from my daughter: if every choice depends on conditions, is anyone free?
Yesterday you helped me explain dependent origination to my fourteen-year-old. Thank you again. She liked the rice. Then she asked the next question, as I said she would. If everything arises from conditions, then my choices also arise from conditions: my mood,…
Started by Nuwan PereraAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Reading group: The Coordinates of Thought
This is the reading group for The Coordinates of Thought, the book this site grew out of. The categories, parts and thinker profiles here follow its map. Use this thread for anything the book raises: a card you want to argue with,…
Started by Syed Raheel ShahzadReply first (no replies yet) -
The grounding revival brought metaphysics back without bringing back a method
For much of the twentieth century, substantive metaphysics was out of fashion. Carnap argued that many ontological questions were either trivial within a framework or merely practical choices about which framework to use. Quine brought ontology back, but in a tightly regimented…
Started by Oskar NybergReply first (no replies yet) -
How can you talk about non-being without turning it into a something?
Every morning I practise taiji in the park and every evening I read a few lines of the Laozi with my grandson's dictionary. Chapter 40 says, roughly, that the things of the world are born from being, and being is born from…
Started by Liu MingqiaoAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Did non-Euclidean geometry sink Kant’s view of space?
I am a retired teacher in Freiburg, finally reading the Critique of Pure Reason properly, and I am stuck on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Kant says space is not a thing in itself and not a set of relations among things in themselves.…
Started by Henrike VogelAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Could the constants have been different? Spinoza says no; the Ashʿarites say God could change them tomorrow
I model oil reservoirs. Every model has parameters, and every morning I change some of them to see what would have happened. So the question "could the physical constants have been different?" feels very concrete to me, and I've found two answers…
Started by Abdulrahman Al-BassamAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Bundle theory or bare particulars: which embarrassment would you rather live with?
I tutor logic and keep running into this in tutoring sessions, so I'd like to hear people argue it properly. Bundle theory: an object is nothing but a bundle of properties. There is no underlying thing that "has" the redness and the…
Started by Ana Clara FerreiraAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Advaita says the Self is not the doer. Is that an answer to the free will problem, or a way of leaving it?
I want to put my own tradition's answer on the free will question to the test, because I suspect it is either very deep or a polite evasion, and I can't decide which. The karmic traditions in India share a puzzle. Acts…
Started by Arjun IyerReply first (no replies yet) -
Naturalisms before the word: the Cārvākas, Wang Chong and Xunzi’s Heaven
I want to test the distinction this site keeps drawing between kinds of naturalism (ontological, methodological, ethical, epistemological) against three older figures who are often lumped together as "early naturalists". The Cārvākas (Lokāyata). Almost all of their own texts are lost; we…
Started by Arvind PoojaryReply first (no replies yet) -
Where do Zhu Xi’s li and qi fall in the substance-versus-process divide?
I recently saw a comparative table that sorted traditions by their answer to "what is real?". It placed Neo-Confucianism under "pattern and material force, inseparable in every thing" and left it outside the neat line it drew between substance traditions (Aristotle, Vedānta,…
Started by Lin Pei-shanAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Free will explained: the main positions, and what physics does and doesn’t settle
A physics reader's guide to the four classic answers, the options that don't fit the usual grid, and the question underneath them all.
Started by Lars EriksenReply first (no replies yet)
