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Question
One question: Explain (can have an accepted answer) or Open (several argued answers)
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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 philosophical problem underneath? Is it a problem about values (which…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman3 replies -
How can I know nothing is red and green all over, when I’ve never checked every red thing?
A friend gave me this puzzle and I can't stop thinking about it. A surface cannot be completely red and completely green at the same time, in the same place. I am sure of this. But I have not checked every red…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies -
Al-Ghazali says some knowledge has to be tasted. Is that an argument, or a way out of one?
Last month I read al-Ghazali's Deliverance from Error in an English translation I found online, and one part keeps bothering me. He goes through the theologians, the philosophers and the Batinites, finds each of them lacking, and then turns to the Sufis.…
Started by Fajar Nugroho5 replies -
Is “who are you to judge?” a moral position, or just a way of ending the conversation?
At a family dinner last week my older cousin said that a mutual friend had behaved badly by lying to his parents about failing a course. My other cousin said, “Who are you to judge? Morality is subjective anyway.” Everyone went quiet…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies -
I have forgotten most of my childhood. On Locke’s view, am I still that child?
I am on a gap year and reading whatever I can find. This week it was a summary of Locke on personal identity. As I understood it, Locke says you are the same person as far back as your consciousness reaches to…
Started by Fajar Nugroho5 replies -
Eliminative materialism: how can anyone claim that beliefs don’t exist?
Another beginner question from me, sorry. I read a short summary of Paul Churchland's eliminative materialism and I can't get past the first step. As I understand it, he says that our everyday way of explaining people ("she went to the shop…
Started by Fajar Nugroho3 replies -
What is the actual difference between Pyrrhonian and Academic sceptics?
I have been reading about doubt, mostly because of al-Ghazālī. Every book I pick up mentions two kinds of ancient sceptics, Pyrrhonians and Academics, and then moves on as if the difference were obvious. It is not obvious to me. From what…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies -
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 should apply that meaning, and changes should come through amendment,…
Started by Deepa Kartha2 replies -
What is the “no miracles” argument for believing electrons are real?
I've been reading al-Ghazālī's Deliverance from Error, where he doubts the senses and then doubts reason. After that I started wondering about things nobody can see at all. Nobody has ever seen an electron. My physics teacher says they are as real…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies -
How does one contradiction let you prove absolutely anything?
A friend studying computer science told me that in logic "a contradiction implies everything". If you accept one contradiction, you can prove the moon is green, that I'm a king, anything. This sounds like a trick. Contradictions are bad, sure, but why…
Started by Fajar Nugroho3 replies -
What do the strange names Barbara, Celarent and Darii actually mean?
I'm working through an old logic textbook my uncle left at our house. There is a page with a Latin verse that starts "Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque..." and then a lot of other names like Cesare and Baroco. The book just says…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies -
Turing never said passing his test means a machine thinks? Then what was the test for?
This month my reading is about computers and minds. My cousin studies informatics in Bandung and he told me the Turing test is simple: if a machine can fool you in a conversation, it thinks. Done. Then I read an introduction that…
Started by Fajar Nugroho5 replies -
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 schools. What are they, and why does the number matter?
Started by Rohan Desai3 replies -
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 is nothing to us, because when we exist death isn't…
Started by Rohan Desai3 replies -
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 say this is strong evidence of a designer. Others respond…
Started by Omar Ragab4 replies -
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. What exactly does functionalism claim? Why do people think it…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen3 replies -
Eighteen and on a gap year: should I read the philosophers themselves or an introduction first?
My parents still call my gap year wasting time. Last month I read al-Ghazālī's Deliverance from Error, his account of his crisis of doubt, and I haven't stopped thinking about it. It was the first time a book felt like it was…
Started by Fajar Nugroho6 replies -
What is Benacerraf’s dilemma, in words a school leaver can follow?
I finished senior high school this year and I'm taking a gap year, which my parents call wasting time. I've been reading about whether numbers are discovered or invented, because my maths teacher always said "we discover mathematics, we don't make it…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies -
A random string and a sonnet can carry the same information? Then what is Shannon measuring?
Yesterday's lecture was about information, and the lecturer said something that has been bothering me through two full shifts: in Claude Shannon's theory, a random string of letters and a sonnet of the same length can carry the same amount of information.…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies -
If morality depends on God, what is my atheist friend doing when she keeps her promises?
My uncle says that without God there's no reason to be good, and that people without religion only pretend to be moral. My closest friend from school is an atheist, and she's the most honest person I know. She returned money a…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies -
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 warmly to Lucilius. So what did they actually think about…
Started by Elin Hedqvist4 replies -
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 a hierarchy: an object language, a metalanguage that talks about…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak3 replies -
Does translating philosophy change the philosophy?
Philosophical texts are the ones that keep translators up at night. Heidegger's Dasein is left untranslated in English. Sartre's pour-soi becomes "for-itself", which sounds nothing like ordinary English. Hegel's Aufhebung becomes "sublation", a word English speakers learn only from Hegel. Each choice…
Started by Claire Dubois5 replies -
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 to define division by zero, not quite successfully. Earlier, the…
Started by Vikram Sethi3 replies -
Who is morally responsible when an AI system causes harm?
Andreas Matthias coined the term "responsibility gap" in 2004: when a learning system behaves in ways its designers couldn't predict, it seems nobody is fully responsible. The designers didn't intend the outcome, the operators couldn't foresee it, and the system isn't a…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman3 replies -
What exactly is kasb (acquisition), and is it just compatibilism with God in it?
I have been reading about free will because it is the question that will not leave me alone. In Indonesia the answer I grew up with is that God creates everything, including my actions, but I am still responsible for them. When…
Started by Fajar Nugroho5 replies -
If a system passes every behavioural test, what would still be missing?
Suppose a future system passes every test we can think of. It holds conversations, explains its reasoning, makes jokes that land, learns new tasks quickly, and reacts appropriately to pain-like signals in a robot body. Some people would say there's nothing more…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen4 replies -
I know within ten seconds whether a room will laugh, but I can’t say how. Does that count as knowing?
After a few hundred gigs you develop a sense for a room. I walk on, say two lines, and I know whether tonight is going to work. I'm right far more often than I'm wrong. Promoters have started asking me before they…
Started by Gemma Pritchard5 replies -
Why is saying “I promise” not true or false, like other sentences?
I found an idea I don't fully understand. The book says that when I tell my mother "I promise I'll be home by ten", I am not describing anything. I am not reporting a promise that exists somewhere else. Saying it is…
Started by Fajar Nugroho3 replies -
Do animals have conscious experiences, and how could we ever tell?
In 2012 a group of neuroscientists signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, stating that non-human animals, including all mammals and birds and some others such as octopuses, have the neurological substrates of conscious experience. In 2024 the New York Declaration on Animal…
Started by Priya Raghavan4 replies