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Philosophical Questions: 131 Big Questions and Their Rival Answers
131 big questions in philosophy with the answers philosophers have actually defended, side by side: 15 to start with, 13 contested ones, and all 131.
On this page
Philosophical questions are questions that no observation settles: Could you have done otherwise? Is an unjust law still a law? Does a life need a point? The facts can be agreed and the disagreement remains, because it is about what the facts mean. Below are the big questions in philosophy, each with its rival answers.
Most lists of deep philosophical questions give you three hundred one-liners and stop there. That is a list of prompts. This page does the other half: for each real question it shows the answers philosophers have actually defended, across traditions, side by side. All 131 come from the question cards of The Coordinates of Thought. Start with the fifteen hand-picked below, or go straight to the full list at the end.
What makes a question philosophical?
On the definition this site uses, a question belongs to philosophy when no observation settles it, not because the answer is unknowable, but because the disagreement is about what the observations mean. Compare “How old is the universe?” with “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Telescopes and physics answer the first. Every observation you could make for the second already assumes there is something.
Or take death. Everyone agrees on what happens to the body. Epicurus argued that death is nothing to us, since where death is, we are not. Others answer that death is bad because it deprives you of goods you would otherwise have had. No new fact about bodies would decide between them. That is the mark of a philosophical question: the facts are agreed, and the disagreement remains.
On this view, philosophy is better described as a discipline of justification than as a subject matter. It can be aimed at anything (science, law, love, humour) wherever a question resists the other methods we have. See What is philosophy? for more.
Are philosophical questions unanswerable?
Not in the way people usually mean. Most have several candidate answers; the difficulty is that there are several, each with serious reasons behind it and a known problem. So-called unanswerable questions are better described as unsettled ones.
Progress in philosophy looks different from progress in a laboratory. Options become clearer, hidden assumptions are exposed, and weak answers are retired. The Gettier cases, for example, showed that a belief can be true and justified and still not be knowledge, and every theory of knowledge since has had to deal with them. Some questions also left philosophy once a method arrived to settle them: questions about motion and the structure of matter became physics. What remains are the questions that resist other methods. Some philosophers go further and argue that certain questions dissolve on analysis; that view, too, appears among the rival answers.
How to think through a philosophical question
A short method works for any of the questions on this page.
- Say it precisely. “Do we have free will?” becomes “Could I have chosen otherwise, given everything that came before?” Vague questions produce vague disagreements.
- Write your first answer down before reading anyone else’s.
- List the rival answers. Usually there are four to eight serious ones. The cards give them.
- For each answer, find its best reason and its strongest objection. If you cannot state why a sensible person holds a view, you do not yet understand it.
- Test with a case. Thought experiments (a transplanted brain, a perfect deception, a machine that passes every test) show where an answer bends or breaks.
- Check what else you are committed to. An answer about free will has consequences for blame and punishment. Each card’s “Where it sits” line shows the connections.
- State your view and what would change your mind. Then put it to someone who disagrees: ask a question or join a debate.
15 deep philosophical questions and their rival answers
These are some of the most thought-provoking questions in philosophy, chosen for beginners and grouped by theme. Each line gives the main rival answers in brief; the card gives all of them, with who held them.
Existential questions: life, death and meaning
- Can something be bad for you if you are not there for it? Epicureans say death is nothing to us; the deprivation account says it takes goods you would have had; some argue that an endless life would be worse. Card 6.20
- Does a life need a point, and where would it come from? From God or a cosmic order; from engaging with things of real value; from whatever you care about; from nowhere (nihilism); or from nowhere, with persistence rather than despair as the response (absurdism). Card 6.21
- Why is there something rather than nothing? A necessary being explains it (theism); no explanation is owed (brute fact); the universe exists necessarily; or an eternal cosmos removes the question of a first cause, though not of why it exists. Card 1.2
Questions about the self and the mind
- Are you the same person you were at five? The same organism; the same brain; a continuous chain of memory and character; a self-told narrative; an immaterial soul; or, on the Buddhist no-self view, no permanent self at all. Card 1.3.2
- Why isn’t it all dark inside? △ Experience is wholly physical; it is a further, non-physical property; it is fundamental and widespread (panpsychism); the problem is an introspective illusion; or it is beyond our capacity to solve. Card 1.3.4
- Could you have done otherwise? △ Hard determinism says no and denies free will; libertarianism says yes, because some choices are not determined; compatibilism says freedom survives determinism; hard incompatibilism says it fails either way. Card 1.7
Questions about right and wrong
- If everyone approved of torturing children, would it still be wrong? Moral realists say yes, since moral facts do not depend on approval; relativists tie wrongness to a framework; constructivists say partly; error theorists say all positive moral claims are false. Card 3.1.1
- If an act produces the best outcome, can it be wrong? Consequentialists from Mozi to Bentham and Mill say rightness depends on outcomes alone; duty-based and character-based ethics reply that some acts are wrong whatever they bring about. Card 3.2.1
- What is it about humans that makes us count? The capacity to suffer, which animals share; being the subject of a life, which grounds rights; taking part in agreements; or a duty of stewardship, with other answers between. Card 3.3.6
Questions about knowledge
- How do you know you are not being deceived about everything? Pyrrhonists suspend judgement; Descartes used doubt as a tool to reach certainty; fallibilists say knowledge never needed certainty; common-sense realists put the burden on the doubter; contextualists say it depends on the standards in play. Card 2.4
- Should the fact that someone disagrees with you change your mind? Move towards their view (conciliationism); keep yours (steadfastness); weigh who is better placed (total evidence); or hold firm if you reasoned correctly (right reasons). Card 2.7.1
Questions about society
- Is an unjust law still a law? Natural law says it is defective as law; legal positivism says validity and merit are separate questions; legal realism looks at what officials do; interpretivism includes the principles behind the practice. Card 6.2
- Who should get what, and why? △ Equal shares; priority to the worst off; enough for everyone; Rawls’s principle that inequalities must benefit the least advantaged; Nozick’s entitlement theory; desert; Sen’s capabilities; or obligatory transfers such as zakat. Card 6.4.1
Questions about art and beauty
- Is beauty in the object or in the eye? A real property of things; a matter of proportion and harmony; a disposition to move suitable observers; Kant’s subjective judgement that still claims everyone’s agreement; or simply the response. Card 5.1
- Why is the sadness of a sad song enjoyable? Accounts of aesthetic experience point to attention detached from practical concern, engagement held at a distance, or, in Indian rasa theory, emotion savoured in a non-ordinary mode. Card 5.5
The 13 contested questions (△)
On most cards, philosophers agree on how to ask the question and disagree on the answer. Thirteen cards are marked △. On these, the disagreement reaches the question itself (how to frame it, what would count as settling it), and presenting any position as the answer would mislead.
| Card | Question | What is in dispute |
|---|---|---|
| 1.3.4 Qualia and the Hard Problem | Why isn’t it all dark inside? | Whether there is a further problem at all, or only a misleading picture of our own minds. |
| 1.7 Free Will and Determinism | Could you have done otherwise? | Whether freedom and determinism can both be true, and what “could have done otherwise” requires. |
| 1.8 Natural Theology | Can argument alone settle whether God exists? | Whether argument is the right route, as well as which arguments succeed. |
| 1.10 Meta-Metaphysics | Are metaphysical arguments about anything? | Whether metaphysical disputes concern the world or only how we choose to talk. |
| 2.2.5 Revelation | Can something be known because it was disclosed rather than discovered? | Whether disclosure is a source of knowledge in its own right or a kind of testimony judged by ordinary standards. |
| 3.3.1 Bioethics and Medical Ethics | Who counts, who decides, and who gets it? | How autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice weigh against each other when they conflict. |
| 3.3.5 War and Political Violence | Can killing be permitted when it would otherwise be murder? | Whether moral categories apply between states at all, as well as when war could be just. |
| 4.4 Non-Classical Logics | Which parts of classical logic, if any, should be revised? | Whether logic itself is open to revision, and for which problems. |
| 6.4 Political Philosophy | When is political power legitimate, and what may it rightly do? | Whether any state authority is legitimate, and on what grounds, from anarchism to Confucian and Legalist views. |
| 6.4.1 Distributive Justice | Who should get what, and why? | What should be distributed, and whether equality, priority, sufficiency, entitlement or desert is the test. |
| 6.17 Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence | What would a machine have to do to count as thinking? | What would settle the question, and whether behaviour could ever be enough. |
| 6.29 Philosophy of Gender | What kind of thing is a gender category? | Whether the category is biological, social, identity-based, several of these, or none. |
| 6.30 Philosophy of Race | If race is not biological, what is it? | Whether racial terms refer to anything real, and whether they should be kept or retired. |
All 131 questions with their rival answers
Here is every question on The Coordinates, grouped by root: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, aesthetics and the fields of philosophy. Each line gives the rival answers in brief; each card adds the philosophers who held them across traditions, the connections to other questions, and a live conversation to join. For philosophy questions to think about over a longer stretch, the beginners’ guide turns ten of them into a path.
Metaphysics
- What is there?Rival answers: Materialism · Idealism · Dualism · Neutral monism · Pluralism
- Is a river a thing, or an event?Rival answers: Substance ontology · Process philosophy · Bundle theory · Trope theory · Substratum theory
- A tomato and a fire engine are both red. Is there something they share?Rival answers: Platonic realism · Aristotelian realism · Conceptualism · Resemblance nominalism · Predicate nominalism · Trope theory · Apoha (exclusion nominalism)
- When do some things make one thing?Rival answers: Universalism · Nihilism · Restricted composition · Organicism · Deflationism
- Does the number seven exist?Rival answers: Platonism · Nominalism · Fictionalism · Conceptualism · Trope theory · Deflationism
- Why is there something rather than nothing?Rival answers: Theism · Deism · Pantheism · Brute-fact naturalism · Necessitarianism · Eternal cosmos
- Did anything ever start, or has it always been running?Rival answers: Temporal finitism · Eternal cosmos · Cyclical cosmology · Timeless origination · Quantum origination
- Could the universe have had different laws?Rival answers: Design · Multiverse · Necessitarianism · Brute contingency · Anthropic deflation
- What is a mind, and how does it relate to the body and the world?Rival answers: Eliminative materialism · Behaviourism · Identity theory · Functionalism · Property dualism · Substance dualism · Panpsychism
- How can a thought move an arm?Rival answers: Substance dualism · Property dualism · Identity theory · Functionalism · Eliminative materialism · Epiphenomenalism · Panpsychism
- Are you the same person you were at five?Rival answers: Biological view (animalism) · Brain theory · Memory theory · Psychological continuity · Narrative identity · No-self (anattā) · Soul theory
- How can one thing be about another thing?Rival answers: Causal theories · Teleological theories · Interpretivism · Phenomenal intentionality · Brentano’s thesis · Language of thought
- Why isn't it all dark inside? △ contestedRival answers: Illusionism · Reductive physicalism · Property dualism · Panpsychism · Mysterianism · Higher-order theories
- Does time pass, or does it only seem to?Rival answers: Presentism · Growing block · Moving spotlight · Eternalism
- If you are bent when sitting and straight when standing, how can both be true of you?Rival answers: Endurantism · Perdurantism · Exdurantism · Presentism · Momentariness
- What do you actually see when you see one thing cause another?Rival answers: Regularity theory · Counterfactual theory · Probabilistic theory · Process theory · Powers theory · Interventionism · Occasionalism
- If every object vanished, would space still be there?Rival answers: Substantivalism · Relationism · Kantian idealism about space · Supersubstantivalism
- What does it mean to say something could have been different?Rival answers: Modal realism · Ersatzism · Modal fictionalism · Dispositionalism · Conventionalism
- When you say something could have gone differently, what are you talking about?Rival answers: Modal realism · Ersatzism · Actualism · Fictionalism · Combinatorialism
- Could you have done otherwise? △ contestedRival answers: Hard determinism · Compatibilism · Libertarian free will · Hard incompatibilism
- Can argument alone settle whether God exists? △ contestedRival answers: Cosmological · Kalam variant · Teleological · Ontological · Moral · Argument from evil · Argument from divine hiddenness
- Do laws of nature make things happen, or only describe what happens?Rival answers: Simple regularity theory · Best-system theory (Humean) · Universals approach (Armstrong, Dretske, Tooley) · Dispositional essentialism · Anti-realism about laws · Primitivism / antireductionism
- Are metaphysical arguments about anything? △ contestedRival answers: Metaphysical realism · Logical positivism · Carnapian deflationism · Quietism · Verbalism · Neo-Aristotelian revival
- Is chemistry just physics, and biology just chemistry?Rival answers: Reductionism · Weak emergence · Strong emergence · Downward causation · Non-reductive physicalism
Epistemology
- What has to be added to a true belief to make it knowledge?Rival answers: Justified true belief · Reliabilism · Virtue epistemology · Causal theory · Safety accounts · Knowledge-first
- Can you be right for the wrong reasons and still count as knowing?Rival answers: No-false-lemmas · Defeasibility · Reliabilism · Safety · Knowledge-first · Contextualism
- Which ways of finding things out actually work?Rival answers: Empiricism (strict form) · Empiricism · Kantian synthesis · Rationalism · Innatism · Carvaka · Buddhist (Dignāga)
- When you see a tree, what are you actually seeing?Rival answers: Direct realism · Indirect realism · Sense-datum theory · Adverbialism · Disjunctivism · Phenomenalism
- How, if at all, do you know that a surface cannot be wholly red and wholly green at the same time and in the same respect?Rival answers: Rationalism · Innatism · Conceptual analysis · Conventionalism · Empiricism (Millian) · Kantian
- Is remembering a kind of perceiving, or a kind of imagining?Rival answers: Causal theory · Simulationism · Direct realism · Preservationism · Epistemic generativism
- Do you need a reason to trust, or a reason not to?Rival answers: Reductionism · Anti-reductionism · Dual-aspect views · Assurance views · Nyaya sabda
- Can something be known because it was disclosed rather than discovered? △ contestedRival answers: Revelation as irreducible source · Harmonisation · Subordination of reason · Subordination of revelation · Reformed epistemology · Fideism · Evidentialism
- Why do you believe that? And why do you believe that?Rival answers: Foundationalism · Coherentism · Infinitism · Foundherentism · Externalist dissolution · Pyrrhonian conclusion
- Is knowledge a building or a raft?Rival answers: Classical foundationalism · Modest foundationalism · Pure coherentism · Weighted coherentism · Foundherentism
- Do you have to know why you know?Rival answers: Access internalism · Mentalist internalism · Process reliabilism · Proper functionalism · Virtue externalism
- How do you know you are not being deceived about everything?Rival answers: Academic skepticism · Pyrrhonian skepticism · Cartesian methodical doubt · Fallibilism · Common-sense realism · Contextualism · Relevant alternatives
- Can you doubt everything, or only something?Rival answers: Global skepticism · Local skepticism · Self-refutation objection · Pyrrhonian evasion · Transcendental reply
- What makes a statement true?Rival answers: Correspondence · Coherence · Pragmatic theories · Deflationary · Identity · Truthmaker
- Is it rational to believe what the evidence supports, or what serves you?Rival answers: Evidentialism · Instrumental rationality · Bayesian rationality · Ecological rationality · Reasons-responsiveness
- Much of what you know depends on other people. What follows?Rival answers: Veritistic · Consensus-centered accounts · Standpoint theory · Individualist reduction · Distributed cognition
- Should the fact that someone disagrees with you change your mind?Rival answers: Conciliationism · Steadfastness · Total evidence view · Right reasons view
- By how much should this evidence move you?Rival answers: Subjective Bayesianism · Objective Bayesianism · Dempster–Shafer · Imprecise probability · Belief-first approaches
Ethics and Axiology
- When you say cruelty is wrong, what kind of statement are you making?Rival answers: Non-natural realism · Natural realism · Theological voluntarism / divine command · Natural law · Constructivism · Relativism · Subjectivism
- If everyone approved of torturing children, would it still be wrong?Rival answers: Non-natural realism · Naturalist realism · Divine command realism · Constructivism · Relativism · Quasi-realism · Error theory
- Does "wrong" describe an act, or do something to the listener?Rival answers: Cognitivism · Naturalism · Non-naturalism · Emotivism · Prescriptivism · Expressivism · Hybrid views
- How would you check whether a moral claim is true?Rival answers: Intuitionism · Reflective equilibrium · Moral perception · Empirical naturalism · Revelation-based · Skepticism
- Can you know an act is wrong and be entirely unmoved?Rival answers: Motivational internalism · Motivational externalism · Humean theory of motivation · Anti-Humean · Virtue accounts
- What should I look at to tell whether an act is right?Rival answers: Consequence-based · Duty-based · Character-based · Contract-based · Care-based · Divine command · Confucian role ethics ◈
- If an act produces the best outcome, can it be wrong?Rival answers: Act utilitarianism · Rule utilitarianism · Negative utilitarianism · Preference utilitarianism · Mohist consequentialism · Motive consequentialism
- Are some things wrong even when they would do good?Rival answers: Kantian deontology · Rights-based · Rossian pluralism · Threshold deontology · Natural law · Agent-centred restrictions
- Should ethics ask what to do, or who to be?Rival answers: Aristotelian · Stoic · Neo-Aristotelian · Exemplarist · Islamic adab and akhlaq · Confucian role ethics ◈ · Ubuntu ◈
- Could you justify this to everyone it affects?Rival answers: Hobbesian contractarianism · Kantian contractualism · Rawlsian · Scanlonian · Global contractualism
- Does morality start with rules, or with the people you are responsible for?Rival answers: Ethics of care · Relational autonomy · Dependency-based · Feminist ethics broadly
- How does a command create an obligation?Rival answers: Voluntarism · Modified divine command · Natural law · Nature-identity views · Maqasid approaches · Mu'tazili rationalism
- What should be done in this case?Rival answers: Moral status · Threshold and line-drawing · Acts and omissions · Double effect · Distribution under scarcity · Consent and capacity · Precaution under uncertainty
- Who counts, who decides, and who gets it? △ contestedRival answers: Autonomy · Beneficence · Non-maleficence · Justice
- Does a forest matter only because people value it?Rival answers: Anthropocentrism · Sentientism · Biocentrism · Ecocentrism · Stewardship · Deep ecology
- Does a company owe anything to anyone but its owners?Rival answers: Shareholder primacy · Stakeholder theory · Corporate social responsibility · Market-failure approach · Islamic commercial ethics · Catholic social teaching
- Who is responsible when a machine causes harm and no one intended it?Rival answers: Responsibility gap · Value alignment · Opacity · Embedded bias · Autonomy and manipulation · Displacement · Moral status of artificial systems
- Can killing be permitted when it would otherwise be murder? △ contestedRival answers: Pacifism · Contingent pacifism · Just war theory · Realism · Militarism
- What is it about humans that makes us count?Rival answers: Moral standing on sentience · Rights-based · Indirect duties · Contractualist exclusion · Welfarism · Religious stewardship · Abolitionism
- Are people naturally good, naturally selfish, or naturally neither?Rival answers: Original goodness · Original self-interest · Blank slate · Sentimentalism · Rationalism · Dual-process · Situationism
- What would make your life go well, apart from being moral?Rival answers: Hedonism · Desire satisfaction · Objective list · Perfectionism · Eudaimonism · Asceticism
Logic
- What makes an argument work, regardless of its subject?Rival answers: Valid vs sound · Deductive vs inductive · Syntax vs semantics · Completeness vs soundness of a system
- What follows from "if this, then that"?Rival answers: ¬ · P ∧ Q · P ∨ Q · → · ↔
- Why could two thousand years of logic not handle "every boy loves some girl"?Rival answers: Predicates · Quantifiers · Variables and binding · Scope · Identity
- What follows from two statements about classes of things?Rival answers: A · E · I · O
- Why does formal logic tell you so little about whether an argument is any good?Rival answers: Deductive vs defeasible · Argument vs explanation · Enthymeme · Burden of proof · Charity
- When is a bad-looking argument actually bad?Rival answers: Ad hominem · Appeal to authority · Slippery slope · Appeal to emotion · Appeal to nature · Straw man · False dilemma
- What does an argument have to do, besides be valid?Rival answers: Toulmin model · Pragma-dialectics · Argumentation schemes · Dialectical models · Nyaya vada
- Is persuading someone different from giving them a reason?Rival answers: Platonic suspicion · Aristotelian integration · Sophistic · Modern rhetoric of inquiry · Manipulation-based distinction
- How do you reason validly about what must be, and what merely might?Rival answers: □P · ◇P · ¬□P · □¬P
- What follows logically from "you must"?Rival answers: OP · PP · FP
- If you know something, do you know that you know it?Rival answers: KᵢP → P · KᵢP → KᵢKᵢP · ¬KᵢP → Kᵢ¬KᵢP · Closure
- Is it already true that it will rain tomorrow?Rival answers: FP · GP · PP · HP
- Which parts of classical logic, if any, should be revised — and for which problems? △ contestedRival answers: Classical · Intuitionistic · Many-valued · Fuzzy · Paraconsistent · Dialetheist · Relevance
- Can a statement be partly true?Rival answers: Łukasiewicz three-valued · Kleene · Fuzzy · Supervaluationism · Jain syadvada
- If you believe one contradiction, must you believe everything?Rival answers: Classical · Paraconsistent · Dialetheism · Relevance logic
- Is logic discovered or invented?Rival answers: Logical realism · Psychologism · Conventionalism · Logical pluralism · Logical monism · Instrumentalism
Aesthetics
- Is beauty in the object or in the eye?Rival answers: Aesthetic objectivism · Proportion theories · Neoplatonic · Response-dependence · Kantian universalism · Aesthetic relativism · Aesthetic subjectivism
- What is art, what does it do, and why does it matter?Rival answers: Mimeticism · Expressivism · Formalism · Institutional theory · Historical approaches · Cluster accounts · Rasa theory
- Can anything be art if someone says it is?Rival answers: Classical definition · Anti-essentialism · Institutional theory · Historical narrativism · Cluster account · Functional definitions
- Does the artist get to say what the work means?Rival answers: Actual intentionalism · Hypothetical intentionalism · Anti-intentionalism · Conventionalism · Value-maximising
- Can you misread a poem?Rival answers: Critical monism · Critical pluralism · Constructivism · Deconstruction · Hermeneutic tradition · Constraint accounts
- Is someone who prefers worse art making a mistake?Rival answers: Critical realism · Humean standard · Kantian universalism · Relativism · Subjectivism · Institutional
- Why do we seek out what frightens us?Rival answers: Longinian · Burkean · Kantian mathematical · Kantian dynamical · Romantic · Contemporary
- Why is the sadness of a sad song enjoyable?Rival answers: Disinterestedness · Psychical distance · Empathy theories · Cognitive accounts · Deflationary · Rasa theory
- Can a beautiful work be evil, and still beautiful?Rival answers: Radical autonomism · Moderate autonomism · Moralism · Ethicism · Immoralism · Contextualism
- Is a mountain beautiful in the same way a painting is?Rival answers: Scientific cognitivism · Non-cognitivism · Aesthetics of engagement · Everyday aesthetics · Wabi-sabi · Islamic aesthetics of pattern
- How can a piece of music be sad?Rival answers: Arousal theory · Resemblance theory · Persona theory · Formalism · Cognitivist
The Philosophy of X Family
- What kind of claim is a religious claim?Rival answers: Divine attributes · Foreknowledge and freedom · The problem of evil · Religious language · Religious diversity · Miracles · Religious experience
- If someone tells you they have met God, what have you learned?Rival answers: Perceptual realism · Credulity principle · Cumulative case · Naturalistic explanation · Ineffability thesis · Constructivist · Transformative knowledge
- Is an unjust law still a law?Rival answers: Natural law · Legal positivism · Legal realism · Interpretivism · Critical legal studies · Usul al-fiqh
- Is education filling someone up, or drawing something out?Rival answers: Transmission · Liberal education · Progressive · Critical pedagogy · Vocational · Confucian cultivation · Tarbiya and ta'lim
- When is political power legitimate, and what may it rightly do? △ contestedRival answers: Anarchism · Libertarianism · Classical liberalism · Social liberalism · Republicanism · Communitarianism · Socialism
- Who should get what — and why? △ contestedRival answers: Strict egalitarianism · Luck egalitarianism · Prioritarianism · Sufficientarianism · Rawlsian · Entitlement theory · Desert-based
- Are you free when nobody stops you, or when you could actually do it?Rival answers: Natural rights · Legal positivist · Interest theory · Will theory · Rights skepticism
- Who holds final authority, and what makes it final?Rival answers: Absolutist · Popular sovereignty · Parliamentary · Constitutional · Pluralist · Divine sovereignty · Post-sovereign
- Are economic models describing people, or a convenient fiction about them?Rival answers: Idealisation · Rational agent models · Value-freedom · Measurement · Causal inference · Prediction
- Is history going anywhere?Rival answers: Providential · Progressive · Cyclical · Dialectical · Contingent · Narrativist
- What makes social facts and entities real, and how do they depend on individuals?Rival answers: Methodological individualism · Social holism · Social constructionism · Structuration · Collective intentionality · Confucian relationalism
- What makes a claim scientific?Rival answers: Verification · Falsification · Inductive support · Method-based · Institutional · Family resemblance
- When have you explained something, rather than just described it?Rival answers: Deductive-nomological · Statistical relevance · Causal-mechanical · Unificationist · Pragmatic · Functional
- Do electrons exist, or do they just work?Rival answers: Scientific realism · Constructive empiricism · Instrumentalism · Structural realism · Entity realism
- Does science build on what came before, or replace it?Rival answers: Cumulativism · Falsificationist · Paradigm theory · Research programmes · Epistemic anarchism · Evolutionary
- Are numbers discovered or invented?Rival answers: Platonism · Logicism · Formalism · Intuitionism · Structuralism · Fictionalism · Empiricism
- How do noises come to be about things?Rival answers: Referential · Ideational · Truth-conditional · Use theory · Gricean · Inferentialist · Apoha
- What makes your word for a thing refer to that thing?Rival answers: Simple descriptivism · Cluster descriptivism · Millian / direct reference
- How does saying "I promise" make a promise?Rival answers: Locutionary · Illocutionary · Perlocutionary
- What is quantum theory telling us about the world?Rival answers: Copenhagen · Many-worlds · Pilot wave · Objective collapse · QBism · Relational
- Is there purpose in living things?Rival answers: Teleology · Species · Units of selection · Fitness · Reductionism · Adaptationism
- What makes something a disease rather than a difference?Rival answers: Naturalism · Normativism · Hybrid · Social model · Phenomenological
- Can a science study something only one person can observe?Rival answers: Introspection · Reduction · Natural kinds · Folk psychology · Replication · Operationalisation
- Can there be laws of human behaviour?Rival answers: Naturalism · Interpretivism · Critical realism · Methodological individualism · Holism · Value-freedom vs value-ladenness
- Do we shape our tools, or do they shape us?Rival answers: Instrumentalism · Substantivism · Social construction of technology · Determinism · Mediation theory · Critical theory of technology
- What would a machine have to do to count as thinking? △ contestedRival answers: Strong AI · Weak AI · Functionalism · Biological naturalism · Behaviourist criterion · Mysterianism
- Is information something in the world, or something we bring to it?Rival answers: Mathematical (Shannon) · Semantic · Physical · It-from-bit · Deflationary
- Do you love someone for their qualities, or for being them?Rival answers: Quality theory · Relationship theory · Bestowal theory · Union theory · Robust concern · Aristotelian friendship
- Can something be bad for you if you are not there for it?Rival answers: Epicurean · Deprivation account · Annihilation is bad in itself · Survival views · Immortality is worse · Neutral
- Does a life need a point, and where would it come from?Rival answers: Supernaturalism · Objective naturalism · Subjectivism · Hybrid · Nihilism · Absurdism · Dissolution views
- Is work a cost to be minimised or a good in itself?Rival answers: Instrumentalist · Perfectionist · Alienation critique · Craft tradition · Anti-work · Work as vocation
- Can an emotion be wrong?Rival answers: Feeling theory · Judgement theory · Perceptual theory · Componential · Social constructionist · Rasa-informed
- What is the difference between your arm rising and your raising it?Rival answers: Causal theory · Agent causation · Volitionist · Anscombean · Teleological · Disjunctivist
- Why does it matter whether the ball crossed a line we drew?Rival answers: Formalist · Conventionalist · Broad internalism · Suits's definition · Developmental · Cultural
- Can you be wrong about what tastes good?Rival answers: Gustatory subjectivism · Aesthetic cognitivism about food · Hierarchical exclusion · Cultural constitution · Ethical gastronomy
- Why is anything funny?Rival answers: Superiority · Relief · Incongruity · Benign violation · Play theory
- Is the difficulty in the body or in the world it meets?Rival answers: Medical model · Social model · Interactional · Capability approach · Value-neutral difference · Welfarist
- What kind of thing is a gender category? △ contestedRival answers: Biological realism · Social position accounts · Norm-relevancy accounts · Identity-based accounts · Cluster accounts · Gender eliminativism · Gender pluralism
- If race is not biological, what is it? △ contestedRival answers: Biological realism · Racial eliminativism · Social constructionism · Racial naturalism (population) · Conservationism · Racial scepticism
- Can you understand a culture from outside it?Rival answers: Cultural relativism · Universalism · Hermeneutic · Incommensurability · Cosmopolitanism · Constitutive
- How do images argue?Rival answers: Realism about film · Formalism · Film as philosophy · Illustration view · Medium theory · Cognitive film theory
Where do you stand?
Every question here has serious answers on more than one side. Pick a card, read the rival answers, then say which you find strongest and why. Members ask, reply and take sides; reading is free for everyone.