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What does dependent origination actually claim? My daughter asked and I had no answer
My daughter is fourteen. Last week, stuck in traffic near Borella, she asked me what paṭicca samuppāda means. I have heard the word at the temple my whole life. I said "it means everything is connected", and she said that sounds like…
Started by Nuwan Perera4 replies -
Is a controlled experiment a new source of knowledge, or only perception with discipline?
I have been reading A. I. Sabra's translation of the first books of Ibn al-Haytham's Optics with two of my tutoring students, and it has raised a question I can't settle. The standard lists of sources of knowledge, whether European or Indian,…
Started by Emeka AnyaohaAnswer first (no replies yet) -
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 -
I keep reading summaries of philosophers instead of the books. Is that so bad?
Confession: in the year since I burnt out and started reading philosophy, I've read maybe three actual books and hundreds of summaries, threads, videos and ‘ten ideas from Stoicism’ posts. I can tell you what Kant, Nietzsche and the Gita say in…
Started by Rohan DesaiAnswer 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) -
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 three clearly, with examples, and why Peirce thought abduction mattered…
Started by Vikram Sethi1 reply -
What’s the difference between a valid argument and a sound one?
In a debate thread here someone said an argument was "valid but not sound" and I realised, being completely new to logic, that I didn't understand the difference. To me both words just sounded like "good". Could someone explain simply, with examples…
Started by Kavya Menon3 replies -
If only the transformed can know, how could a mystic ever be shown to be wrong?
Since I campaign against superstition, let me say first that I'm not asking this to sneer. I read Sufi poetry with real pleasure, and I've learned from discussions here that the Sufi claim is subtler than "feelings beat reason". The claim, as…
Started by Arvind PoojaryAnswer 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) -
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 Christians like Yahya ibn 'Adi and Jews like Maimonides wrote…
Started by Layla Sfeir2 replies -
Would games really be the only thing left worth doing in utopia?
Bernard Suits ends The Grasshopper with a strange and wonderful claim. Imagine a utopia where every instrumental need is met: machines do all the work, nobody needs to earn, build, heal or cook. What would people do? Suits's Grasshopper argues that they…
Started by Sasha KovalenkoAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Is an economy more than the people in it?
Economics lives with a tension it never resolves, and I meet it at work every year. On one side, methodological individualism: social phenomena should be explained, ultimately, by individuals' choices and interactions. Prices, unemployment and recessions are patterns of individual behaviour. Most…
Started by Javier FerrandisAnswer 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) -
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 explanation of what the internal senses were and how they…
Started by Elif Yıldız2 replies -
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 and what philosophical claim, if any, it makes.
Started by Sana Rizvi2 replies -
Plantinga’s proper function: does warrant need a designer, or will evolution do?
This term a student asked me a question I could not answer cleanly, so I bring it here. Alvin Plantinga's account of warrant, in Warrant and Proper Function (1993), says roughly that a belief has warrant if it is produced by cognitive…
Started by Ikechukwu AnyanwuAnswer first (no replies yet) -
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 with religious faith, or whether every believer is just a…
Started by Aoife Kilbride2 replies -
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 argument and the best objections. Can someone help?
Started by Rohan Desai2 replies -
Capabilities or the social model: which better tells a city what it owes disabled residents?
In a moot this term we had to argue about what a municipal corporation owes disabled residents under India's disability-rights legislation. I found myself reaching for two frameworks that don't fit together as neatly as our professors suggest. The social model tells…
Started by Deepa KarthaAnswer first (no replies yet) -
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 can't there be an infinite chain of contingent beings, each…
Started by Omar Ragab2 replies -
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 very free version that many consider a great English poem…
Started by Kavya Menon3 replies -
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 be taken from you. Rawls even argued for a "property-owning…
Started by Javier Ferrandis2 replies -
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 about four minutes. What they struggle with is the Greek…
Started by Giulia Ferrante4 replies -
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 said it is bad, but I've read that this is…
Started by Elif Yıldız2 replies -
What’s the difference between “deep ecology” and environmental ethics in general?
In conservation work, "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 other kinds of environmental ethics. Can someone explain?
Started by Anand Kurup2 replies -
Did Hume ever read al-Ghazali?
Last month I read al-Ghazālī's account of his crisis of doubt, and then went looking for more. I found the part of The Incoherence of the Philosophers about fire and cotton: we see the cotton burn when it touches the fire, but…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies -
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 discusses the phantom limb and a patient called Schneider at…
Started by Claire Dubois3 replies -
Does an engineer’s training help or hurt in metaphysics?
When I read metaphysics, I notice an engineer's habits. I want to know the system boundary, the inputs and outputs, the failure modes. Sometimes this helps me see what an argument actually claims. Sometimes I think it makes me impatient with questions…
Started by Arjun Iyer4 replies -
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 like this centuries earlier. The Buddhist Dharmottara (eighth century) is…
Started by Meera Kulkarni2 replies