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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 -
Did al-Ghazali’s Incoherence kill philosophy in the Islamic world?
A story you'll still find in textbooks: al-Ghazali attacked philosophy around 1095, Ibn Rushd's defence was ignored in the East, and after that Islamic philosophy died while Europe picked up the torch. The story is false, and I want to collect the…
Started by Layla Sfeir4 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 -
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 -
Is love a choice, or something that happens to us?
In poetry, love is almost always something that happens to you: you "fall", you're struck, you're helpless. But in many families and religious traditions, love is described as a commitment you choose and keep choosing. Harry Frankfurt, in The Reasons of Love…
Started by Kavya Menon4 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 -
Ubuntu and personhood: Menkiti’s communitarian view
I'm finally reading the African philosophy my physics course never mentioned. The Nguni saying behind ubuntu is usually translated as "a person is a person through other persons". John Mbiti's African Religions and Philosophy (1969) put the idea in the form: I…
Started by Emeka Anyaoha4 replies -
My bus kneels for wheelchairs. What is the difference between an impairment and a disability?
Our newer buses on the 413 can lower themselves at the kerb and put out a ramp, which takes about thirty seconds. Some of the older buses can't. A man I see most mornings uses a wheelchair, and on a new bus…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies -
Why can’t a shadow explain the height of a flagpole?
I'm reading an introduction to philosophy of science and got stuck on the flagpole example. The idea, as I understand it: Carl Hempel said that to explain something is to derive it from laws of nature plus the starting conditions. From the…
Started by Hsieh Wei-ting4 replies -
What’s the difference between Kant’s “mathematical” and “dynamical” sublime?
Last month I stood at the crater rim at Bromo before sunrise with the volcano smoking below and the sand sea all around, and I felt something I don't have a word for: scared, tiny, and very happy at the same time.…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies -
If Buddhism says there is no self, what exactly gets reborn?
This week's lecture was on Buddhism, and the speaker said two things that seem to contradict each other: there is no permanent self, and there is rebirth. If there's no self, what is reborn? Who carries the karma? If I do something…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies -
What is the difference between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, and why keep them apart?
Reading history, I keep meeting two Latin phrases: jus ad bellum and jus in bello. I understand roughly that the first is about whether going to war is just, and the second about how the war is fought. What I don't understand…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 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 -
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 -
Is fana in Sufism the same as nirvana in Buddhism?
My grandmother used to read Sufi poetry about fana, the annihilation of the self in God. Now I've started reading about Buddhism and nirvana, which also seems to involve the end of the self. Are these basically the same experience described in…
Started by Elif Yıldız4 replies -
Founders and Stoicism: real philosophy or corporate self-help?
In the startup world, Stoicism is everywhere. Podcasts, newsletters, Marcus Aurelius quotes on office walls. I got into it during a bad year, and honestly it helped. But I'm starting to wonder if what we're doing is Stoicism at all. The startup…
Started by Rohan Desai4 replies -
Reading group: The Muqaddimah, the introduction on historians’ errors
Before the Muqaddimah proper begins, Ibn Khaldun explains why historians get things wrong. His list includes partisanship for opinions and schools, overconfidence in one's sources, failure to understand what was intended, mistaken belief in the truth of reports, and, above all, ignorance…
Started by Youssef Berrada4 replies -
Reading group: the Mandukya Upanishad and Gaudapada’s Karika
The Māṇḍūkya is the shortest of the principal Upanishads, only twelve verses. It analyses the syllable AUM in terms of four "quarters" of the self: the waking state (vaiśvānara), the dream state (taijasa), deep sleep (prājña), and the "fourth" (turīya), which is…
Started by Arjun Iyer4 replies -
Reading group: Ibn Rushd, The Decisive Treatise
The Faṣl al-Maqāl (c. 1178–80) is short and lucid. It's the best introduction to Ibn Rushd's thought, and it's written in the form of a legal opinion: what is the status, under the religious law, of studying philosophy? His answer: the Law…
Started by Layla Sfeir4 replies -
What is the principle of double effect, and when does it apply in medicine?
In palliative care, I often hear that giving high doses of morphine is permitted even if it might shorten life, because of the "principle of double effect". But I've realised I don't know exactly what the principle says or where it comes…
Started by Omar Ragab4 replies -
Gödel’s incompleteness theorems are constantly misused in philosophical arguments
A public service post, since I see this weekly. What the first theorem says, roughly: any consistent, effectively axiomatised formal system that contains enough arithmetic has true sentences in its language that it can't prove. The second says such a system can't…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak4 replies -
Persian gardens, proportion, and Plato’s Timaeus
The classical Persian garden, the chahar bagh, is divided into four parts by water channels meeting at a centre. Visit the Fin Garden in Kashan or Bagh-e Eram in Shiraz and you feel the order before you understand it. In the Timaeus,…
Started by Reza Tehrani4 replies -
Can someone explain Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain argument and the strongest reply to it?
We did chapter 7 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) in a tutorial this week and I came out feeling slightly winded. As I understand it: start from whatever distribution you think is just. Call it D1. Now a famous basketball player,…
Started by Ethan Mercer4 replies -
Found the Master Argument in Epictetus, between two bus stops
Another find from my recordings. Last week it was Epictetus, Discourses Book 2, and in the middle of a chapter he mentions an argument by Diodorus Cronus that clever people used to show off with. I had to pull my attention back…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies -
How is Scanlon’s ‘reasonable rejection’ test different from asking what most people would agree to?
We read a chapter of Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other (1998) in my ethics tutorial this week, and it left me with more questions than answers. The idea, roughly, is that an act is wrong if it would be disallowed…
Started by Ethan Mercer4 replies -
My son says my rain forecasts could be “Dutch-booked”. What does that mean?
This week my son's course reading was about probability, sent, I think, to keep his mother humble. On the phone I told him I was sixty percent sure the rains would come early this year. When he asked about the dry season…
Started by Akosua Mensah4 replies -
How can a thought move an arm if physics already explains every movement?
Last week a lecturer said something I have been chewing on since. He said: decide to raise your arm, and it rises. Fine. But scientists say every movement of the arm has a complete physical cause, nerves, muscles, chemistry. So what is…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies -
Is ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ a real question or just a very good bit?
I do stand-up, mostly in northern clubs, and I've got a bit about "why is there something rather than nothing". The punchline is that the universe exists because somebody forgot to cancel the booking. It does all right. Afterwards a bloke in…
Started by Gemma Pritchard4 replies -
If a stopped clock happens to show the right time, why don’t I know the time?
Yesterday's lecture was about knowledge. The lecturer said that for a long time philosophers agreed that knowledge is "justified true belief", and then a man called Gettier wrote three pages and the agreement fell apart. The example that stayed with me was…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies