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Fes, al-Qarawiyyin, and how medieval students learned to argue
Al-Qarawiyyin is a short walk from my school. Founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, it's often described as one of the oldest continuously operating institutions of learning in the world. What interests me is how teaching worked. Students learned not only texts…
Started by Youssef Berrada2 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 -
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 -
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 -
The sorites paradox and my pile of exam scripts
It's marking season. A script with 33 marks out of 100 passes; one with 32 fails. My students ask: "Sir, what's the real difference between 32 and 33?" And I can't really answer. That's the sorites paradox, which goes back to Eubulides.…
Started by Vikram Sethi2 replies -
Patients who pray: faith, placebo, and respect at the bedside
Many of the patients at my hospital pray. Some ask the staff to pray with them. Some refuse treatment until they've consulted a sheikh, or a priest. Some say their recovery is entirely God's will and the doctor's role is incidental. There…
Started by Omar Ragab2 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 -
Reading group: Tagore’s The Religion of Man (1931)
Rabindranath Tagore gave the Hibbert Lectures at Oxford in 1930, and they were published the next year as The Religion of Man. It isn't a work of systematic philosophy but an extended reflection on the human being as the meeting point of…
Started by Kavya Menon2 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 -
“If I don’t sell it, the shop next door will.” Does that excuse selling a remedy I think is useless?
At our pharmacy counter in Ahmedabad we sell a herbal "immunity tonic" that I am fairly sure does nothing. It's legal, cheap and harmless as far as I know. Customers ask for it by name. When I told my father I didn't…
Started by Hetal Shah1 reply -
Twenty minutes below the pass, the weather turns. Is turning back the coward’s choice or the brave one?
Last season I was guiding two trekkers towards the Thorong La, which is 5,416 metres. About twenty minutes below the pass, cloud came over very fast and the wind changed. One client wanted to go on. He had saved for three years…
Started by Nima Tsering Gurung1 reply -
Conceptual decolonisation only counts as a method if it can conclude that the borrowed concept was right
Kwasi Wiredu's proposal is simple to state. Take a philosophical problem that came to Africa in a European language and try to think it through in your own. If the problem cannot even be formulated there, ask whether it was ever a…
Started by Kwame Asante1 reply -
Reading group: Epictetus’s Handbook, about ten short chapters a week for five weeks
The Handbook (Enchiridion) is a pocket digest of Epictetus's teaching, compiled by his pupil Arrian, who also wrote up the longer Discourses. It is short enough to read on a bus and dense enough to argue about for a month. Our Book…
Started by The Editors1 reply -
Lashon hara forbids true gossip. Does that make sense in the age of the screenshot?
Our Tuesday group has been working through the laws of speech. The striking thing about lashon hara, "the evil tongue", is that it concerns true statements. Lies are a separate and graver matter. Lashon hara is saying something accurate and damaging about…
Started by Eliana Halpern1 reply -
Reading group: Mencius and Gaozi on human nature (6A1–6A6), in one sitting
A short one, for anyone who wants a single sitting rather than a month. The first six sections of Mencius Book 6A are a debate with Gaozi about human nature, and they are some of the best arguments-by-image in any tradition. What…
Started by The Editors1 reply -
If perception is free of concepts, as Dignāga says, how do I ever see a cup as a cup?
I've been reading an introduction to Buddhist epistemology on the train, and I'm stuck on Dignāga's definition of perception (pratyakṣa) as "free from conceptual construction". As I understand it, the object of perception is the bare particular, and anything general, like "cup",…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen1 reply -
Reading group: Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, three short chapters a week
Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) is short, about seventy pages, in twelve chapters. I have listened to people talk about it in lectures for years and never read it properly. So I propose four weeks, three chapters a week, starting…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu1 reply -
The rectification of names, from a translator’s desk: when words and things drift apart
In Analects 13.3 a disciple asks Confucius what he would do first if he were given charge of government. "Rectify names," he says. The disciple thinks this is impractical, and Confucius explains, in a famous chain: if names are not correct, speech…
Started by Vũ Quốc Bảo1 reply -
My cousin’s biopsy result already exists. Does it make sense to pray that it is benign?
My cousin had a biopsy on Friday. The results come on Wednesday. Whatever is in that tissue is already there; the lab will only tell us. Yet the whole family is praying that it will be benign, and so am I. A…
Started by Aoife Kilbride1 reply -
Zeno’s arrow and what my students made of it
Zeno's arrow came up in class today. At any instant, the arrow occupies a space exactly its own size, so at that instant it is at rest. Time is made of instants. So the arrow is always at rest and never moves.…
Started by Giulia Ferrante1 reply -
Is human dignity a religious idea that secular law borrowed?
Article 1 of the German Basic Law (1949) declares human dignity inviolable. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) begins by recognising the inherent dignity of all members of the human family. Many constitutions since then have done the same. Kant gave…
Started by Hamza Qureshi1 reply -
Reading group: Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974)
A short classic, first published in The Philosophical Review. Nagel argues that an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something it is like to be that organism. Bats perceive by echolocation, a sense so different from ours…
Started by Priya Raghavan1 reply -
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 -
Reading group: Hobbes, Leviathan, chapters 13–17
These five chapters of Leviathan (1651) contain the core of Hobbes's political argument. Ch. 13: the natural condition of mankind. Rough equality, competition, distrust and glory lead to a war of every man against every man, in which life is famously solitary,…
Started by Javier Ferrandis1 reply -
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 -
Compassion fatigue: does the duty to care have limits?
After a hard month at work I've been thinking about this. People in care work talk about "compassion fatigue": after enough exposure to suffering, you start to feel less. You become efficient and a little cold, and you hate yourself for it.…
Started by Elin Hedqvist1 reply -
Privacy as a virtue, not just a right
We usually talk about privacy as a right: something others shouldn't violate. But in my work I see people giving away their data voluntarily all the time, for convenience or a discount. The right isn't violated; it's waived, again and again. I've…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman1 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 -
Wu wei for burnt-out founders: what did Laozi actually mean?
After Stoicism, I've been reading the Daodejing. One idea that hits hard is wu wei, usually translated "non-action" or "effortless action". Chapter 48 says that in pursuing learning you add something every day, but in pursuing the Dao you let something go…
Started by Rohan Desai1 reply