Tradition
Greek & Roman
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Testing the theories of laughter on Nasreddin Hodja
Superiority, relief, incongruity, benign violation: I took the philosophers' theories of humour onto my bus route and tried them on the stories my grandfather told.
Started by Serkan AydoğduReply first (no replies yet) -
How much should one result change your mind? Thinking in degrees of belief
Base rates, the Dutch book and an ancient sceptic's coil of rope: a data scientist's case for believing by degrees.
Started by Wanjiru NjengaReply first (no replies yet) -
Can a machine be your friend? Aristotle, Buber and the ethics of AI companions
Companion apps are sold as friends and partners. The oldest theory of friendship explains what they can and cannot be, and shows where the real ethical problem lies.
Started by Derek HollisReply first (no replies yet) -
What the Stoics meant by ‘indifferent’, seen from a night shift
Health, life and death are 'indifferents' in Stoic ethics. That does not mean they don't matter, and getting the difference right changes how the Stoics read at a bedside.
Started by Elin HedqvistReply first (no replies yet) -
What is aesthetics? A beginner’s guide
Six questions that make up the philosophy of beauty and art, explained for someone meeting them for the first time, with a restorer's view of why they matter.
Started by Chiara BellandiReply first (no replies yet) -
Free will explained: the main positions, and what physics does and doesn’t settle
A physics reader's guide to the four classic answers, the options that don't fit the usual grid, and the question underneath them all.
Started by Lars EriksenReply first (no replies yet) -
Should a struggling state pay for music? Mozi and Xunzi’s quarrel
More than two thousand years before modern arts-funding debates, the Mohists argued that music wastes what the poor need, and Xunzi replied that a society without music cannot hold together. Both were partly right.
Started by Chen YutingReply first (no replies yet) -
Why does sad art feel good? What the rasa theorists worked out
A Sanskrit argument that ran for two centuries gives the most careful answer I know to the old puzzle of enjoying grief on the stage.
Started by Meera KulkarniReply first (no replies yet) -
Political philosophy in ten questions
A beginner's map of the questions political philosophers ask, from why anyone should obey a state to what we owe people beyond our borders, with answers drawn from several traditions.
Started by Hamza QureshiReply first (no replies yet) -
Two ways of holding no view: Nāgārjuna and Sextus Empiricus on suspending judgement
The Madhyamaka dialectician and the Pyrrhonist physician look like twins. Read closely, they are doing different things, and the difference is instructive.
Started by Meera KulkarniReply first (no replies yet) -
Not a warehouse: what the Baghdad translators actually did
The usual story says Arabic scholars kept Greek philosophy safe until Europe was ready for it; the translators themselves were doing something far more interesting.
Started by Layla SfeirReply first (no replies yet) -
Logic for beginners: what makes an argument valid
A first introduction to the single most useful idea in logic, with the tests you can use on any argument and the mistakes almost everyone makes.
Started by Tomasz SzewczakReply first (no replies yet) -
Is morality objective? A beginner’s guide to meta-ethics
What are we doing when we call something wrong? A teacher's map of the main answers, from the Euthyphro to error theory.
Started by Giulia FerranteReply first (no replies yet)