NON-WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONSHistory Of PhilosophyMIDDLE EASTERN TRADITIONS
November 15, 2023

MIDDLE EASTERN TRADITIONS

As the Middle East is often called the cradle of civilization, it is also the source of some of the earliest philosophical literature. Much of it is devoted to what…
Writing PhilosophyGRADING CRITERIA FOR PHILOSOPHY ESSAYS
November 24, 2023

GRADING CRITERIA FOR PHILOSOPHY ESSAYS

The eight skills just listed are so central to philosophical writing that we may count them among the criteria most instructors use in grading essay assignments. Keep these eight skills…
LogicBASIC LOGICAL SYMBOLS
November 15, 2023

BASIC LOGICAL SYMBOLS

¬ one-place logical connective read as “not” or as “is not the case” ~ alternative notation for “not” & two-place logical connective read as “and” ˄ and
NON-WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONSHistory Of PhilosophyAFRICAN PHILOSOPHY
November 15, 2023

AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY

The earliest indigenous African philosophy to produce written documents emerged during the seventeenth century, especially in Ethiopia. Zera Yacob (1599–1692), whose Hatata (1667) has been compared to René Descartes’ Discourse…
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHYHistory Of PhilosophySCHOLASTICISM
November 15, 2023

SCHOLASTICISM

A general term for those philosophers influenced by the medieval rediscovery of classic texts, Scholasticism is broadly characterized by an interest in logic and disputation and is motivated to resolve…
History Of PhilosophyCLASSICAL PHILOSOPHYARISTOTLE
November 15, 2023

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born in Stagira but moved to Athens as a young man to study at Plato’s Academy. Following Plato’s death, Aristotle traveled, became tutor to Alexander the…
History Of PhilosophyTHE ELEATIC SCHOOL
November 15, 2023

THE ELEATIC SCHOOL

Based in the Ionian colony of Elea (modern-day Velia) in southern Italy, and primarily associated with Parmenides (early fifth century BC) and Melissus of Samos (mid fifth century BC), the…
History Of PhilosophyPOST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
November 15, 2023

POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Kant’s philosophy continued to dominate throughout the nineteenth century, although there were increasing concerns about the overall coherence of his system; in particular, there was doubt as to whether the…
History Of PhilosophyANALYTIC PHILOSOPHYORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY
November 15, 2023

ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY

Between the 1940s and the 1960s, analytic philosophy shifted away from investigating the (supposed) underlying logical structure of language. While it was still primarily concerned with conceptual analysis, this was…
FORMS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGTHE PERSONAL ESSAY
November 20, 2023

THE PERSONAL ESSAY

The personal essay is a self-reflective search for meaning. Unlike most philosophical writing, it is not argumentative. Instead, it is exploratory and speculative, often even somewhat confessional. It is typically…
Modern Branches of PhilosophyPhilosophy BranchesHERMENEUTICS
November 14, 2023

HERMENEUTICS

Originally applied to scriptural exegesis (interpretation), hermeneutics is more generally the theory and method of all “textual” interpretation. In the modern context, this refers to both verbal and non-verbal “texts”…
FORMS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGWriting PhilosophyTHE ARGUMENTATIVE PAPER
November 19, 2023

THE ARGUMENTATIVE PAPER

Essays of assertion, affirmation, and refutation are all examples of the argumentative paper. An effective argument relies on factually true premises or premises for which you have strong support.
FORMS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGWriting PhilosophyTHE POSITION PAPER
November 19, 2023

THE POSITION PAPER

A position paper may be viewed as a type of argumentative paper in that it states a claim—your position—concerning a topic, issue, or question and presents a justification for that…
Philosophy BranchesBRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY
December 12, 2023

BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy embraces the most ambitious field of inquiry—the universe, including the self and everything both physical and metaphysical. It is impossible to list all the branches of philosophy, which are…
Traditional Branches of PhilosophyPhilosophy BranchesEPISTEMOLOGY
December 12, 2023

EPISTEMOLOGY

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, including its nature and its extent, and of justification (that is, whether a belief is formed in a valid way to justify its being…

Books

  • Profiles in Courage (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

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  • Aquinas and Modern Science: A New Synthesis of Faith and Reason

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  • Existential Rationalism: Handling Hume’s Fork (Unlock Tao)

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  • Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto)

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  • Sobre el intelecto

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  • Self-Reliance and Other Essays

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  • A Brief History of Everything (20th Anniversary Edition)

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  • Así habló Zaratustra: Un libro para todos y para nadie (Spanish Edition)

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  • Living from the Soul: The 7 Spiritual Principles of Ralph Waldo Emerson

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  • A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living (Learning to Live)

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  • Thus Spake Zarathustra (Dover Thrift Editions: Philosophy)

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  • Discourse on Method and Meditations (Philosophical Classics)

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Reexamining Spacetime Substantivalism: A Critique of Modal Arbitrariness and Determinism in Teitel’s Framework

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Reexamining Spacetime Substantivalism: A Critique of Modal Arbitrariness and Determinism in Teitel’s Framework

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Rule-Following and Artificial Intelligence: A Kripkean Perspective

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The Eternal Coexistence of Consciousness and Spacetime: A Philosophical Inquiry

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Embracing Contradiction: An In-Depth Analysis of Dialetheism

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Analysis of, and Responses to Edmund Gettier’s “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”

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The Unstable Foundation: A Critique of the Ontological Proof of God’s Existence

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Meta-Modal Actuality: A Dynamic Framework for Possibility, Actualization, and Causality

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Killing, Morality, and the Human Condition: A Philosophical Investigation

Killing, Morality, and the Human Condition: A Philosophical Investigation

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The Intricacy of Existence: A Philosophical Exploration of Complexity, Contingency, and Divine Agency

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The Ethics of Procreation and the Rational Acceptance of Life: A Critical Engagement with Weinberg’s Argument

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Imagination, Consciousness, and the Nature of the Soul: A Philosophical Inquiry

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The Interplay of Karma, Rebirth, and Non-Self in Buddhist Philosophy: A Metaphysical Inquiry

The Interplay of Karma, Rebirth, and Non-Self in Buddhist Philosophy: A Metaphysical Inquiry

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Metaphysical Perspectives: A Comparative Analysis of Theism and Atheism

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The Infinite Universe, Death, and the Search for Meaning: A Philosophical Exploration of Existence, the Divine, and Human Mortality

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The Unconscious Artistry of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Reflection on Spinoza’s God and the Blind Watchmaker

The Unconscious Artistry of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Reflection on Spinoza’s God and the Blind Watchmaker

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The Ethics of Procreation and the Rational Acceptance of Life: A Critical Engagement with Weinberg’s Argument

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Terms & Concepts

F

Formal fallacy

An error in the structure or form of reasoning. The most common formal fallacies includeAffirming the Consequent and Denying the Antecedent. A formally fallacious argument is aninvalid one. https://youtube.com/shorts/WCgxcFur6hc?feature=share
S

Secondary quality

A feature or “power” of an object to produce sensations—for instance, sweet, cold, and so on;most commonly associated with John Locke (1632-1704). https://youtube.com/shorts/Mn1uGDXG1Lg?feature=share
C

Church-Turing Thesis

The Church-Turing Thesis states the extensional equivalence of several different methods of formalizing the notion of computability (for example, any general recursive function can be computed by a Turing Machine)…
R
Rule utilitarianism
C
Consistent
I
Intuition
I
Infinite regress (or regression)
K
Karma
S
Sense data
L
Logical validity
P
Prisoner’s Dilemma
D
Dualism
View All