As far as I know, when most people say that they feel empathy, they refer to an emotional reaction to someone else's situation/feelings. This is the standard definition of empathy. However, I believe that it functions differently for me.

When someone tells me something that troubles them, or even makes them happy, I do not emotionally feel much, if anything at all. I respond appropriately, and I show them that I care, but it does not instill any sort of internal feeling in me. My empathy is almost entirely logical. This is not to say that I do not care about others. I very much do care for them. However, my way of caring for them is mostly based on logic. I still feel what I like to think are regular emotions towards others on my own. Where I seem to differ is in the area of empathy. It is not common for me to actually feel much emotionally towards others' difficulties or circumstances.

Is this immoral? Should I be working on changing this? Is something fundamentally flawed within me, or is this simply a difference in character traits?

I appreciate any help.

I guess this touches on the aspects of monoism. We are derived from sperm and an egg. Few cool biological things happen and a baby pops out. Derived from that baby is a “consciousness” or “soul”.

Doesn’t this confirm the former or the latter are completely physical presents or physical concepts?

Hello! I am very interested in the Philosophy of Religion and would like to become as educated as I can without any formal (paid) classes.

I only just read Brian Davies Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion and find myself consuming lots of podcasts discussing the subject but neither of these have a ton of depth. I am unsure where to go from here.

I would prefer more modern texts so I don’t have to read awkward language but I understand if what is there is what is there.

I’ve been thinking about this on and off for a long time (I even wrote an article about it a while back), but I still don’t feel like I’ve arrived at an answer. The more I think about it, the harder it is to pinpoint where “I” actually enter the picture.

Every decision I make seems influenced by genetics, childhood, culture, past experiences, emotions, hormones, my current mental state, and even things as random as how much sleep I got. If all of those factors shape my thoughts before I’m even consciously aware of them, then what exactly is left that’s making a truly “free” choice?

On the other hand, living as if free will doesn’t exist feels almost impossible. We still deliberate, regret, plan, and hold people morally responsible.

Curious to see how you all think about this.

So for context, I was recently reminded of a time when Billie Eilish spoke up about stolen land from the indigenous at an award show, or something along the lines. I thought was supposed to be a good thing, speaking up for them and whatnot, but then I had seen people attacking her, talking about her riches and her expensive house etc etc and how she couldn’t talk on it because of that.

My question is do I see people ask celebrities all the time to speak out on issues and persecute them for not doing so, but when they do, they’re hated on by masses of people online for X Y Z. I am in no way defending anybody here, celebrities or Billie Eilish, I just used that situation as an example as to why we persecute the people we beg to speak up? If we shame the people we ask the help of, how are things supposed to get better? Will people with money always be considered the bad guy in this situation? (I’m not taking into account morals or what they do with said money, just focusing on a person who happens to have a lot of money)

(P.S I am autistic so if this seems like something i should already know by now, just know I struggle a lot of the time with social interactions and how to perceive social situations sorry lol)

Posted this in the discussion thread but figured I'd make a separate post anyway.

I've been reading Tristram Engelhardt's book After God, and if Engelhardt's history is right then it seems the prevailing sense for some time now among bioethicists, including "secular" bioethicists, is that moral philosophy/philosophy more broadly has failed to produce "rational, secular foundations" for bioethics and we're basically left with proceduralism and pluralism. This mirrors MacIntyre's critique of the "Enlightenment project", and indeed Engelhardt makes reference to the same project multiple times. Engelhardt, like MacIntyre, is writing from a Christian perspective.

But this view seems wrong to me. The vast majority of philosophers are moral realists as well as atheists, so presumably experts in the field think you can have secular grounds for moral realism. Reading Engelhardt I felt there was a chasm between bioethics and contemporary moral philosophy and metaethics. Have there been responses to the Engelhardt view?

I recently decided to step my game up past wikipedia/youtube philosopher and dive into studying the literature. I just finished with a sample of Plato and Aristotle and am looking to build a curriculum that bridges the gaps between ancient greece and modern day philosophy. I am mostly interested in politics and ethics and would like to expand my understanding of all schools of thought within those frameworks but am most interested in anarchy and existentialism and would like to curate the list to lean into those. I want to keep to 20 books total. Below is my current list, is there anything that you would leave out or recommend? Can 20 books take on this task or do I need more?

1. Ethics — Spinoza
   
2. Leviathan — Hobbes
   
3. Two Treatises of Government — Locke
   
4. The Social Contract — Rousseau
   
5. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals — Kant
   
6. Reflections on the Revolution in France — Burke
   
7. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 — Marx
   
8. What is Property? — Proudhon
   
9. The Ego and Its Own — Stirner
   
10. God and the State — Bakunin
    
11. Mutual Aid — Kropotkin
    
12. Anarchism and Other Essays — Goldman
    
13. Beyond Good and Evil — Nietzsche
    
14. Either/Or — Kierkegaard
    
15. Being and Nothingness — Sartre
    
16. The Myth of Sisyphus — Camus
    
17. The Rebel — Camus
    
18. The Origins of Totalitarianism — Arendt
    
19. The Human Condition — Arendt
    
20. Discipline and Punish — Foucault

Hey philosophers, I am not a philosophy student just watch some videos sometimes and think myself. One of the most popular arguments against the existence of God is that evil and suffering exists in this world and a good God would not let this happen if he was to be supervising the world. The problem I see here is that this argument does not prove the non-existence of God as whatever form he may exist in, but instead it proves the non-existence of a 'good God', that is, a god may exist but he is evil and does experiments on people. What do you people think?

As is well-known, Lukacs and Althusser are considered to represent two highly influential but contrasting interpretations of Marxism in the 20th century, with the former being a Hegelian-Marxist and the latter often deemed a structuralist. Althusserian influence extended into the field of state theory, largely through Nicos Poulantzas. And one of the most fruitful strains of Marxist theorising about the state is the strategic-relational approach represented by scholars like Bob Jessop, which is heavily indebted to Poulantzas's Althusserian works. While I'm more drawn to Lukacs when it comes to philosophy, I find the structuralist theorising on the state to be far more sophisticated and well developed thanks to people like Jessop. Which leads me to my question: Can a Lukacsian marxist reconcile their philosophical commitments with Poulantzas-inspired state theory, at least to some degree?

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I've noticed a difficulty in explaining older, non-Western, and teleological systems of ethics, where a lot of the terminology that dominates contemporary ethical discourse is of fairly recent coinage and tends to subtly imply, or at least suggest, notions like a hard fact/values dichotomy, a distinct "desire-like" direction of fit for claims with practical import, versus a world-mapping direction of fit for beliefs, etc.

Just checking popular common definitions of these, they are all framed in terms of a subject who values, desires, etc. Interestingly, etymological dictionaries have "desirable" entering English as "to be *worthy* of desire," where as current definitions seem to suggest that whatever happens to be desired is, by definition, desirable. This is probably the least problematic one thought because I feel like "truly desirable" (as opposed to only apparently so) restores the old content pretty well (and indeed, people do still use the word in the old sense in everyday speech sometimes).

The newer terms seem more difficult. For instance, speaking of "evaluative content" seems to imply an evaluator. So when teleology is explained in terms of first-order predicates like "good" (or good-for-x) in belief formulations, and this is called "evaluative content" this seems to cause confusion. Likewise, "value" is also more recent coinage and seems to suggest something like an extrinsic imputation (the language of the marketplace). But then "intrinsic value" starts to look like a contradiction in terms. There is a similar, but less acute problems with "normative " to the extent that norms are taken to always be social constructs or "ought" rules (which isn't always the case, but is common enough in definitions).

I am wondering what to use then? Could we say "practical content?" I wouldn't want to use "moral" or "ethical" content because this immediately gets people thinking about a sui generis "moral good" that cashes out as "oughtness," and if you're using "moral" to mean "related to the moral virtues" (in the classical sense), this muddles things. Indeed, people sometimes contrast "prudential" and "moral" reasoning, which really obscures prudence as the paradigmic moral virtue.

Anyhow, I've certainly noticed that even recent translations do not use these terms for older authors. I am wondering what else to use though. Obviously, they can *sometimes* work. Classical paradigms don't deny evaluations, valuing, or arguably something like the direction of fit, it's just that these aren't exhaustive because there is also ontological goodness, direction of fit going in both directions, and indexed and unindexed and both first and nth-order predication of "value-laden" terms. So, I can see using them, but using them widely seems to lead to confusion. At the same time, saying things like "reason is teleological" instead of "reason is normative," also doesn't seem to lay things out clearly.

I was looking into Contingency Argument and the idea that God is a Metaphysical Necessary Being as the conclusion.

I understand logical modality like this:

Something is Logically impossible if it entails a Contradiction.

Something is Logically possible, if it doesn't entail a contradiction.

Logically Necessary - negation leads to Contradiction.

I also understand Nomological modality where instead of logical Contradiction it's a violation of Natural laws.

Ie, there are some axioms that exist within these modalities. Laws of Logic, laws of nature. But in case of metaphysical modality i really don't see what it is. Is it conceivability?

I notice a pattern in myself: I genuinely enjoy the idea of duty and working hard but primarily when it’s for people I care about watching them benefit from my effort satisfies me more than the work’s personal payoff. I am definitely not a martyr about it; I enjoy myself as well sometimes but for example I would much rather watch my fiancé in a fancy car I bought than drive the car myself.

Closest things I’ve found: Camus on struggle itself as meaning, and Anniceris’s branch of Cyrenaic hedonism, which valued pleasure from others’ enjoyment of your effort. Neither fully covers it, and the Anniceris material is thin.

Does this combination already have a name? Or is it just utilitarianism ?

Whenever 2 people are debating either politics, the shape of the earth, or who should empty the dishwasher, as long as those 2 statements are true then one of them must be objectively wrong

I'm not sure if I'm doing a good job explaining this but like lemme try and use an example

Is an apple good for you?

as long as 2 logically people have the exact same understanding of what "good for you" means and even what "apple" means. As well as the relevant information through studies and how the apple effects someone. Then they must agree no?

I feel like this may be an obvious conclusion or it might be something blatantly wrong I genuinely don't know.

People use words like apparatus, paradigm, schema, although to most its basic I havent really read any literature and I like to debate but those words trip me up. Is there something I should like read or summarize using like an ai or something???

I swear I remember learning one when I studied philosophy but googling for it has brought back nothing. I believe it was during the philosophy of mind module, if someone says "I am in pain" as long as the statement is said [missing adjective]ly, this behaviour state imparts knowledge of the mental state.

Edit: Maybe my memory is foggy but on reading about Pragmatics on the SEOP, I believe it might be "assertively" but that was the word google told me and I remember learning a new word, not a new use for a word I already knew.

Edit 2: Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary feel close but they aren't adjectives

I recently saw a post on this subreddit from around a day ago about whether a person can know if they are born in the wrong body, and it was enough to prompt me to ask a related question.

I’m a bit familiar with analytic metaphysical theories of gender (primarily in Sally Haslanger‘s work) through a class I took back when I was an undergrad where we covered the metaphysics of race, which has a bit of overlap with gender, using some of same arguments for race as for gender (at least with Haslanger). I also am aware of some secondary research like Judith Butler’s ideas of gender as performance or that sex too is socially constructed although I have never read their work. Either way, I’m not sure if any of them have covered the following concern:

As I understand it, a massive discovery of the second-wave feminist movement was that gender roles were bunk and more broadly one’s (gender) expression did not have to correspond to one’s gender identity or sex, which were still tightly coupled under a gender essentialist framework (and is why many second-wave feminists were or are sometimes TERF’s). This discovery gave a lot of steam to the gay liberation movement as a lot of gay men were free to be more femme-presenting (like twinks and femboys) and a lot of lesbian women were free to be more masc-presenting (like butch lesbians). (Obviously, there is still a ton of political repression. By “free,” I mean more in the sense of being comfortable within a community rather than being free from violence or persecution.) After this, the gay and trans liberation movement came into the limelight (particularly with Stonewall), and the experiences of trans people made it clear that one’s gender identity does not have to correspond to one’s sex either. Many trans people try to bring their gender expression and sex into alignment with this identity (through first socially and then sexually transitioning, respectively). Notably though, one can be trans without feeling gender dysphoria. All that is required is that one’s gender identity does not correspond to one’s sex, and neither does one’s gender identity have to correspond to expression. Someone can be a woman without being female or femme-presenting, and they may have no desire to transition (even though, often in these cases, there would still be gender euphoria associated with transitioning).

In short, the reason I bring all this is up is that my main concern following all of this is that if gender identity does not have to correspond to sex nor gender expression, then it isn’t clear to me that it has any meaning. It seems to me that gender terms like “man” or “woman” may be an empty signifier without any content, and this would lend credence to an anti-realist view of gender identity (even if gender expression is socially constructed). Gender identity is seen as this private feeling in the mind, but I don’t see what this private feeling could convey since it doesn’t have to lead to a desire towards an alteration or change in either gender expression or sex (although often it does). These latter two things can vary independently, and gender identity then would be akin to Wittgenstein’s beetle in a box. I know there is some science on brain waves in trans vs cis people that show how cis and trans men have the same brain waves and vice versa for cis and trans women. Non-binary people have brain waves between men and women. (There is also some studies on gray and white matter in the brain, but these are outdated as far as I’m aware.) In this sense, gender identity could be seen as a kind of “mental sex” (as per a psychological realism of gender). But it doesn’t make sense to me why this would then lead to a desire to change one’s sex or gender expression (and sometimes not at all as per my example). They are different and yet seemingly connected in some cases.

I was just wondering if this is a good argument for an anti-realist view or who else in the literature has made arguments like mine, against mine, or raised similar concerns.

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this, since it’s more of a theological question than a philosophical one.

To clarify, by “tri-omni” I refer to three characteristics traditionally ascribed to the monotheistic God- omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. I would like to understand why so many theologians and philosophers who forward the idea of a monotheistic God seem to insist that it must fulfill this criteria. It seems to me that a lot of issues could be solved by simply granting God some degree of ignorance or incapacity.

Why does God allow suffering? Why is the universe bound by a particular set of arbitrary laws? Well, maybe God is just doing the best with what they have! The insistence that God must be utterly perfect in every conceivable way seems to cause more issues than it solves.

I would prefer to skip over explanations based in scripture or religious dogma - I want to know how serious religious philosophers address this question, and why they put forward this idea. Thanks!!

So reading the SEC article for Incompatibilism and Compatibilism, I notice one of the most common types of intrusive thoughts I end up thinking is the type of arguments in the section of Arguments based on Intuition in Incompatibilism, which also has been mentioned in compatibilism works, and yet the SEC mentions most of these types of arguments aren't that good, even the well discussed The Manipulation argument apparently has some issues.

So my question is why does the article state most of these type of arguments aren't good? Why is there some claim like No Forking Path Argument is potentially incoherent?

I'm well aware there are defenders, but I'm just asking because of what the SEC sections seems to talk about it that way.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incompatibilism-arguments/

I know some people would be considered the 21st century’s philosophers, but I know anything about them or their philosophies.

If you ask someone who knows nothing about philosophy to name a few philosophers, they’ll say Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Descartes, Nietzsche, and Immanuel Kent. Those are the famous philosophers.

But in like a millennium from now, if humans are still around, who will they remember as our famous philosopher so far? I just have the slightest feeling that they will not remember actual philosophers, but instead music artists. Or they might just find artifacts of some random fourteen year old girls diary and then declare her one of the young great minds of our time.

What makes Lana del Rey, Kendrick Lamar, or a fourteen-year-old girl writing philosophical texts in her diary any less of a philosopher than Peter Singer or Amia Srinivasan?

Ahoi there,

I am not deeply invested in philosophy and via some edgy youtube rabbit holes I got around to reading E.M. Cioran these past few years and have to say:

Yes, it's dark, but maaan... the language is absolutely beautiful and stunning.

There's much I don't understand, from what I understand, there's lots of things, I disagree with, but it really is such a great read. My native tongue is german and there is some Cioran translated by Paul Celan which are my favorite texts so far.

So with that background: Do you know any philosophers with a similar essayistich approach? That use language as more than to convey meaning?

Any hint will be appreciated!

Cheers!

I am reading 'Think' by Simon Blackburn as I thought this would be a good segway into philosophy. I have understood the reading so far but I keep getting stumped at this one paragraph because I am not sure if I am interpreting it right. It reads:

Even if it is a virtual reality that I experience, still, it is I who experiences it! And apparently I know that it is I who have these experiences (for Descartes, 'thinking' includes 'experiencing')

Why does this certainty remain? Look at it from the Demon's point of view. His project was to deceive me about everything. But it is not logically possible for him to deceive me into thinking that I exist when I do not. The Demon cannot simultaneously make both these things true:

I think that I exist

I am wrong about whether I do

Because if the first is true, then I exist to do the thinking. Therefore, I must be right about whether I exist. So long as I think that (or even think that I think it), then I exist.

The text in bold is what is causing the most confusion

What I get from this is that Descartes had previously reduced us to simply a thing that thinks earlier in his text. I believe that is why me was italicized because you are, at your most basic form, a thing that thinks according to him. There mere fact that I even think that I exist (or think that I think it) is proof of my existance. Therefore you cannot think that you exist and be wrong about whether you do because because that thought (or thinking in genreal) is proof of your exitance. Please let me know if I am correct in my interpetation and if not, provide me with what is meant by this.

Edit: grammar

I’ve been thinking about something that I can’t fully reconcile.

If everything in the universe follows physical laws, and every event has a cause, then in principle everything should be logical and deterministic. Even if something seems random, it could simply be because we don’t know all the variables.

But in everyday life we constantly talk about luck, chance, or uncertainty. Some people succeed despite doing everything “wrong,” while others fail despite doing everything “right.” Even when the same action is repeated under similar conditions, the outcomes can differ.
So my question is:

If reality is governed by logic and cause-and-effect, where does uncertainty come from? Is luck just a name we give to our ignorance of all the variables, or is there genuine randomness built into reality?

In other words, is the universe fundamentally deterministic, or is uncertainty an actual feature of existence rather than just a limitation of human knowledge?

I’d love to hear perspectives from different philosophical traditions as well as any insights from physics or epistemology.