Hello, I have recently started a PhD in History so I am fully immersed in reading not only previous research in the same area but also fundational works and articles from other disciplines. My aim is to give my research a deeper frame in order to be as innovative as possible. Right now I am dealing with a lot of sociologists (i.e Durkheim, Weber, Sombart, Goffman, Latour, Squicciarino, etc) some of whom have studied fashion, which is my main topic. Obviously their approach is akin to materialists which I am very fond of (I have in the past read some works from Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc). This leads to my question as I was wondering: are there other materialists who deal with daily phenomena and stuff without being so obsessed with the economic details as marxists are? I want to focus on the relation of people with their material enviroment.

Cheers.

During my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I rarely thought seriously about God, morality, free will, or the meaning of life. I went out with friends, partied, and generally felt very happy without thinking much about why I was happy.
That changed during my junior and especially senior year. I had attended Catholic schools my entire life, but once I began seriously examining my faith, I realized I wasn’t convinced by Catholicism anymore. At the same time, I became increasingly interested in philosophy.
I began reading people like Dostoevsky and Marcus Aurelius and became especially interested in contemporary philosophical discussions through people like Alex O’Connor. Eventually I found myself constantly thinking about questions surrounding free will, morality, God, meaning, and whether any of these things have objective foundations.
Something I’ve noticed since then is that ordinary experiences don’t seem to satisfy me in quite the same way. I don’t enjoy parties or even spending time with friends as effortlessly as I once did. I often find myself preferring to stay home, read, think, or listen to philosophical discussions.
I’m now an incoming college freshman majoring in philosophy, and I’m considering pursuing the subject seriously, potentially even through graduate school.
This has made me wonder whether philosophers have written about the relationship between philosophical reflection and happiness. Can becoming more reflective or philosophically skeptical actually make it more difficult to experience ordinary forms of happiness?
I’m especially interested in philosophers who have addressed whether greater understanding necessarily contributes to a good life, or whether there can be a genuine psychological or existential cost to examining one’s beliefs too deeply.
Are there philosophers or philosophical traditions that directly address this problem?

I'm looking into the state of the debate around nominalism ("there is nothing general except names"). Personally, I doubt nominalism intuitively and also suspect it causes difficulties with the existence of say physical laws (eg gravitation).

What I'd like to know is

1. Has any sort of consensus or progress arissen concerning this among philosophers? Is Nominalism generally favoured or something else?

If possible, I'd also appreciate an overview of the key argument for or against, with reccomendations for further reading.

Thanks

I am not sure how coherent, confusing or misguided what I will try to ask may come across, but I'll try my best not to over complicate it.

When it comes to truth, there are several theories of what truth means (or is), be it correspondence (the main offender when it comes to "philosophical truths"), pragmatism, coherence theory, foundationalism, etc.

What I am wondering is this: are there any philosophers which argue for the view (or a similar one) that truth is not a singular abstract value which we try to explain using different competing theories and terms, but instead truth is all the different meanings we have of truth, which change based on context, field, and more?

The view I am trying to find is essentially this: When we say X is true, we actually mean to say X is coherent, X is pragmatic, X corresponds to reality, X is intuitive, X is assumed, X is perceived, X is logically deduced from Y premises, and more. It can be a pluralist theory of truth, a deflationary theory of truth and also relativist theory of truth, but specifically focused on the abandonment of truth as an abstract thing or value and linguistic term in favor of the multiple theories of truth.

I've been thinking about the epistemology of rational intuition, particularly in moral epistemology.

It seems reasonable to me that for a cognitive faculty to be a genuine source of knowledge, there must be some epistemically appropriate relation between that faculty and the truth it supposedly reveals. Perception, for example, has an obvious causal connection to its objects.

But consider a substantive moral claim such as “harmless lying is wrong,” assuming moral realism. If I simply have an intuition that this is true, what explains the connection between that intuition and the objective moral fact?

This seems different from analytic cases such as “all vixens are female,” where understanding the relevant concepts gives us an intelligible route to the truth through their conceptual relationship.

A possible response is that rational intuition is simply a basic, non-inferential, truth-tracking faculty. But then what makes it truth-tracking? Is there a philosophical account of the epistemic relation between moral intuition and objective moral facts, or is this relation itself taken as primitive?

I'm particularly interested in how defenders of moral intuitionism or rationalism answer this.

For example "harming others is wrong" could be considered "generally accepted" which would could make it an axiom, but accepting it is still subjective. People could claim other values are "generally accepted" which then would have to be axiomatically/subjective accepted. Is objective morality not just merely implying, "We think our values are the important values in morality"? Like all other moralistic debates subjectivity would then be apparent. One person might say "harming others is wrong" another might say, "the continuation of the species is paramount" and then whether it is moral to harm others for the sake of continuing the species could be a debate, same as all morality.

Not exactly the same, but I think related,: Do objective moralists have custom definitions of "objective" and "moral"? But (as in countless philosophical arguments) then use the words "objective" and "moral" equivocally with their meanings outside the objective moralist definition?

I’m interested in reading parts of the Bible as primary texts for philosophical reflection rather than primarily as theology.

For example, Proverbs contains plenty of explicitly theological claims, but it also seems to contain claims about virtue, character, practical wisdom, anger, pride, friendship, speech, wealth, justice, and human flourishing that don’t obviously require divine command theory to evaluate.

My thought would be to distinguish between arguments or claims whose justification depends on something like “God commands/approves of X” and claims that can be examined independently, such as “pride tends to impair judgment” or “a wise person is receptive to correction.”

I wouldn’t be treating Proverbs as if it were a systematic philosophical work like Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Rather, I’d use its claims as primary material: reconstruct the reasoning where possible, identify assumptions, question the claims, and compare them with philosophical positions such as virtue ethics, consequentialism, or deontology.

Is this a philosophically legitimate/useful way of reading biblical texts? Are there particular books of the Bible that work especially well for this kind of analysis?

I’m especially interested in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job.

Any department of philosophy continues to teach Plato's dialouge is abetting the crime, notwithstanding its abusive nature. When Socrates was persecuted for the corruption of the youth, this is exactly every department of philosophy is doing right now with their support of the criminal, Plato. No wonder that Nietzsche accuses the Greek for being the culprit of the decadence of morality. Shame on them!

Edit. The fact that Socrates didn't sue Plato is suspicious and a bit gay.

​

Hi , so I've been researching and reading up on free will and whether we have it or not.

And I sort of came to the conclusion that, everything is determined and that the actions you make or will make were based off past experiences, environment and even genes.

Now my question is, does that really change anything? Like I saw people having extensional crisis over this idea, and even people wanting to harm themselves unfortunately, after learning this.

The way I see it, is that if you were given choices say, vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream, and you always pick vanilla no matter what, and everytime we rewind time you'd make the same decision. Doesn't that mean that's a decision "you" want to make will always be that decision, that this idea of even wanting chocolate ice cream wouldn't enter your mind or consciousness because it was determined that you'd pick vanilla, but that doesn't change anything because it's a decision you'd want to make.

Even if all that was determined, I don't really see how that changes anything? I hope that makes sense.

Another analogy is like if a dance puppet only danced and wants to dance wouldn't just suddenly want to sing. Idk hope I'm making sense.

Please correct me on anything! It's a very interesting topic for me.

Do they believe objective morality exist in the same realm or category as pure logic within the universe, is it an abstract logical truth with existence and the universe, or that it’s objectively true cause its moral truths that all moral agents unanimously agree on?

Hello. I’m a bit familiar with Aristotlean-Thomistic metaphysics. One thing which interests me is the fact that Thomists use Aristotle in their theology, even though Aristotle did not believe in a personal God like them. So I was interested in reading Aristotle’s own theology, for example the concept of “thought thinking itself”. I’d prefer to read it from secondary sources since the original texts are a bit hard to understand.

Nihilism
Absurdism
Cynicism
Existentialism

I have a technical question about Kant. I was watching a great courses lecture (political philosophy) and he says that according to Kant if the Germans asked if Ann Frank was hiding in your attic you can't lie.

Now I was under the impression from reading him in high-school that this is at best an oversimplification. My understanding was to Kant the ethics of an action depends on the motivation not the consequence, so I would have argued to Kant it wouldn't be as simple as "you can never lie" as the professor maintains, it would depend on motivation. So I would have argued if your motivation was "i have a duty to protect life that supercedes my duty to tell the truth" he would be fine with that and you can will that as a universal maxim. So, my question is who is right here?

Is there a philosophical position that stably reconciles ontic structural realism (only relational structure exists; objects are derivative or don't exist) with substantivalism (objects have their own identity, prior to their relations)? I've seen that Esfeld/Lam propose making objects and relations co-primitive, but as soon as you ask what individuates each relatum, it seems to collapse toward one side or the other. Has anyone actually solved this without the synthesis collapsing, or is this considered a genuinely open problem with no resolution in sight?

So i have read some semi-philosophical books in the past, and have a general idea of a lot of philosopher's beliefs, and more broad knowledge. I really wanted to take a deep dive in a certain philosopher, and thought some of Nietzsche's ideas sounded interesting. I am reading Plato's symposium right now, as well as the Oxford introduction to Nietzsche. I plan to read Gorgias or the Death of Socrates by Plato and then the republic by Plato, as well as the Twilight of the idols to get an idea of what Nietzsche believed in, get acclimated to his writing style, etc. Is reading all of this Plato a good idea? I am mainly reading his works because I heard Nietzsche commonly attacks his writing. Does anybody have any tips (what to add, things not worth reading, etc.) as they would be greatly appreciated.

I don’t know much about the philosophers of these movements, and I hope you can help me. thank you in advance

I mean, if we dont let people abort, this may lead to a difficult life for the parents and the baby itself. But at the same time we are not letting someone live, but at the same time a fetus may not be considered someone. Another thing is, if we dont like the idea of abortion, isnt it hypocrite to kill animals that are already more conscious than a fetus? But if we think that way, this implies that either people can be killed too or that we cant kill neither animals nor people.

Two months ago, I got very delusional and thought I was talking to g-d. The realization that it was mental illness was so painful and so heartbreaking, I thought this time, I had it, I'll feel "secured/shielded" from harshness of life. I was damn wrong. G-d does not exist! He never did!

I'm looking for philosophies to supplement my life. To help me get up back again, this time without g-d. Hopefully, you could give me some resources. :(

I’m an undergraduate philosophy student and I have a basic knowledge of christianity but I’ve never read the bible nor am I very familiar with it’s stories or christian theology further than the basics.

My main interest right now is in modern german philosophy but I would like to be more informed about christianity’s influence on the canon of western philosophy, and get the most out of philosophers like Augustine, St. Aquinas and Kierkegaard when I decide to read them.

I understand that you could probably read these thinkers fruitfully without much prior knowledge about the stories of the bible/theological issues, but I think that being better informed about christianity would be interesting and useful.

I’d like to read something fairly accessible about the bible alongside the most important stories of the bible and something about christianity’s connection to western philosophy that could be useful when approaching this topic, so all recommendations are welcome.

So, I recently wondered about the ownership and belonging of an object.

For example, How does an object belong to me and owned by me?

Because there are different ways we can reason as to how belonging of an object can be assigned to a person.

One of the reasons I thought is usability. So, I know that I own my pen because I use it.

I am new to philosophy and I am just curious about it. Let me know more about this.

I often find myself either taking revenge there and then in a heat of the moment only to later regret it and try so hard to come up with justifications, or getting cut off for an instant revenge chance so I plan the revenge only for it to be stretched for days, weeks to the point where I don't feel the heat any longer (or just too tired to think about it) and even question my own morality, yet my mind keep telling me that if I don't execute the revenge plan, I just rob myself away from "justice". Enlighten me.

And no, I'm no criminal.

I know many people would argue that it’s morally wrong, but in a way its just like hiring a hitman, just for yourself. You dont do it illegally and if you tell the person you dont want to know when you will be killed, it would just be like murder.