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21 votes
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A neurophilosophy of governance of artificial intelligence and brain-computer interface
2 votes -
Wise thoughts: Summaries of classic philosophical works in words of one syllable
7 votes -
In defense of hellfire: The rhetoric of damnation has been lost. But how else can we adequately condemn injustice?
8 votes -
The vampire problem: Illustrating the paradox of transformative experience
8 votes -
Why did GE Moore disappear from history?
9 votes -
A big little idea called legibility
10 votes -
Doing being rational: polymerase chain reaction
3 votes -
Truth be sold: How truth became a product
12 votes -
Nihilism
7 votes -
Modesty means more, not less
9 votes -
Bad company: The corporate appropriation of nature, divinity, and personhood in U.S. culture
6 votes -
The Stone Lion Racism Test - Who owns the Shisa?
8 votes -
Ignorance, a skilled practice
5 votes -
The parable of the pebbles
5 votes -
The Principle of Charitable Interpretation
13 votes -
How Mengzi came up with something better than the Golden Rule
7 votes -
The unlikeliest cult in history
11 votes -
Has science shown that consciousness is only an illusion?
6 votes -
The Trolley Problem
An interesting thought experiment that I vividly remember from undergrad philosophy courses is the trolley problem: You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise...
An interesting thought experiment that I vividly remember from undergrad philosophy courses is the trolley problem:
You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the main track. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. You have two options:
- Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
- Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
A variation of the problem that we were also presented with was:
You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the main track. You are standing on a bridge that runs across the trolley tracks. There is a large man on the bridge next to you, who if pushed over the bridge and onto the track, would safely stop the trolley, saving the five people but killing the large man. Do you:
- Push the man over the bridge, saving the five people.
- Allow the trolley to kill the five people
Which is the more ethical options? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?
17 votes -
What are the ethical consequences of immortality technology?
9 votes -
Excerpt from "Myth and Ritual in Christianity" by A. Watts
... The very insistence on the one historical incarnation as a unique step in a course of events leading to the future Kingdom of God reveals the psychology of Western culture most clearly. It...
... The very insistence on the one historical incarnation as a unique step in a course of events leading to the future Kingdom of God reveals the psychology of Western culture most clearly. It shows a mentality for which the present, real world is, in itself, joyless and barren, without value. The present can have value only in terms of meaning—if, like a word, it points to something beyond itself. This "beyond" which past and present events "mean" is the future. This the Western intellectual, as well as the literate common man, finds his life meaningless except in terms of a promising future. But the future is a "tomorrow which never comes", and for this reason Western culture has a "frantic" character. It is a desperate rush in pursuit of an ever-receding "meaning", because the promising future is precisely the famous carrot which the clever driver dangles before his donkey's nose from the end of his whip. Tragically enough, this frantic search for God, for the ideal life, in the future renders the course of history anything but a series of unique steps towards a goal. Its real result is to make history repeat itself faster and more furiously, confusing "progress" with increased agitation.
—Alan Watts, Myth and Ritual in Christianity. 1954
11 votes -
The hypersane are among us, if only we are prepared to look
4 votes -
Tainted by association: Would you carve a roast with a knife that had been used in a murder? Why not? And what does this tell us about ethics?
17 votes -
Can animals commit crimes?
8 votes -
The Impossible Dream - How have we come to build a whole culture around a futile, self-defeating enterprise: the pursuit of happiness?
9 votes -
The first socialist
7 votes -
C.S. Peirce on science and belief
4 votes -
Like Michael Jackson and R Kelly's songs but not them? Ethical approaches for how to deal with it
11 votes -
"Work," from "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol"
4 votes -
Two kinds of freedom
8 votes -
If anyone can see the morally unthinkable online, what then?
5 votes -
"How to do what you love": An essay on finding goals and discovering what things you really enjoy doing.
9 votes -
Who is the doomer? - Dealing with an age of hopelessness
8 votes -
The cultural significance of cyberpunk
7 votes -
The 'debate of the century': What happened when Jordan Peterson debated Slavoj Žižek
8 votes -
"Ethics" and ethics
6 votes -
Moral circle expansion: How humanity’s idea of who deserves moral concern has grown — and will keep growing
9 votes -
The banality of empathy
4 votes -
Logical Consequence
4 votes -
Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault - On human nature
5 votes -
The philosopher redefining equality
9 votes -
Socrates versus Roger Stone
9 votes -
If universities sacrifice philosophy on the altar of profit, what’s next?
7 votes -
The Principle of Charity: on the Importance of Using Constructive Arguments
8 votes -
Do you have a moral duty to leave Facebook?
31 votes -
Believing without evidence is always morally wrong
10 votes -
Does anyone here share a passion for spiritual development, the occult, metaphysics, or fringe science/academia?
One of my biggest hobbies and passions over the last 10 or 15 years has been essentially all of the above. I'm not the smartest or the most well-read lady out there by any means but I enjoy...
One of my biggest hobbies and passions over the last 10 or 15 years has been essentially all of the above. I'm not the smartest or the most well-read lady out there by any means but I enjoy exploring the more shadowy realms of discourse. There's lots and lots of dross but occasionally a nugget of something magnificent, and over the years it's eroded away my original scientific materialist atheism completely and my thinking now is more animist, panpsychist, deist. I've spent years off and on experimenting with (actual, not stage) magic, and though I was never super committed to the full ceremonial experience like others I've seen, it's become a part of how I think.
So I was wondering if there's any here that don't fit into the typical scientific materialist box in one form or another. And if so, what're you reading or experimenting with right now?
Currently I'm reading through Conversations with God and it's persuaded me to start practicing loving-kindness meditation. I've only been at that a few days but I'm interested to see what impact it has on my daily life. It's definitely true that up until these past few days I've never actively focused on trying to love myself and others, which kind of surprises me when I think about it. But that sort of thing isn't really something I see emphasized in our culture or in my own little circle.
How about you?
21 votes -
About time: why western philosophy can only teach us so much
6 votes -
How alt-right is Nietzsche really?
6 votes