Philosophy

Husserl's phenomenological reduction does

Husserl's phenomenological reduction suspends the natural attitude to examine pure consciousness

Husserl meant by 'intentionality'

Can your mind exist without something to focus on?

Phenomenology (philosophy)

Epoché brackets existence claims to study how things appear

Lifeworld

Edmund Husserl popularized the concept of lifeworld

The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology

Did science lose touch with life's meaning?

Merleau-Ponty means by the 'flesh of the world'

Can you see the world differently than others?

Emmanuel Levinas

Levinas argues that ethics precedes knowledge

Axiological ethics

Max Scheler's material value ethics opposed Kant's purely formal ethics

Dasein

Dasein means 'existence' in German

Martin Heidegger

Heidegger introduced Dasein to describe human existence

Heidegger means by 'thrownness' (Geworfenheit)

Heidegger's 'thrownness' (Geworfenheit) refers to our inevitable situation in life we didn't choose

Heidegger's 'the question concerning technology' argues

Heidegger's 'the question concerning technology' argues that technology reveals the world as standing-reserve

Heidegger meant by the forgetting of Being

Why does forgetting something feel like losing a part of ourselves?

Heidegger's concept of authenticity means

Heidegger's authenticity means owning your existence rather than drifting in das Man

Heidegger's being-toward-death reveals

Heidegger's being-toward-death reveals finitude as the condition for authentic existence

The Origin of the Work of Art

Can a simple pair of shoes reveal a hidden world?

Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was born on 15 July 1930

Deconstruction

Derrida's deconstruction reveals internal contradictions in texts

Michel Foucault

Foucault's theories link power, knowledge, and social control

Panopticon (album)

Panopticon album title inspired by Bentham's panopticon prison ideal and Foucault's allegorical use

Episteme

Episteme is the Ancient Greek term for 'knowledge' or 'understanding'

Gilles Deleuze

Deleuze's concept of 'the virtual' is central to his philosophy

Deleuze and Guattari mean by 'deterritorialization'

Ever felt trapped in a routine that suddenly shifts?

Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard coined the term 'simulacra'

Žižek means by 'ideology is our spontaneous relation to the world'

Do we really know why we believe what we do?

Adorno means by the 'culture industry'

Mass culture turns us into passive consumers

Benjamin's 'aura' is

Does copying art lose its magic?

Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas was a German philosopher and social theorist

Communicative rationality

Communicative rationality aims for mutual understanding, not domination

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge

Wittgenstein's later philosophy argues

Can words mean different things depending on how we use them?

Private language argument

Private language is unintelligible

Theory of descriptions

Russell's theory of descriptions explains meaningful but false statements

Sense and reference

Frege's distinction between sense and reference

Willard Van Orman Quine

Quine was an influential 20th-century philosopher

Two Dogmas of Empiricism

Quine's essay attacked two central aspects of logical positivism

Rigid designator

Kripke's rigid designators refer to the same thing in all possible worlds

Kripke's Naming and Necessity showed

Can you name water without knowing its chemical formula?

Twin Earth thought experiment

Twin Earth thought experiment illustrates semantic externalism

Chinese room

Chinese Room thought experiment challenges strong AI hypothesis

What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

Thomas Nagel's paper challenges the mind-body problem's solvability

Jackson's Mary's Room argues

Jackson's Mary's Room posits that there are non-physical facts about conscious experience

Functionalism (philosophy of mind)

Mental states are defined by their functional roles, not their material basis

Eliminative materialism

Eliminative materialism claims many mental states don't exist

Existence precedes essence

Jean-Paul Sartre formulated "existence precedes essence."

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Myth of Sisyphus

Albert Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" explores the concept of the absurd

Leap of faith

Kierkegaard coined 'leap of faith' to describe faith beyond rational justification

Stages on Life's Way

Kierkegaard's "Stages on Life's Way" explores the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages of existence

God is dead

Nietzsche's phrase "God is dead" symbolizes the collapse of Christian morality's foundation for Europe's moral values

Übermensch

Übermensch means "Overman" in English

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche suffered a neurological collapse at age 44

Will to power

Nietzsche's will to power is not political domination but self-overcoming

Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche developed his philosophy in the late 19th century

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir coined the phrase "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."

The Ethics of Ambiguity

Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity challenges Sartre's Being and Nothingness

Categorical imperative

Categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

Immanuel Kant

Kant separates duty from inclination to determine moral worth

Original position

Original position thought experiment by John Rawls

Rawls' difference principle says

Rawls' difference principle states: Inequality is just if it benefits the least advantaged

A Theory of Justice

Nozick's entitlement theory argues against Rawls — redistribution violates individual rights

utilitarianism's 'utility monster' problem is

Can one person's joy outweigh everyone's pain?

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism maximizes happiness for the greatest number

Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics emphasizes character traits over rules

Eudaimonia

Aristotle defines eudaimonia as human flourishing through virtue

Doctrine of the Mean

Aristotle's doctrine of the mean posits virtue as a balance between excess and deficiency

Ethics of care

Ethics of care emphasizes relationships and empathy over abstract principles

Moral nihilism

Moral nihilism asserts that nothing is morally right or wrong

Is–ought problem

Hume's guillotine: ethical conclusions can't follow from facts alone

Moral responsibility

Moral luck challenges moral responsibility

Problem of universals

Universals question independent existence

Nominalism

Nominalism claims only particular things exist, universals are just names

Theory of forms

Plato's Theory of Forms posits abstract perfect Forms are more real than physical copies

Mind–body dualism

Mind–body dualism posits mental phenomena as non-physical

Mind–body problem

Mind-body problem: immaterial thoughts vs. physical brain

Social identity theory

Social identity theory explains intergroup behavior

Parfit's teleporter thought experiment challenges about personal identity

Can you teleport and still be you?

Ship of Theseus

Ship of Theseus paradox questions identity over time

Four-dimensionalism

Objects persist by having temporal parts

Modal realism

Possible worlds are as real as the actual world

Principle of sufficient reason

Every contingent fact has a sufficient reason

Cosmological argument

Universe's existence requires a First Cause

Paradigm shift

Paradigm shifts are fundamental changes in scientific concepts and practices

Kuhn means by 'normal science'

Kuhn describes 'normal science' as the routine work of solving puzzles within an established scientific paradigm

Falsifiability

Popper introduced falsifiability as a criterion for scientific theories

Problem of induction

Observing 1000 white swans doesn't prove all swans are white

Feyerabend means by 'anything goes'

Can science always be trusted to give us the truth?

Underdetermination

Evidence may support multiple theories

Scientific realism

Scientific realism posits unobservable entities have the same ontological status as observables

Instrumentalism

Instrumentalism views scientific theories as useful tools, not as descriptions of unobservable reality

Replication crisis

Replication crisis undermines scientific credibility

Logical positivism

Logical positivism's verification principle claims only empirically verifiable statements are meaningful

logical positivism collapsed

Can a philosophy prove itself scientifically?

Qualia

Qualia are subjective experiences like the redness of red

Explanatory gap

Joseph Levine coined the term "explanatory gap."

Epiphenomenalism

Epiphenomenalism posits that consciousness is a by-product of physical brain states

Binding problem

The binding problem is about integrating separate sensory inputs into a unified experience

Integrated information theory

Consciousness is identical to integrated information (Φ)

Panpsychism

Panpsychism posits that consciousness is a fundamental feature of all matter

Extended mind thesis

Mind extends into tools and environment

Embodied cognition

Thinking is influenced by bodily state and capacities

Hard problem of consciousness

Hard problem vs. easy problems

the Buddhist concept of anatta (no-self) claims

Ever wondered if you're the same person today as you were yesterday?

dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) means

Dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) means everything arises in dependence upon conditions

Wu wei

Wu wei means not-acting or non-doing

Ren (philosophy)

Ren (仁) is the highest Confucian virtue

the Zen kōan 'what is the sound of one hand clapping' is designed to do

Can you hear silence?

Śūnyatā

Śūnyatā means "emptiness" in Sanskrit

the Upanishadic concept of Brahman-Atman identity claims

Is there more to you than meets the eye?

Artificial general intelligence

Can we teach machines to think like us?

Fundamental interaction

Why do things fall and magnets stick?

Foundations of mathematics

Can math ever be truly complete and consistent?

Open-source software

Can a software program evolve without losing its identity?

Buddhist philosophy

Can you imagine everything around you is just a shadow of something else?

Verificationism

Can words mean anything at all?

Distinction (philosophy)

Why can't a squirrel be a llama?

Quantum entanglement

Can two particles instantly affect each other across vast distances?

Moral development

Is fairness always about equal outcomes?

Concept

Can we ever fully express complex ideas with words?

Time complexity

Why can't we always solve problems quickly?

Business ethics

Can ethics be more than just rules?

Occam's razor

Why not choose the simplest explanation when faced with multiple theories?

Theory of computation

Can a machine think like a human?

Arrow's impossibility theorem

Can a perfect voting system exist?

Ethics in religion

Why do some people value character over outcomes?

Gödel's incompleteness theorems

Can a puzzle have missing pieces we can't see?

Discrete mathematics

Can you count everything?

David Hume

Can reason alone push us to act?

The Real

How can a word mean different things over time?

Yin and yang

Can harmony exist without opposing forces?

Proof of impossibility

Can a perfect square root be neatly packaged as a simple fraction?

Ship of Theseus (film)

Is a ship the same if all parts are replaced?

Translation

Can we truly understand another language without mistakes?

Computational theory of mind

Can our thoughts be like computer programs?

Russell's paradox

What if you find a set that defies its own rules?

Paradox

Can a hotel with infinite rooms ever run out of space?

Fermat's Last Theorem

Can you add any two cubes to get a cube?

Gauss's law

Ever wondered why your phone's screen lights up when you touch it?

Paradigm

Can science suddenly change its mind? Why does this happen?

Edmund Husserl

Can you see colors without knowing what they mean?

Philosophy of science

Can science really prove anything?

Consciousness

Why do we struggle to understand consciousness?

Ethics of artificial intelligence

Can AI mimic actions but not understand feelings?

Knowledge

Can you truly know something if luck plays a role in your belief?

A priori and a posteriori

Can you know something is true without ever seeing it?

Gettier problem

Can we truly know something if luck plays a role in the truth we believe?