Index

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What is duty and what is instinct?
Utilitarianism and moral choices
John Stuart Mill on unreasoned belief
I need to learn how to stop thinking

Logical and non-logical justification
Morality and moralities
Faith, reason and ancient philosophy
Is having lots of money wrong?
Locus of mind-body interaction
Can philosophy be defined?

Divine command theory and the sinking lifeboat
Is randomness mind-dependent?
Robbing Peter to pay Paul
Visual appearance and illusion
Houses in the sky
Sartre on radical freedom

Thinking too much
Thought and language
Classic texts for the beginning student
Better to never have been
Metaphysical necessity
Causation and necessary connection

Kant on organ donation
Is it worth reading Plato’s dialogues?
I want to be a Superman
Advice to a newbie
Buridan’s ass revisited
Memento mori

Socrates on virtue and the cosmic order
I may be a Brain in a Vat
Nozick’s libertarianism and self-ownership
Locke, Berkeley and Ockham’s Razor
A little more on Hoyle’s ‘junkyard tornado’ argument
On Fred Hoyle’s ‘junkyard tornado’

Flukes or simulants?
Are we all ultimately the same consciousness?
Evidential argument against God trumped
Questioning the appearance/ reality distinction
Sins of the nihilist
J.S. Mill and the definition of ‘harm’

The examined life
Plato, Parmenides and Heraclitus
Consciousness, nous and the demiurge
A fate worse than death
Physicalism bad, panpsychism good
Materialism, thought, infinity

Acting dutifully and acting well
Doubts about materialism
Is religion superstition?
No Marx for Positivism
On a purported objection to Hempel’s D-N model
Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ and philosophy

Evaluating the Kalam Cosmological Argument
Proving the existence of the soul
Is philosophy dead?
Forgive me for my failures
Is Achilles still chasing that tortoise?
I am 65 and struggling with philosophy

Telling patients the truth
Between Jesus and Hitler
Kant and the Category of Relation
Morality and one’s own desires
I want to live forever
P.F. Strawson’s critique of Hume’s bundle theory of the ‘self’

Can water turn into wine?
Can we (literally) perceive value?
Materialism, immaterialism and Ockham’s Razor
What is a moral environment?
Define a ‘pen’
Is it sometimes OK to jump the queue?

Problems with J.S. Mill’s Harm Principle
Regretting my decision not to invest in Bitcoin
Believing things into existence
Writing an essay on the Crito
Extracurricular activities of a Philosophy major
Russell, Pascal and betting on God

Do panpsychists have a moral obligation to rocks?
What’s the difference between rule-based utilitarianism and deontology?
THE most important philosopher
Jobs for philosophers revisited
The case for Mystery
The awareness of plants

Philosophical zombies
How old am I really?
Aristotle on reason and emotion
Ethics and potentially harmful foodstuffs
Is contradiction an objective reality?
Sartre’s ‘Being and Nothingness’

Philosophy as eschatology
Ouroboros, birth and death
God and Lucifer
Location of the soul
I want to study philosophy on my own
Why is there something rather than nothing?

Parmenides’ One
Politicians’ expert-led fallacies
Personal identity and the Eternal Recurrence
Facts and alternative facts
Virtue ethics and social context
Aristotelian Virtue and Kantian Duty

Are some human beings zombies?
On wanting to live forever
I dreamt I was a brain in a vat
How to apply the Categorical Imperative?
The ethics of immigration raids
Michael Dummett’s ‘Truth’

Descartes, doubt and God
Puzzle about objects and identity
Could an AI ever be a philosopher?
The consequences of cultural relativism
Descartes and the resurrection of the body
Are psychology and materialism compatible?

What do we owe to future generations?
Solving Meno’s paradox
Mental sanity
The Brexit Case and modus ponens
Dangerous professors and sparing the rod
Finding your significant other

Negative attitudes to the world
Evolution of bright colours in birds
Losing arguments gracefully
The actor and the spectator
Justifying a war of aggression
Conceivability arguments

Mill and higher pleasures
Infatuated with philosophy
Rawls’ principles of justice
Is history of philosophy bunk?
Saying goodbye to religion
Greek philosophers on mathematical truth

Deduction, induction and abduction
What’s so bad about an infinite regress?
An invisible God?
Why did Marxism fail?
Fear of death
Marrying a horse or another man

Man is semi-autonomous
Socrates and the ‘physikoi’
Definition of ‘definition’
Logical determinism and fatalism
Naturalism vs. Materialism
Ronnie O’Sullivan and metaphysics

An entity to worship
Semantics of ‘so gay’
The meaning of ‘the’
‘If God made it, it must be good’ puzzle
What’s so bad about suffering?
Challenging the law of excluded middle

Perplexing questions
The good Brahmin
When the Devil plays with us
Monkey’s under the skin
Cartesian dualism and consciousness
Sartre on freedom and evil

The meaning of life
Ethics of shark culling
What is ‘the’ question?
(Who) is a philosopher?
Socrates ‘not all pleasures are the same’
After the EU Referendum

Who is greater, Aristotle or Kant, and why
British EU Membership Referendum (continued)
The disjunctivist theory of perception
Putting up with bad language
British EU Membership Referendum
‘Ignore all rules’ paradox

Metaphysics and epistemology of science
Cartesian mind-body interactionism revisited
Trusting our senses and our reason
Heidegger on the entity-ness of an entity
Real and nominal definitions revisited
Should I be worried that the world is not as it seems?

Things I might have been born ‘as’
Objections to emotivism
‘Hard’ determinism revisited
Defending Cartesian mind-body interactionism
Time travel in a dream machine
‘Real’ and ‘nominal’ definitions

Is it pointless to have regrets about the past?
Arthur C. Clarke and the prospect of superintelligence
Paradox of the heap and the messiness of language
Bertrand Russell on appearance and reality
Can a computer running an algorithm be conscious?
Questions on hard determinism

Philosophical zombies
Being a good person and being a good friend
Relation between science and philosophy
Infinite being
Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Not seeing philosophical questions

Gilbert Ryle contra Descartes
Leibniz on necessity and compossibility
Ethics, epistemology and ontology of Buddhism
Slippery slope principle simply explained
Question about God’s power
Dr Johnson and the stone revisited

When Dr Johnson kicked the stone
‘The world is all that is the case’
Are all beautiful paintings good paintings?
Implications of the theory of parallel universes
Would the world be a better place without religion?
Question about Jeremy Corbyn and political philosophy

Philosophy, psychiatry and anti-psychiatry
Role of the muses in Hesiod’s Theogony
Philosophy of decapitation
Kant versus Hume on the nature of causation
Friendship and intellectual elitism
Heraclitus on change and permanence

Philosophy versus theology
Philosophy as a way of life
True contradictions and the Liar paradox
Descartes versus the evil demon
Kant on lies and the axe man
Free will and destiny

What will happen to me when I die?
What is direct realism?
Do scientists need help from philosophers?
Newton ‘I frame no hypotheses’
Do ethical propositions have an objective reference?
Does a cloned human have a soul?

Philosophers on the nature of philosophy
Euthyphro’s dilemma revisited
Implications of the disappearance of religion
How did Socrates know he was wise?
What is the age of the Earth if time does not exist?
Puzzle about BCE and CE dating

Aristotle on the ‘proper function’ of an object
Hume’s problem of induction
Parmenides and Zeno on the impossibility of change and motion
Marx on ‘alienation’ and Heidegger on ‘deworlding’
Is Russell right that ethics is not a branch of philosophy
Which came first: the individual or society?

Immaterial substances in a natural world
Personal identity and tele-transportation
Adding premisses to a valid inference in traditional and modern logic
How does philosophy progress? (continued)
Descartes and the challenge of scepticism
Deciding to burn your hand on the stove

Why?
Difference between happiness and pleasure
How does philosophy progress?
Making sense of Kant in easy steps
What do you think of my views about the soul?
On the need to convince people to agree with us

Secular view on the meaning of life
Could God make it the case that I passed the exam that I failed?
Is truth just a logical property?
In what manner (if at all) do numbers exist?
What questions did Thales ask?
Aristophanes on Socrates

Could we be merely characters in a galactic video game?
How different might the laws of nature have been?
Invalid arguments with logically true conclusions
Guidance for someone interested in metaphysics
Looking at an argument for the unreality of time
Could there be a Turing Test for aesthetic experience?

The philosophy of Chairman Mao
Is life meaningless?
How Hume woke Kant from his ‘dogmatic slumber’
Nietzsche’s breakdown and his view on pity
Kant on space and time
Divine command theory revisited

The central questions of philosophy
Locke’s view on just/ legitimate government
Good and bad arguments vs non-arguments
Where is time?
God and morality: Euthyphro’s dilemma
Fallacy of ‘we are only human’

Do philosophers have a duty to heal human suffering?
The direction of time
Descartes’ case for doubt in the First Meditation
Does anything matter if nothing’s real?
The possibility of body duplication
What is the number one?

What if the human race screws up?
Plato’s allegory of the cave
The Matrix and philosophy
Does it matter if nothing’s real?
Practical philosophies
Philosophy as classic liberal education

Philosophical views about love
Personal identity and brain swapping
Difference between concepts and words
Descartes and the ontological proof of God’s existence
More on Heidegger’s ‘Dasein’
Questions about evil

Slavery and moral progress
What does Heidegger mean by ‘Dasein’?
Virtue and hubris in Ancient Greece
Confused about the external world
Puzzle about listening to a tune
Thought experiments revisited

The philosophy of Max Stirner
Bernard Williams ‘The Idea of Equality’
Passion in a post-postmodern society
Thought experiments in philosophy
David Hume’s missing shade of blue
Artificial intelligence and the Turing Test

On a possible form of faster-than-light travel
Am I here?
On omniscience and immutability
Consequences of the argument from illusion
Free will problem revisited
Kant and Mill on the golden rule

Keeping a philosophical notebook
Utility of academic philosophy
Locke on personal identity
Is there free will?
Is Baudrillard a philosopher?
Discriminating on the basis of homosexuality

Donald Trump conundrum
What is the meaning of a proper name?
Can a good Confucian be selfish?
Tree in the forest revisited
Quine’s attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction
Things or processes as fundamental?

Is metaphysics possible?
Demarcating science from pseudoscience
What is holism?
Do we use only 10 per cent of our brain?
The time before the Big Bang
Are all philosophic truths objective, rational and universal?

Descartes on self-knowledge and Leibniz on indiscernibles
Does God believe in himself?
Solipsism as a practical possibility
Descartes’ cosmological and ontological arguments
What is life?
Choosing Philosophy as a major

Hobbes’ case for an absolute monarch
Bringing about the past
Scepticism and the Cogito of Descartes
Berkeley vs Descartes and the beeswax
Materialism and the fallibility of sense perception
Leibniz’s theory of monads revisited

Moral dilemmas and moral theory
Leibniz’s theory of monads for the perplexed
Puzzle about absent time travellers
Knowledge of truth and the nature of illusion
Reason and imagination
J.S. Mill on higher and lower pleasures

Is Kant a naturalist or a non-naturalist?
Strawson vs Russell on analysing definite descriptions
Are the self and material objects illusory?
Love and sex in Ancient Greek philosophy
Determinism, compatibilism and libertarianism
Is Aristotle an ethical relativist?

How much intelligence does a philosophy student need?
Kant and free will
Philosophy and the nature of knowledge
The Glass Bead Game and philosophy
Nietzsche’s theory of the eternal recurrence
What is your favourite paradox?

Chess and philosophy
Inverted spectrum hypothesis
Greatest 20th century philosopher
Total recall? forget it
Philosophical pecking order
Are all questions philosophical?

Is the world all there is?
Knowing when an act is done from duty
Descartes’ method of doubt
Thinking before you speak
Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem
Denying the consequent

Would ‘I’ still exist if I was conceived one hour later?
Claims about what ‘most’ philosophers believe
Moral dilemma over career vs family
Heraclitus on change revisited
Intelligence and levels of consciousness
Kant on intentions and consequences

Heraclitus on temporal flow,identity and change
Four basic questions of existence
On an attempted proof of mind-body dualism
Cosmology vs ontology in Eastern and Western philosophy
Buddhist philosophy of mind and self
A syllogism named Celaront

Descartes and the principle of egocentricity
Does objectivity exist?
Descartes on imagination and intellect
Fatalism and knowledge of the future
Knock-down refutation of skepticism
Latter day Latin

Can philosophy help me in my confusion?
AI and the answer to the task of life
What kind of animal is homo sapiens?
Looking for a first cause
One approach to the meaning of life
Scientific laws without a lawmaker

Karma for robots
Ending the debate of materialism vs. idealism
Is morality inherent?
Why should I be moral?
A different look at free will
Dating with a Kantian ethicist

David Hume and the sensible knave
Who will check my claim about alternate electricity?
Meaning of an artwork to the artist
Free will versus determinism
Big bang holds steady
Confused about Leibniz’s theory of monads

What keeps a philosopher interested?
Explaining the differentiation of the universe
Quantum theory and the free will problem
What is the mind-body problem and why is it important?
Wittgenstein on the definition of a ‘game’
What’s the point of philosophy?

Nietzsche on the will to power and the Ubermensch
A philosopher’s view of the future of religion
Wittgenstein’s view of philosophy
How our view of reality is shaped by theory
Could two identical objects occupy the same space? (revisited)
Hume’s is-ought problem and its application to morality

Contrasting The Matrix and Descartes Meditation One
The three-way cake division problem
David Lewis on the logical possibility of time travel
An eight year old’s question about the external world (contd.)
Experiencing a ‘temporary epiphany’
On a proposed argument for theism

What makes someone a philosopher?
When is a question about religion philosophical?
Hegel, Marx and historical materialism
Can you call an invalid argument ‘unsound’?
An eight year old’s question about the external world
What would Nietzsche say about today’s society?

Is time travel possible?
Short answer to a question about evil
What’s the most interesting philosophical argument you have come across?
Descartes on the insufficiency of sense experience to determine what is real
Will there come a day when philosophy no longer exists?
David Hume’s view on personal identity

Could two identical objects occupy the same space?
Role of philosophy in the postmodern era
Do laws actually make a difference?
Descartes’ argument for God’s existence in the 3rd Meditation
More on ‘must everything that evolves have intelligence/ consciousness?’
More on ‘can a perfect being create something imperfect’?

Locke on personal identity
Is human free-will compatible with God’s omnipotence/ omniscience?
What right do we have to be happy when things are so bad?
Reading Hegel’s ‘Geist’ as equivalent to ‘God’
Proving the existence of a teapot
Philosophy in the 21st century

How does Hume justify belief in an external world?
What is Hegel’s dialectical process composed of?
What does the soul look like?
Must everything that evolves have intelligence/ consciousness?
Is Nietzsche an ethical egoist?
Can a perfect being create something imperfect?

How a good empiricist gets to grips with gravity
The science and the philosophy of colours
One day all human life will be extinguished – so why are we here?
Explaining Kant’s ‘transcendental unity of apperception’
Question on knowledge, faith and certainty
What do you think of my theory that everything is motion?

What is a metaphysical explanation of a phenomenon?
On the value of studying philosophy
Can our feelings be our sole guide to morality?
Difference between being philosophical and being a philosopher
Questions on the philosophy of time
Are some acts morally obligatory regardless of consequences?

Nietzsche on pity and the death of God
Plato’s allegory of the cave
Philosophy of mathematics and the nature of numbers
More on Mill’s understanding of higher and lower pleasures
Distinction between concrete and abstract particulars
Descartes on the divisibility of mind (contd.)

Why dissatisfied Socrates is better than a satisfied pig
Was there a time before the universe existed?
Descartes on the indivisibility of mind
Difference between reality and illusion
Question on human evolution
Logic puzzle about trees and leaves

There is no TV in your head – true or false?
Nietzsche on truth, lies and interpretation
Paradox of the tattoo artist
Descartes’ attempt to prove the existence of an external world
What use is formal logic to philosophy?
Why were my comments deleted?

What do we want from answers?
Which of these statements did Plato hold?
Kant on why one should not make a false promise
Analyzing Descartes’ ontological argument for the existence of God
Was Hegel a scientologist?
Defining informational content

What is a philosopher?
Existence of the external world
Geniuses versus idiots
Can there be certainty outside my currently observed world?
Thales versus Anaximander
How to use a logic diagram

Kant on empty thoughts and blind intuitions
Moral philosophies of Kant and Aristotle compared
Plato’s allegory of the cave and his political views
Frege on thoughts, truth, and facts
Cutting Aristotle (and a few other philosophers) short
Science, philosophy and the possibility of free will

Benefits of understanding the abstract world
The notorious case of Debora Rodriguez
How did Socrates break the conventions of Athenian society?
On an attempted critique of postmodernism
What’s the use of philosophy?
Aren’t we happier not knowing that our ‘real’ world isn’t real?

Is there such a thing as darkness?
Descartes’ method of systematic doubt
Is scepticism self-refuting?
Achieving fellowship with Dionysus
Does mere existence imply causal efficacy?
Worried about the universe

Why is death a comparative evil?
Determinism and Laplace’s demon
Existentialist view of free will and responsibility
Removing life support from a patient in persistent vegitative state
Question from a fan of Diogenes
The difference between concepts and propositions

Nagel’s example of the infant and the brain-damaged man
Did Berkeley really ask the question about the tree in the forest?
Is artificial intelligence posisble?
Which is most real: the chair or its molecules?
On knowledge, theory and the unknowable
Struggling with Gödel’s incompleteness theorem

Comparing the Buddha to Socrates, Plato and Descartes
Utilitarianism versus deontology
Reading original philosophical texts
Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia
A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
Recommendations for an introductory book on philosophy

Why are we so scared of death?
How can earth and water produce a live frog?
Does the verification principle fail by its own criterion?
Thomas Nagel on why life is absurd
What makes the cosmological argument of God’s existence an impure argument?
Does the panel understand the meaning of hubris?

The Ionians’ contribution to philosophy
Cartesian scepticism and the ontological argument for God’s existence
Descartes and Hume on seeing a red bird
Kant and the idea of empty space
Counterfactual statements and the London Marathon
Casting two shadows with one object and one light source

General laws and the notion of causality
Idea of a universal aesthetic
Brain, mind and soul
What is theism?
What is philosophy?
Berkeley as solipsist

Leibniz and the zombie hypothesis
Justification for Plato’s ideal Republic
Confucius: virtue is not left to stand alone
The point of studying the Presocratics
‘Transcendental’ in Kant, Husserl, Heidegger etc.
Basic tenets of transcendentalism and challenge to the idea of a soul

Problem of understanding an illogical reality
David Hume’s contribution to the debate on God
Why have children when life is so hard?
The thought of Epictetus the Stoic
Problem of understanding an illogical reality (contd.)
How does Plato define ‘eros’?

Machiavelli’s notion of truth
God and objective morality revisited
Is lying always wrong?
Intelligence of cheats and non-cheats compared
Are we all victims of cause and effect?
Trying to explain personal identithy

Prejudices that prevent you from finding the truth
Understanding Ryle’s ‘Concept of Mind’
Is it more ethical to let the starving die?
Nagel’s notion of ‘what it is like to be a…’
On the plurality of religions, moralities and political ideals
Definitions of ‘scientifically impossible’

Who invented philosophers?
Is God necessary or sufficient for objective morality?
The philosopher who says we are a bundle of neurons
What is time?
How Descartes attempts to explain the union of body and mind
Wittgenstein on the true battle of philosophy

Questions on mind and materialism
Heraclitus versus Parmenides
Mill’s argument for the greatest happiness principle
Leibniz’s theory of monads
Questions on Plato and Confucius
Proving to a solipsist that you exist

A question of business ethics?
Aristotle on the meaning of life
Does education undermine the authenticity of the student?
Hobbes on the state of nature and the social contract
Origin of our notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’
Kant for beginners

Reality of the chair, its molecules, and the perception
Should we have a child?
Startup time for your physical identity
Foundation of environmental responsibility
Invalid argument with true premisses and a true conclusion
What use is philosophy for flipping burgers?

Plato’s aim in the Republic
Nature of scientific explanation
Does time exist?
Do criminals ‘deserve’ to be punished?
What is the soul made of?
Question about same sex marriage

Is there a legitimate debate over climate change?
The possibility of time travel
The possibility of reincarnation
Determinism, prediction and human agency
Confused about Hegelian logic
Asking ‘why’ and ‘why not’

Why should I be moral?
Nietzsche’s analogy of the eagles and lambs
Is alcoholism a self-inflicted illness?
Saying what is true about truth
Question about the ‘one mind’ theory and Aristotle
The meaning of Taoism

Is physician-assisted suicide morally justifiable?
So the big bang theory is only a theory?
Must we obey our parents?
Rationalist, empiricist and Kantian views of Plato’s forms
Logic puzzle about knights and knaves
What is the essence of a question?

Philosopher who believed we find new laws by guessing
Kant on our ignorance of things in themselves
Bravery as an example of an Aristotelian mean
Is morality dependent on religion?
Question about truth and knowledge
Can anyone be a philosopher?

Questioning the ideal of the wise man
Puzzle about the big bang
Aristotle on why the highest good is happiness
Philosophy as astonishment
Criticisms of the ontological argument
Putting effort into the self and into society

What would Thales have thought of Sagan and Hawking?
Socrates’ view of applied ethics vs ethical theory
Aristotle on the highest good
Books to get started in philosophy
Proving the existence of God
How do I know that my ‘yellow’ isn’t your ‘green’?

Philosophical perspectives on Occupy Wall Street
Karl Popper and the creationist debate revisited
Why do women exist?
Who claimed that forms reside in physical objects?
Should abortion be legalized?
Difference between melted cheese and grilled cheese

Can we apply Karl Popper’s ideas to the creationist debate?
Do you agree with Nietzsche that God is dead?
Deciding who should get a heart transplant
Who can call himself a spiritual philosopher?
Confused about Plato’s theory of forms
Thomas Aquinas on the existence of God

If you replace all the parts of a car is it still the same car?
How do philosophers decide which answers are worth considering?
Why are most philosophical works linguistic?
Is psychology a pseudo-science?
When was the Big Bang?
How do philosophical questions fit in with modern life?

Understanding Kant
Western vs eastern philosophy
Influences of Aristotle on Thomas’s philosophy
Difference between real and perceived space
Anselm’s aims in the ontological argument
Why is science materialistic in its metaphysical assumptions?

Why do people have crushes on other people?
Socrates’ view that moral truth is personal
Feelings as a guide to morality
Plato and Descartes on the nature of the mind
Hume’s scepticism about induction
Problem of evil revisited

Where to pursue the quest for truth
What is philosophy?
Why do we dream?
Descartes’ First Meditation
Problem of mind-body interaction
Defining logic

Pythagoreans and the problem of irrational numbers
Digging beyond the obvious
Advice on reading philosophy
What is reality?
What is beauty?
What is life?

Difference between objective and subjective valuation
Socrates and the Oracle of Delphi
Why Socrates held that everything is water
What did Nietzsche mean when he claimed that God is dead?
Does it matter if an artist expresses racist views?
What colour is a blank canvas?

Finding the story of Genesis in other cultures
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Good livelihood for a pessimistic misanthrope
How do you know the other person is not a robot?
What is the ancient Greek paradox “catch 22”?
What is a holotes and its parts?

Advice on a philosophy self-study program
Why shouldn’t my father take his own plate to the kitchen?
Teacher help with biology practical
Quid est ergo tempus?
On presentism and the cosmos
Taking 300 pages to say what can be said in one page

What is time?
The masochist problem in hedonistic utilitarianism
Philosophical advice to a yoyo dieter
What is a possible world?
Ethics for nonbelievers
Chomsky and Plato compared

Did U.S.A. pick the right side in WWII?
Descartes versus Leibniz
Berkeley’s arguments for idealism
Opinions about God
The theory of phenomena and noumena
Anselm’s ontological argument

What is philosophy?
Theory of evolution
The last philosopher
Churchland’s eliminative materialism
Nature of philosophy and the purpose of Plato’s guardians
Descartes’ argument for mind-body dualism

Kant on acting from duty and acting in accordance with duty
Is induction ultimately circular?
How Plato’s epistemological assumptions shape his metaphysics
Descartes’ argument for mind-body dualism
Should children have the right to vote?
Do the objects of philosophical inquiry change with time?

Am I a sceptic about the external world?
Philosophers question answers
Appearance and reality in the 21st century
When did the big bang happen?
Are WE God?
If this is a question…

Does it matter if an artist expresses racist views?
Plato’s answer to Heraclitus and Parmenides
Kant and Aristotle on ‘why be moral?’
Best soccer team — the objective truth?
Limits on God
What’s the point of philosophy?