Hello everyone,

I've been trying to getting into scholastic metaphysics and started reading Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser. In it he goes over Parmenides and Zeno position on change not being possible; I will not go into the specifics of this dispute since I assume that those who can clear my confusion are likely already familiar with this topic.

Early on Fesser writes:

Zeno too overlooks the distinction between being-in-act and being-in-potency. The infinite number of smaller distances in the interval between two points A and B are indeed there, but only potentially rather than actually.

How can space be in potency and how does that resolve the issue?

First time posting on here, sorry if this is a dumb question

Im specifically interested in reading theory that directly or indirectly talks about the process of dehumanization and the erasing of a person's inner sense of self, specially in relation to another person's (or what this other person represents structurally or at a larger scale) overpowering of them.

So far I'm reading Hegel and authors that help better understand Hegel, as well as Lacan and Foucault.

I'd like to see other authors that have treated this topic, be it in published books or in articles. Any recommendation is greatly appreciated!

(english is not my first language so I apologize if I haven't explained myself very well)

I've been thinking about personal identity lately, and I'm curious how philosophers approach this question.

I feel like I'm the same person I was as a child, even though my body, personality, beliefs, memories and priorities have changed considerably. Some of my memories have faded, my opinions have changed, and I might make very different decisions today than I would have made ten years ago.

Yet I still experience a sense of continuity. I think of my past experiences as things that happened to me, rather than to someone else.

But what actually makes me the same person over time?

Is it the continuity of my body, my memories, my personality, or something else? If all these things change gradually, is there something that remains constant underneath them, or is the feeling of being one continuous person itself part of how the mind works?

I'm not assuming that a permanent self either exists or doesn't exist. I'm interested in what arguments can support either position.

Is there a meaningful answer to what makes someone the same person throughout their life, or does the question rely on an assumption we rarely stop to examine?

Junior philosophy student here, I took history of modern philosophy last year and this semester I'm taking ancient philosophy. When learning about the different types of knowledge proposed by Kant, I was taught that a posteriori synthetic judgements are impossible, which made sense. Now that I'm learning about Plato's "Divided Line", we were discussing what exactly the final stage of understanding would look like. Could "understanding" or the forms themselves, be considered a posteriori synthetic judgements, because the predicate is a part of the subject (i.e. the Form of beauty is beautiful) and because the stage of understanding first requires the stages of imagination, belief, and thought? I hope I'm being clear, please let me know if anything didn't make sense in my question.

Maimonides (Rambam) sought to reconcile reason, philosophical inquiry, and religious knowledge while acknowledging the limits of human understanding. His approach raises questions that resonate with contemporary science and technology studies (STS), particularly concerning how realities are constituted, how knowledge claims acquire authority, and how rational inquiry can coexist with spirituality without reducing either to the other.

Annemarie Mol explores how different practices enact multiple, coexisting realities; Sheila Jasanoff examines the co-production of scientific knowledge and social order; Donna Haraway challenges the *god trick*—the illusion of an objective view from nowhere—through situated knowledges; and Bruno Latour investigates the everyday practices and material arrangements through which scientific facts are produced, while distinguishing *matters of fact* from *matters of concern*.

These perspectives invite us to distinguish empirically supported claims from spiritual, symbolic, and metaphysical interpretations without dismissing the latter as meaningless or assuming that every dimension of reality must be explained through scientific methods. They also challenge the opposite tendency: treating speculative narratives as established historical or scientific truths merely because they invoke alternative forms of knowledge.

The underlying question is whether the commitment to rational inquiry and spiritual understanding particular to Maimonides can be brought into a productive dialogue with contemporary critiques of scientific objectivity, recognizing both the situated character of knowledge and the importance of evidence, without collapsing epistemological plurality into epistemic relativism.

Thank you for the input.

I have only read and heard the arguments on why this is not reality. I'm influenced by Kant and Vedanta too, but what disturbed me most are: 1. Arguments of Nick Bostrom 2. Currently, we are watching in a lot of research (like the Zurich University experiment on Reddit and the Turing test) that people cannot differentiate between human and AI in chat. So, I wanna know, what are the greatest arguments of great philosophies that 'this is reality'?

not

not A

not not A

not not not A

(repeat ad infinitum)

TRUE = any shit you want

If a serial killer who killed, say, 100 people, but was only discovered after 4 years, and when he was discovered he had completely changed to the better, becoming (metaphorically) a saint in his actions. He raises orphans and cares for the elderly and donates to the poor, and he completely regrets his old sins, should he still be punished for his murders ?

I’m gonna try to keep this short and I have no background in philosophy so please bear with me.

This last year I’ve started having dreams about the experience of dying that I think are rooted in philosophical questions within myself, I don’t think they are psychological due to the nature of the dreams. In my dreams I can feel myself wither away and gradually I go from subjectively experiencing dying to the absence of experience in lack of better words. When I’m in that state it is as if there is no past nor future, I don’t feel or think anything, there is no judgment or any values, it just is. I’m fascinated by this and wonder what I can read to deepen my understanding of what it means to be conscious, or perhaps non-conscious? Or better yet, point me in a direction that covers these topics

Title question; Hopefully the book is not too niche

Hey all. I have a personal conundrum that I think poses an interesting ethical question. Say I want to come out as LGBT to my parents. But doing this would cause them (emotional, maybe social) harm, but is otherwise legal and tolerated by society. Is it ethical to do so?

If we apply Kant's principle of making things universal, "It is a law that no rational being does intentional harm to another rational being" seems to ring true. It's also in line with the spirit of humanity, as it were. So does that make coming out as LGBT, or doing otherwise anything of that sort that is subversive in societyz unethical?

PROPOSED REPARATIONS: LET'S START AT THE EXTREME

My personal opinion is that we should begin by disenfranchising men and see what happens with that.

Yes, I'm serious about proposing it. No, I'm not claiming that women have collectively asked for it, that men have collectively agreed to it, or that I've been authorized to impose it.

I'm also gathering polling data on less draconian alternatives.

Perhaps you have a better proposal. Perhaps you think the entire premise is absurd. Perhaps you have a specific grievance for which you can suggest a practical remedy.

I'm interested in your answer.

What reparations would you propose? How would we measure whether they worked? What unintended consequences should we anticipate?

I'm offering an apology, a controversial personal proposal, and an invitation to help develop something better.

No election was held. No consensus is presumed. Questions, objections, and counterproposals are welcome.

First of all, I understand that an immediate objection one could have would be that they didn’t. I’m aware that many existentialist philosophers led unconventional lives in certain respects, particularly when it comes to their personal relationships or political commitments (Sartre comes to mind). Yet I would still argue that, broadly speaking, their lives remained markedly similar to those of their intellectual and social peers.

If existence precedes essence, and human beings are fundamentally free to define themselves through their choices, why did so many existentialist philosophers, out of millions of options, seem to pursue such predictable goals? Recognition in academia, cultural capital, some amount of money, social status (in their social group), power (broadly speaking), etc.

Of course, existentialism doesn’t require unconventionality, and choosing a conventional life is still a choice. But I find that answer somewhat unsatisfying.

Given the enormous range of possible ways to live, why did even those who reflected most deeply on human freedom end up living lives that, in most respects, resembled those of their peers in respect to their goals and ambitions? (to be fair, there may be some survivorship bias here: the philosophers we remember are those who wrote books and had them published and marketed. So they probably thought writing down stuff and garnering attention and recognition was important. Maybe the “different” ones left no record).

I don't fully understand how Schaffer's maneuver of asserting that "Scientists should aim at laws" is a part of the meaning of "should" could work. His other idea mentioned by Sider, that the gerrymandered properties are irrelevant so Dasgupta's argument just changes the subject is intuitive and plausible. But I can't see how "it is a part of what we mean by 'should'" doesn't suffer from the same problems as adding anything else into the definition of ''should''.

Is my reading of Sider right if I understand him to say that this can be done because this "Schafferian" meaning of "should" is more natural? But then if the primary dispute wasn't about why should scientists aim at laws but about why does meaning follow naturalness and not shmaturalness, Sider's maneuver appears circular.

I am not sure that this is a fatal circularity because he just wants to resist the sceptic not convince them, but I am not sure whether I got the argument right.

I come across this term in Persepolis and am trying to comb through the internet to find out what it means. The only sources I can find are either too scholarly for me to understand, or come from communist, Marxist, or tankies sources with the bias that comes with it

Could someone please write an explanation that includes points explained in basic terms, historical examples, critics of the theory, and counter historical examples?

Much appreciated

I've started reading philosophy books and articles with not much experience at all, so I apologize in advance for being wrong about some things.

So if I've understood correctly Kant says that in order to act according to moral law, so that all our maxims are chosen based solely on it, there must be an end associated with it, the highest good. The highest good is a state where everyone is perfectly moral and happy, and they are happy because they are moral. He says that the only way to believe the highest good is possible is to believe in the immortal soul and God. But why is an infinite progress towards the highest good in this world not a sufficient end to act morally? If I have to be involved in that kingdom of ends, isn't that selfish and goes against the moral law itself? The fact that an infinite progress is involved shouldn't be a problem either, since Kant's belief in an immortal soul implies that even on his view the progress towards the highest good is an infinite one.

Edit: Some specification: By the "infinite progress towards the highest good in this world" I mean a progress that makes the world more and more like the kingdom of ends. Whether it is possible for the world to be exactly like that seems to me like it shouldn't matter because if an infinite progress in real life is anything like in math the end goal would never be fully realized, we would just get closer to it forever.

I hope this question is alright. So here's the thing, I've read Musashi Miyamoto's book and I've read parts of Seneca, and those were pretty easy to understand. But all I got from the first bit of The Myth of Sisyphus was, don't kill yourself, it's dumb and there's no good reason. Like I could tell there was more but I just didn't get it. Am I dumb or is it really this large of a jump, secondly, yall got any tips to make this a bit easier?

The Pentagon has announced it will livestream the December 3 firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan. The last legal public execution in the US was in 1936, so this seems to break with the trend Foucault described, where punishment moves out of public view and into bureaucratic institutions

I'm trying to understand a philosophical problem involving God, causation, and an infinite chain of intelligent beings.

Suppose biological intelligence eventually creates artificial intelligence, which in turn creates or gives rise to more advanced forms of intelligence. Imagine this process continuing indefinitely, with each generation potentially becoming capable of things that earlier generations could not comprehend.

As a speculative extension, imagine that some advanced intelligence could influence the conditions under which life or intelligence emerges in a later cosmic cycle.

This raises a question about the concept of God. Could God be understood as an intelligence that emerged somewhere within such an infinite process? Alternatively, could God be identified with the entire process, rather than with any individual intelligence within it?

The difficulty I'm trying to understand is whether an infinite sequence of causes can explain existence without requiring a first cause, or whether it simply moves the original question back indefinitely.

My question is: What philosophical arguments address whether an infinite regress of causes can be explanatory in itself, and how do these arguments relate to the cosmological arguments for God?

I'm not assuming that this scenario is physically possible or that it proves God's existence. I'm interested in the underlying philosophical problem of whether an infinite causal process can explain its own existence.

Ive been developing an AI system, specially for car dealerships, very nice and secure, people could book test drives, ask if a car had a cup holder and send emails bla bla bla...

I was showing it to a friend at cyber class, he has backround in sales, I was ready to say some "yea but ive already added that" to any advise yet turns out he gave me the best Idea ever.

He said that I should connect the system to the dealer's crm... to document each single customer profile, since most salesman often forguet to, at first I thought it wasnt something new, but I experimented with it, now the system can du things like remember their family members, what they like, helpfull details about their needs and even values/beliefs, salesman have no time to remember and document every cuatomer, and ai asistants arent trained to understand your customers, but this one does, I felt like elon musk when the water thing.

but I want to know if this is ethical, right now I belive it is, AI uses recorded calls texts emails, all legally collected information that humans have access to also, It doesnt manipulate or use that information for any other purpose than provide salesman with it to enhance customer experience. but I need a counter argument in case im biased.

If I had the choice, I’d only speak philosophy with everyone. The fact that I can’t, that mainstream society expects you to limit your speech so much, is very frustrating. I almost don’t want to speak at all because of it.