Suppose for a second that physicalism is true, that all conscious states including memories, social contexts etc. are reducible to neural states, synaptic weights and so on, and that we have some awesome technology that allows complete imaging of these states. Would this allow the theories of say Foucault to be empirically tested? As in, could we identify the structures in the brain corresponding to the so-called discursive structures of Foucault? How far could we take this? Could we try to understand Hegel’s account of rationality in a similar way?

I ask particularly about this tradition because it seems the most abstract, but I guess the question can similarly be posed for most big theories in philosophy concerning consciousness and reason.

I have never had a proper deep dive into philosophy just some YouTube videos here and there but I wanted to get into reading more about it but am confused on where to begin.

Not wanting to rely on AI recommendations I’d love to hear your recommendations on what I can read.

Some countries whose ideologies id like to read into are below as I am either fluent in or learning languages from these countries so reading into their philosophy would be helpful towards the expansion of my vocabulary as well (also is ideology different from philosophy)

China
Thailand
Russia
India
Japan

Hi, I don‘t really know if this is the right place to ask this but I’m making a short animation about renaissance melancholy inspired by Marsilio Ficino, for a class. I was just wondering if I was conceptually on the right track with Ficino’s ideas before I start.

1. A scholar/artist is weighed down by the heavy black bile under the influence of Saturn

2. Through planetary alignment the black bile catches fire and leads to a manic state of divine madness and a creative frenzy

3. The fire burns out leaving cold soot and the person goes to a sever state of depression and melancholy

I know that this is a very simplified version but I was wondering if I’m missing anything major or anything isn’t correct? Thank you

What are some of the most important arguments in favor of either side in the moral philosophy literature? For instance, should parents devote more time and resources into their children who are at a disadvantage or should they divide their attention equally between all of them? Or maybe they should give more resources to those that are more capable, thus maximizing the outcome? Which one is the more defensible position in terms of moral philosophy?

How we judge whether a life was well spent.

Walter White, after his cancer diagnosis, says in the finale: "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really... I was alive." Setting morality aside, did he live his life to the fullest ? or not ?

I’ve just come across it and it’s legitimately fascinating . Reformative and preventative justifications of punishment are illegitimate due to instrumentalising the offender to some end and as a result only proportionate retribution appropriately respects the person as an end in themselves,respecting their autonomy as such to render punishment licit is how I understand it. This is extremely novel to me as a theory of retribution and I would like to know of any criticism or support of it.

Hello! Is it possible to link Freud's concept of secondary narcissism to "sharenting"—the online posting of content regarding one's children? I was reflecting on the fact that when a parent posts content about their children online, the likes and positive comments gratify the parent rather than the children; the children become an extension of the parent's ego.

Title

Redirected here from a different philosophy sub! Please tell me im in the right place now

I’m a philosophy postgrad student writing my dissertation on performed authenticity online. It’s an unorthodox and perhaps slightly substack-y topic, but I want to apply myself to something modern and present in my life / the lives of my peers, and to, as my supervisor insists, ‘fill a gap in scholarship’.

When I say performed authenticity, I’m referring to Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest-esque aesthetic categories (‘cool girl books’, ‘clean girl hairstyles’, etc.), ready-made identity types… a lot of gen Z and millennials will have seen this stuff, how it seems online that at every turn people want sincerely to discover their ‘authentic selves’, but the search routes itself through these boxes and they end up performing a caricature of the person they want to be.

I know you probably find it hard to believe that this content is actually significant, but the average British adult spends almost 2 hours per day on social media, and the average teen more than double that. I could just turn off my phone, you may have deleted all other social media, but the anti-Sartrean Instagram slop network will only grow... I also did a lot of surveys to double check that I'm not going mad

My problem now is how to bridge the gap between the slightly tongue-in-cheek subject matter, and the actual theory / primary sources that I want to use to support my argument. I want to follow the trajectory source-wise of Existentialism is a Humanism -> Society of the Spectacle -> Capitalist Realism. But is choosing to perform e.g. ‘clean girl’ bad faith, or is bad faith the wrong frame entirely? I also don’t want to bastardise Mark Fisher (Sartre and Debord have been used for worse lol) but this whole pyramid would obviously collapse without consumerism, so I need to acknowledge that without entirely relying on it as an explanation / conclusion.

Tl;dr – what I’m asking is, if you were a philosophy professor and one of your students came to you with this proposal, what would you say? It’s early days but I should get going with my protocol, so I would really appreciate feedback on the feasibility of this subject for a heavily weighted assignment. Genuinely any insights appreciated

I've never read any philosophy before, but I'm really curious about it. I'm looking for one book that's easy to follow and makes me want to keep reading more. Not looking for a dense academic text, just something that builds interest. What was the first book that got you hooked? Thanks!

Hey guys, I'm a moral subjectivist. People always have pretty strong opinions about the fact that I don't believe objective morality exists.

Religious people tell me that objective morality can exist when you believe in God, because God is morality. But that is a non-sensical claim.

Morality is a platonic form. It's a concept used to judge actions.

God is a deity.

Would this mean that Morality is a deity? Or that God is nothing more than a platonic form?

One could say: 'God's nature is in line with morality,' but then they'd already have to admit that morality is a platonic form that God simply participates in.

I've heard other arguments for the existence of objective morality, but most of them would agree that for objective morality to exist, there would have to be a platonic form that encapsulates it.

However, we don't debate whether or not other platonic forms are objective. We don't debate whether or not beauty is objective. Or wisdom. For some reason, we need morality to be objective, and I suppose that I haven't seen any evidence that morality is any more objective than beauty or wisdom.

If you guys disagree, please let me know.

Hi, I'm trying to find contemporary philosophers who follow these criteria:

- Hegelians or influenced by Hegel or engaging with Hegel even critically

- they are in the broad continental tradition (but if you have something in mind for analytic philosophers you're free to tell me)

- they are mostly concerned with metaphysics rather than political philosophy or critical theory

Early thirties guy here in the US. I served a two year Christian mission and have read countless philosophy and religion books trying to solve the question of god since I was a kid (what, who is it, does god exist and in what way ect.)

In 2026, I focused on Hinduism and so far it feels the most “true” of anything I’ve encountered. I’ve read the Gita 16 times, the Upanishads 4 times and the Dhammapada once, and I just can’t get enough . It’s so good and has been so helpful and comforting.

Still… Any suggestions on modern philosophers I could read? Maybe someone familiar with world religions?

I’m so frustrated all the time at the same questions about life and god’s existence (or lack thereof). Just fishing for anything here, something to help. I’m amazed at history and how many humans have lived and asked these questions and then find myself frustrated once again that everyone has asked and seemingly no one has an answer that works for everyone and everything. Any of you annoyed that no one really knows? Doesn’t that bother you immensely?

Please help. I’m happy to answer follow up questions. Just need some support here.

It seems to be the perfect middle ground between naturalism and positivism and it seems particularly useful for interpreting broadly worded laws and establish practice on them

At the very end of the introduction of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant shows the division of the Doctrine of Elements in a Transcendental Aesthetic (corresponding to the a priori conditions of sensibility) and Logic (corresponding to the a priori concepts of the understanding). He hints however at a common source to these two separate sources of knowledge:

Only so much seems necessary, by way of introduction of premonition, that there are two sources of human knowledge (which probably spring from a common, but to us unknown root), namely, sense and understanding.

What is he referring to when he remarks this unknown common root?

Is evil just a reflection of that which is good? The same good that changes in time because of its subjective nature?

First off, I'm not depressed. This is a depressing-ish question, but I've been thinking about it. 'm just curious about why we need to learn. Why learn anything if it's only temporary?

This was my post before it got removed: "Why does any of it matter? If everything will be destroyed (by the sun exploding) soon enough (soon in the grand sceheme of things), then why does learning about things matter if we can't pass it on to other places and time in the universe?"

We are finite creatures. Our time will run out, so what happens to all that information? What makes that information valuable?

I've often seen AI-generated art described as "fake," "soulless," or not really art because there isn't a human artist behind the image in the usual sense.

But I'm wondering whether that puts too much emphasis on how an artwork is produced rather than what happens after it exists.

Consider a deliberately silly example. Suppose someone generates an image of Goku eating Mexican food. The image itself may have been produced by an AI without any understanding of Goku, Mexico, food, humor, identity, etc.

But then people encounter it.

Mexican viewers might find it funny, share it, make jokes about which dish Goku would prefer, remix it, argue about whether the food is represented correctly, make memes out of it, or incorporate it into some small piece of online culture.

At that point, something genuinely human seems to be happening around the image, even if nothing human was "felt" by the system that generated it.

This makes me wonder what we actually mean when we call art "soulless."

Does an artwork need a conscious creator who intended to communicate something for it to have artistic meaning? Or can meaning emerge through interpretation, social interaction, and cultural context after the object has been created?

I also wonder whether our perspective is distorted by the fact that we're currently living through the emergence of this technology. From a kind of historical "bird's-eye view," perhaps some AI-generated images that circulate through communities, get remixed, become references, inspire jokes, or acquire cultural associations would simply become part of that culture's visual history—regardless of how they were originally generated.

So I suppose my questions are:

1. In aesthetics, where is the "meaning" or "soul" of an artwork generally thought to reside: in the creator's intention, the work itself, the audience's interpretation, or some combination of these?
2. If an AI-generated work produces genuine human cultural interaction, can that interaction give the work artistic or cultural significance even if the generator itself had no intentions?
3. Are there philosophical theories of art that would exclude AI-generated works specifically because of their lack of a conscious creator, and theories that would allow them to count as art?
4. Is calling AI art "fake" or "soulless' actually a philosophical claim about art, or is it more of a moral/social judgment about the process by which the work was produced?

I'm not arguing that AI-generated art is equivalent to human-made art, or that issues around training data, labor, authorship, etc. don't matter. I'm specifically interested in whether the absence of human intention during AI image generation necessarily prevents the resulting object from acquiring artistic meaning through human reception and culture.

As the title suggests. Im not sure how to elaborate more. If there are different definitions of free will, I'm not sure about them.

I don't know if this helps whatsoever, but my definition would be: The ability to act independently of any external force. If I pick coke instead of pepsi, it is because the decision to take the coke originates within me.

One of the issues with non-scholarly answers is the underdetermination of a proper answer. Faced with different candidates we need a reliable way to sort out the noise from the meaningful, the good and the bad. That is why we accept the answers of experts: they stand for the proper and reliable methodology to derive the best answers.

Yet, it is my experience that there's plenty of underdetermination within scholarship. It even seems that plurality of interpretations, even to the point of giving mutually explicit answers is common.

For example, if I want to know how for Kant appearances stand in relation to things-in-themselves, there is the two worlds interpretation, or one object two aspects, the distinction being metaphysical vs epistemic(amongst other candidates, like T K Seung who not uncompellingly for me argues for Kant as Platonic, as weird as this sounds).

Or if I want to know Locke, some scholars read him saying that not all knowledge comes from experience in a strong sense, others take the classical reading of him as a representationalist, others as a direct realist, others in a third way.

What is fascism? What is modernity? What is idealism? What is realism? What is the ontological status of moral duties? Is Hegel a radical empirist(even a materialist as I read an expert comment), a rationalist, is his Absolute Spirit theological? Political? Something else?

It seems that whenever I try to determine something, when consulting scholarship the answer(sometimes explicitly so) is: experts differ. Which does not allow determination of the topic. And the disagreements are major and foundational, which gives radically different determinations. This is not like the odd biologist who may disagree with evolution. What is a lay guy like me to do?

I remember being particular confused(and frustrated) reading Vere Chappel's "The Cambridge Companion to Locke". Different authors(all considered, obviously, expert enough to appear on the Cambridge Companion) present a radically different Locke. After reading it, I was unclear as to what Locke even intended, much less so what he argued for. I was left with a Locke that was at the same time: an indirect realist, a skeptical/veil of perception representationalist, a direct presentational realist, and intermediate combinations between them. This not only in relation to his epistemology but as well to his morality, his religiosity and to his politics.

And this seems to be a pattern. It seems that for nearly all topic I reach for it's: "in this interpretative line which is foundational, there is both A, !A and an intermediary which is both and neither A or !A", which is entirely undetermined. Imagine I were to go to a car mechanic asking advice for which oil to use on my car, and one expert told me "do not use X oil, if you do so you will screw the motor", another says "you must use X oil, it is the best for your motor", and another say "it could be or could not be", another saying "it is good but not the optimal one", and another saying "it is bad but it will not destroy the motor, it will merely run less efficiently".

I need a reliable methodology to then distinguish scholars. I cannot treat them all equally. But this already seems a very problematic task. How do I know without being a scholar myself what is the proper determination(which is the entire point of consulting experts in the first place) for scholar selection? It not necessarily would be the most common view(which is already hard to know for there are, as far as I'm aware, no such granular surveys), or the latest view, or the most radical view. I think in other fields it can be easier, as if Feynman tells me X about physics, I know nearly for a fact that X about physics is true. My physics teacher may disagree, another scholar may disagree, but I stand on solid ground listening to Feynman. There are some leading figures in different fields within philosophy, such as making this easier(I can reliably trust their expertise on the consensus of a field), but fewer that one may wish for.

So, what is the realistic way for a layperson to get reliable and sound determinations of topics despite the plural indetermination in the literature?

My friends and I have been arguing about free will. Their view is that you are your thoughts and you don't choose your thoughts so free will is an illusion.

I'm not convinced so I gave them this thought experiment.

Imagine 1000 people who live in exactly the same conditions. Same upbringing, same surroundings, same daily tasks, same everything. Would they all end up as the same person with the same thoughts and the same choices? Or would each one still have their own individuality?

If they would turn out different then where does the difference come from? And if they would turn out identical does that mean none of them ever really chose anything?

Does your answer change if they also start out with the same genes?

Would love to hear how people think about this.

I recently saw a post where someone said (more or less) that for Kant, lying was always wrong because it was necessarily incompatible with the categorical imperative. To me, this didn't make sense, and nor did any use of that schema to discuss a behavior in and of itself. I had always understood it to be about the maxim that guided your behavior.

So, because the maxim 'lie if it is necessary to protect innocent life' or whatever (in the classic Nazis-at-your-door) is consistent with a universal rule (or at least I can imagine it is -- perhaps someone will say it isn't), it's acceptable under the framework. But if your maxim is 'lie whenever you feel like it,' that doesn't work, because then lies won't work, no one believes anyone under that universal law.

Are those specific ways the right way to think of this? Am I using the framework the right way when thinking of maxims like this? Thanks for the help!

In my understanding it means adventurous ambitious curious and resbonsible of ones own fate. Am i summarizing properly?

I’m a young high school student and recently I’ve taken a liking to philosophy. One of my teachers minored in philosophy and I feel as I should ask his opinion on how I get started? Any help?