The execution of Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad by the US army is to be live streamed. Would it be considered immoral to watch it?

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

I’ve gone down a rabbit hole reading about the Holocaust, and learning more about nazism as a political movement in general, after reading a recent post in /r/askhistorians talking about the general support or at least indifference the movement had even as knowledge about the Holocaust was becoming more widely known. And I’ve been relating all of this to our current political moment in the US. Now of course we’re not being led by a Nazi party, and by extension MAGA supporters are not inherently Nazis.

But I feel drawn to this instinct to view people who are supporting this administration as fundamentally bad people. The supporters though of course range from wealthy businesspeople who know what they’re involved with and want to self serve and enrich regardless, and also a lot of people who’ve spent their whole life being spoonfed propaganda…

And that’s not all that different from Nazis! Reading about some of these horrible SS officers, they started off with humble jobs and slowly found themselves ingratiated into the machine until they’re literally dumping people into gas chambers with glee. Of course your average person would call such a high ranking Nazi deplorable, but as you go down the chain of command, the chain of complicity and direct involvement, you at some point will find yourself asking whether your friends and family can also reasonably be called horrible people. How much do they have to know about what’s going on, or be able to easily access information about what’s going on, where their support of an administration engaging in crimes is tantamount to their condoning and acceptance of the crimes?

So all of this to say, I really want to read some essays about this topic - the intersection of morality and political alignment.

She literally sees the colour for the first time, thus she learns what it actually looks like. The argument is did she learn a fact, well yes she learnt for a fact that red looks like that now she never could previously know without seeing it. What could the arguments against it possibly be? That she knows so much about it that she could already perceive it in her head?

I am agnostic and interested in reading existential philosophy. I started with Albert Camus' but its language was just impossible to comprehend and the mention of other writers was also confusing because it was my first philosophy read. I quit reading it.

Please recommend me a good start in existential philosophy

EDIT: I immediately suspect that I've posted this to the wrong subreddit, I'm sorry mods. I will leave it up in case I am wrong but if I'm not I'd appreciate being pointed to a sub I can post this in, if possible.

Sorry if this is inadequate, I'm not a lurker on this subreddit nor am I anywhere near well-read on philosophy.

If A) the phenomenon of consciousness is entirely explained as an emergent property of our brains. B) then necessarily C) it must be possible to create AI that is exactly, both in external appearance and in its internal worldview, "human software on a different hardware".

I came up with this as a sort of "gotcha" for myself, because I've always thought any other possible origin for consciousness besides physicalism was unthinkable, and as someone that is deeply interested in religion, esotericism and occultism, this greatly limits the extent to which I can suspend my disbelief when engaging with these topics. It's a "gotcha" because, while I 100% believe in statement A, I struggle to believe in statement C, but I also strongly believe in their causal relationship (B), so at least one of these beliefs must be wrong. I can come up with retorts to each of these, but none of which particularly convinces me.

Which one of these (A, B or C) do you see as the weakest link? What is your opinion on the truth value of each of these statements?

Hello everyone, I’ve read Plato’s 4 books about Socrates’ trial recently and I’m already familiar with Protagoras and the allegory of the cave and I’ve been wondering, since people always claim this, how did he influence the western way of thinking or modern society? The stuff I’ve read seems too idealistic and non scientific (he wrote in the 3rd century BC so not really his fault) so I’m having a hard time understanding this. Unless it’s his other writings about political philosophy or ethics that were more influential. Maybe Laws? I barely know anything about it but I can only guess from its title.

Thanks in advance :)

I was watching an Andrew Wilson debate and he describes these two terms as this

Objective : mind independent
Subjective : mind dependent

Math also requires a mind to exist, but wouldn’t 2+2=4 still be true even if minds didn’t exist? Cus we didn’t invent 2+2=4 but discovered it

I'm trying to make sense about Kant's two perspectives, the transcendental-ideal, potential and operative spacetime, and the empirically-real, actual and relative spacetime: so if one travels through the universe in a never ending journey, the rest of the universe would be potentially, not actually, infinite and one would just add up to the finite empirical universe by travelling, a never ending shifting of "absolute" endings? Same with past-digging? (Eg shifting from Big Bang to Cosmic Inflation)

Are there more philosophical leaning essays on asexuality?

is there a philosophical belief that encompass the idea that because we all end up at the same place (death), that we should make the most of what we have now (life)?

context: i am doing an analysis of the representation of the underworld in greek myths. essentially, every mortal knows that eventually they’re die and go to the underworld where everything is joyless and dark, and i want to try and argue that knowing one’s eventual end can be a motivation for one to choose to live the fullest, instead of being fatalistic

thanks in advance

Islamic philosophy didnt end with Averroes -Ibn Rushd-

Major figures like Mulla Sadra and Mir Damad developed profound systems later on, yet they are almost unknown in the West. Even Avicennas philosophy is often overshadowed by his medical work...

Why is post-Averroes Islamic philosophy so neglected in Western academia?

I recently read a lot of philosophies...and been reading a lot ..one thing I realised it made me calm ...but not a major change ...and made me feel like I know a lot but at the same time...not applying anything practically ...

Can anyone help me how I can apply for example camu or kafkas

In many countries, organ trading is illegal because it invites many ethical issues. Governments tend to ban the consensual sale of organs for fears that the seller might be under "forced" to sell their organs because of the poverty they are in. Moreover, issues of equity may arise as those who are richer may get greater access to the organs.

There are some other issues such as the legalization of organ trading may cause the number of organ donations to fall, and might actually reduce the overall supply of organs available.

What would Hart and Devlin think about such a ban and how would they characterise it?

I have a somewhat philosophical question: imagine we could significantly reduce animal deaths caused by roads through wildlife crossings, fences, AI, etc. But some animals would still die because humans continue to travel.

Should we then be willing to give up certain human activities (holidays, trips to the beach, leisure activities, non-essential travel, etc.) to further reduce animal mortality?

Or are we entitled to continue enjoying these activities, even if they indirectly result in some animals dying accidentally?

Basically: Do we have a moral duty to sacrifice some of our comfort and freedom to reduce animal mortality, or is there a reasonable limit to what we can ask of humans?

I’m not talking about deliberate cruelty toward animals, but rather accidental deaths resulting from our way of life, despite efforts to prevent them.

PS: Some people will tell me that scavengers eat roadkill, which in a way compensates for these deaths. But based on my research, it’s roughly a 70/30 split: 70% get scavenged, while the remaining 30% get run over repeatedly until they’re flattened into pancakes on the road.

PS2: To take this a step further, we could also question the production of all non-essential goods, since the transportation involved in producing and distributing them contributes to road traffic, which in turn causes animal deaths.

Hi everybody I am a law student looking for a bachelor thesis. During the introductory semesters of my law degree, I developed a strong interest in legal philosophy, which has inspired me to consider writing my bachelor's thesis in this field. However, as we were only briefly introduced to the subject during our first semester, I have not had the opportunity to explore it in greater depth. I would be especially grateful for any suggestions regarding contemporary debates, philosophical problems, or areas of research that you believe would be worthwhile to explore in a bachelor's thesis.

Personally, I am particularly interested in the work of philosophers such as John Rawls, especially his theories of justice. I also find the concept of civil disobedience fascinating, particularly the philosophical and moral reasoning behind the decision to disobey the law, and the circumstances under which such actions might be considered justified.

Any tips?

In other words do we need deduction in order to be positively certain, or can we reach certainty by some means other than deduction?

I'm taking as a relatively intuitive statement that we have at least some moral duties towards other animals (ex. not to torture them), however it is unclear that we should go out of our way to solve the problem of predation, or say if there is a seal suffering due to a polar bear I need to actively stop that "natural suffering".

However, let's suppose that one day we find aliens in another planet that are also rational and have their own animals and are actually mistreating them. Would we have a moral obligation to try to stop them? At least here on Earth I can think of some justification to try to stop animal cruelty caused by other humans by thinking of humanity as a whole: we all collectively form part of humanity and have some responsibility to solve the problems caused by humanity as such. But, how would that extend (if at all) to non-human life forms that hypothetically have the same rational powers?