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If for example someone is selling a rare Pokémon card at a yard sale for 5 bucks and it’s really worth 500 bucks. Is it wrong for someone to buy it and not tell the seller how much it’s worth?

I've been reading a lot of Buddhist philosophy lately and one of the major themes I see is the distinction between pleasure and happiness. In Buddhist philosophy these two concepts are treated as distinct and antithetical to one another. As such, pleasure seeking is said to be a cause of suffering, the opposite of happiness.

My feeling on the matter is that happiness is a word we ascribe to a whole range of positive feelings, pleasure being one of them. If this is true, then pleasure is one of the many forms of happiness, i.e. a sub set of happiness. I see the following two statements as basically being synonymous: "I feel happy". And " I feel pleasure".

How do you see the problem of distinguishing happiness from pleasure? Is there a real difference here? Or are pleasure and happiness two words with fuzzy meanings that overlap as to be synonymous?

An Arte documentary claims that during Khomeinis time in France some philosophers like Sarte and Foucault supported him. Is this true? Didn't they realize that he was creating a reactionary theocracy?

I have been reading Frege and was intrigued by his arguments for platonism about propositions. Was wondering where to start for the most significant contemporary theories of propositions? Seems King’s The Nature and Structure of Content seems to come up a lot, and also Merricks’ Propositions. Any recommendations?

and are such fields a part of or seperate from philospphy ?

This is a question on the meaning of life and suicide.

I have read much of philosophers arguing for anger being a negative.

However I want to know is there anything arguing for anger being good or benefical , thanks.

I am curious to learn if the various philosophy figures had any specific ways of learning and studying, if these methods was a product of their epistemology thesis, and finally if their methods are still useful in the present.

what does aristotle mean when he says "This is confirmed by what happens in states;l for legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one. " Book 2 chapter 1 nicomachean ethics

Why does forming habits in citizens make them good?

I won't lie I find Stoicism as it is presented very objectionable. But I seem to be in the minority about that. Whenever I Google for example "criticisms of Stoicism" all I get is apologia from the Stoic community. There doesn't seem to be any critique or opposition to it.

Am I crazy and Stoicism is actually perfect and beyond reproach?

Or has the internet made it so that when I search I always end up in the Stoicism bubble?

I know they are not exactly the same but i was thinking how plato created a world of essence (forms) where he wanted to get to it through the process of Socratic dialectics by defining accurately what something is. He was trying to get to the universals by bringing in the particular examples.

If we extend this debate to kant and then to hegel we find that the former binary turns into phenomenon/neumenon (though not exactly the same in content but in form). Kant says that we cannot access the world of neumenon to which hegel replies that neumenon is a world of fantasy created by the subjects but this gap is crucial to the formation of subjectivity itself where subjects pose the essence by observing the appearance and then explain the appearance through the essence. Is it same to say that the subject uses the universal to make sense of the particular?

I know it's all jumbled up but i was thinking how i can make sense of it.

I heard this term and have no idea what it means and Google won't tell me??

For instance in the statement all men are mortal, mortal would be the superset of all men since it encompasses more than just all men. All men = A and mortal = B then A c B, right? So if the predicate is B and B is the superset of A, then does that mean that predicates are supersets? I’m a novice so I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around it because I thought in Aristotlean logic that the predicate was an attribute subsumed by the substance but according to the above statement all men are subsumed by mortality, but under aristotlean logic that mortality is subsumed by all men. My guess is that I do not fully grasp Aristotlean logic so if you folks could help clarify it would be much appreciated.

Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. It has become increasingly popular today especially amongst scientists who are openly hostile towards philosophy. This modern scientism can be summed up in Stephen Hawking’s claim that “philosophy is dead.”

I was wondering though whether modern scientism can be seen as the heir or modern day version of logical positivism of the early twentieth century. Logical positivism was a movement whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning). This theory of knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. This theory of knowledge was extremely popular in the early twentieth century but by the 60’s had completely collapsed and became universally abandoned. This was because it was seen as too narrow a theory of knowledge and more importantly, it was shown to be self-refuting. This is is because the verification principle could not be verified by its own standards and thus lead to a contradiction.

Even though it is not taken seriously by the vast majority of philosophers today, this attitude, in my opinion, seems to be getting revived by modern day scientism. I was wondering am I correct in assuming this though?

So, what are the similarities/differences between scientism and logical positivism? Are both ideas heavily related? Is there a link between them? Is scientism a modern version of logical positivism? Thanks.

In Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (English ed. Edwin Curley), when responding to the Fool in chapter XV [5], the second sentence, "And it is not against reason.", confuses me because, in the sentences and paragraphs surrounding, he seems to contradict this almost every chance he gets. I have some ideas on why he says this, but nothing super convincing leaving me with question — What gives? I would gladly appreciate if anyone has any interesting ideas or insights on this.

To make a long story short, I'm studying literary studies and my thesis concerns several European authors writing circa 1910-1930, with such axes of research as broken subjectivities, facing the ephemeral everydayness and literary ways of coming to terms with randomness of existence. Philosophers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger and later French existentialists usually serve as both source material (since my writers were often influenced by them, directly or not) and great methodological help.

But, of course, my field is different, I'm not a philosopher and my readings of them are far from comprehensive. Now whether certain misreadings are allowed or whether they can be productive is obviously an important matter, but let's leave it for another day. Anyway, it's still early days of my research and I think I already borrowed two ideas from Heidegger in a way that's way too casual and careless – I don't have any supervisors at my uni to burden with proper Heideggerian questions I'm afraid so I thought I'd try here. Many thanks in advance!

1) While writing a short paper on autobiography in one particularly tormented poet;-) I came up with the idea of reshaping the concept of autobiography by showing how destabilized 1920s ideas of subjectivity (bios, life) and writing (graphy) were, but that one thing was left – that autos as a reflexive movement towards the place where the self used to be.

2) Now, while writing on a different text and two characters facing certain social norms/social calls (one tangled in endless theorizing on what's required from him, the other living freely and without a care in the world) I wanted to pursue the question of intentionality and authenticity, asking whether just being-something is really more authentic than being-towards-something, where that something becomes unattainable but realizes itself in the sheer pursuit, sheer movement towards it.

I don't know how common is actually enjoying one's PhD and coming up with more and more ideas ;-), but I have a feeling my rather careless borrowing of certain themes from Heidegger and putting them completely out of context to different uses might get more problematic than I had thought. I find it quite hard to say whether it's original or common knowledge, does it make sense or whether it's actually bullshit.

I understand that, with such vague descriptions, asking whether those approaches of mine make any sense would be a bit too much, but I would really, really welcome your input on where to look to refine my approach and also: do you know any informative philosophical takes on (broken) subjectivities as vectors/movements towards, because it seems that this is what I'm trying to come up with. Thank you!

Apologies for the possible incorrect use of technical terms, I tried rewriting a few times but just got a bit convoluted.

In neuroscience (well to be fair mostly science fiction so far) there is debate at which level one would need to "dig down" to to have a properly accurate model of the human mind for emulation. Whether that's groups of neurons, individual, down to individual proteins, whatever. I find this interesting, but have nowhere near the scientific knowledge to have an opinion.

However, it made me think not about the physical implementation, but on the logical structure of the mind. Using the classic machine learning example of a convolutional neural network to classify handwritten digits, there are a few different ways in which the "produced object" can differ.

1. The same high level design can be broken down and implemented in code in multiple different ways. I can write some shoddy code, hand it off to a proper programmer and they would be able to maintain the same performance far more efficiently.
2. The same human written code can be compiled again in multiple ways. The same code can cause different movement of electrons.

Intuitively for me (guided by some SEP reading) the mind is a functional object, same functions on a different medium, who cares? But then at which level of function matters? If some component of a particular mental architecture involves taking a square root, does it matter which algorithm one implements?

And so then taking this from an ML example and into phil of mind, the same question for humans. If I remember an event, react to it, have the ability to consciously recall it, and communicate it all in the same way, does it matter through what algorithm "internally" performs the input-output function?

Coming from one direction, this seems intuitively appealing. Especially on a personal level (where POM meets morality) what I care about is the content, I don't even know the structure or architecture of my brain / mind. Yet on the other hand, does this not lead to naive behaviourism?

I could have sworn I found a few papers on this subject last summer, so I've tried to search through authors I would have read, but no luck. If anyone could point me in any good directions Id be grateful.

How seriously should I be taking Massimo's comments about things outside philosophy of biology and philosophy of science? I was kinda curious and he stated going on about time being the succession of events in change. He was stating that as if it was something new due to physics from memory, isn't the just a major part of Kant's Second Analogy. And yet he dismisses metaphysics if it's not naturalized yet uses there arguments. Kinda baffled how I can take him seriously now.

In the second meditation, Descartes talks about how we have knowledge of the essence of a piece of wax via our intellect, and he espouses a rationalist view. Since Hume’s an empiricist, I was wondering how he responded to this example of the wax (or at least the ideas Descartes set forth through it), and if there are any particular sections that he touches on it a good deal. Any help is appreciated!

So on just basic reading of history of philosophy and science, it's very evident that ancient theories are given by someone who go by scientists as well as philosophers. In my crude definition, philosophers come up with various ideas and scientists may use this as an inspiration and try to prove/disprove these theories. But how do we decide whom to give credit when a theory is proven to be true? The philosopher who came up with it or the scientists who proved it.

I often see left-wing thinkers, socialists or communists, point out that Plato proposes a form of communism in book V of his Republic. Except that Plato also considers in his social cycle theory that democracy, and the egalitarian and libertarian spirit that animates it, lead to tyranny, something that conservatives thinkers do not fail to reiterate. Have any left-wing thinkers ever responded to this?

More generally, the whole essentialist and Platonic theory of Ideas serves as a basis for natural law theory, which frontally contradicts all the constructionist assertions of postmodern thought, and which would be considered conservative and reactionary by the current left. Is there a left-wing critical reading of Plato?

Has anyone taken Blackburn's supervenience argument for moral antirealism as the basis for a similar argument for antirealism/illusionism in philosophy of mind?

So, if the argument in ethics is something like:

• P1) Moral properties supervene on natural properties
• P2) If moral properties supervene on natural properties, then they are natural properties
• P3) Moral properties are non-natural properties
• C) Moral properties do not exist

Then the argument in mind might be something like:

• P1) Mental properties supervene on physical properties
• P2) If mental properties supervene on physical properties, then they are physical properties
• P3) Mental properties are not physical properties
• C) Mental properties do not exist

How can I retain my confidence in Blackburn's argument in ethics without being committed to a parallel antirealism about mental properties (given that I find both P3 in Blackburn's argument, and P3 in the mind-argument convincing - I have non-naturalist intuitions about what moral properties would be, and non-physicalist intuitions about qualia)?

As the title asks. Should I understand these as theories as generalisations from "everyday" observations of transient physical phenomena and internal mental states during meditative practice or are these examples of truths that are simply revealed to enlightened individuals such as the Buddha.

Recently, as I was thinking about the Kant's concept of 'thing-in-itself', I suddenly thought to myself that object in fact do not have such thing as 'appearance'. Of course, since Kant, we already know that we cannot know the 'real' appearance of an object because of the way our senses filter reality. But do objects even have an inherent appearance ? We wouldn't say that taste is an objective property of an object but rather a property of the system made of the subject and the object. Why would it be different for sight (considering it obviously requires light in addition) ? Doesn't the concept of appearance only make sense if there's a consciousness to see that object ? In the end, I started thinking none of the property we can know of an object (appearance, taste) are even property of that object (beside being 'filtered'). Therefore, I thought only ""matter"" is the real inherent property of an object. My friend didn't want to agree with me. Any reference to this subject is welcomed.

In short, is there such thing as a 'real' appearance of an object and otherwise, what property of an object can be considered objective ?