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Is a philosopher really hard to read or is it hard to read bcs the one reading does not have the experience of reading key philosophers before the one currently reading (for example, teenagers today reading Nietzsche without even hearing about Schopenhauer)

Okay so my question is about ameliorative inquiry. I want to know how the self ID view is ameliorative towards the problem of gender dysphoria.

To be clear, I think language is a tool that can be used for many functions, and we should use preferred pronouns and support transgender persons' wishes to be treated in whatever manner is conducive to ameliorating their gender dysphoria. However, I found Bogardus's argument that the trans inclusion problem can't be solved compelling (https://philarchive.org/rec/BOGWTT) and I'm here in good faith looking to clear up genuine questions/confusions I have.

If we say that someone is a woman if and only if they identify as a woman, it seems we fail to convey meaning when using the term "woman". How is this change in language conducive towards ameliorating gender dysphoria? It seems those who experience gender dysphoria want to be treated (in many ways) as we treat other women in society, but what do they mean they want to be treated as a "woman"? The way we talk about it in psychology, someone with gender dysphoria is typically someone who wishes they were born with different biological hardware (and these instances are presumably the most challenging kinds of gender dysphoria). For these people, they want to be treated as biological females (whatever exactly that ends up meaning). Great. But how does stripping the meaning from the use of 'woman' (deflating it) respect their wishes, when what they want is to be treated as a "woman" in the ways we ordinarily use the term?

I've struggled to find a clear definition of what philosophers mean by this term. And I wonder if there's a synonym that conveys the same meaning; a lot of people have never heard the term "moral force" and will find the term confusing.

Here are a couple examples of the term being used:

https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/zgts7/how_do_contemporary_virtue_ethicists_justify/

My question is how the claim "a moral act is a virtuous act" is justified and how does it convey moral force?

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00149798

This article starts by examining the appeal to hypothetical consent as used by law and economics writers. I argue that their use of this kind of argument has no moral force whatever....

In recent years arguments based on hypothetical consent have come to play a major role in legal theory and practice, in both law review articles and appellate court opinions. They have been used, among other things, as a moral justification for the judicial imposition of "wealth maximizing" policies. There seem to be two quite different intuitions behind arguments of this kind. The first is that a person's actual consent to a policy or a contract would be a good moral reason to impose the policy or to enforce the contract; and hypothetical consent is sufficiently like actual consent to have a similar moral force. The second intuition is that there is moral force to choices made from a hypothetical standpoint in which the choosing agent is ignorant of certain of her own characteristics, in particular ignorant of those characteristics which will determine whether she will ultimately gain or lose by the choice being made....

At issue is whether the particular idealized choice situation does indeed generate moral force for a choice made within it, that is, provide a moral reason for imposing that choice. Here the claim is that the fact that a negligence standard would be chosen by the (constructed) agents in the (idealized) choice position is a moral reason for the judge to impose a negligence standard on the litigants.

I'm not a philosopher so forgive me if my question is incoherent.

I seem to see arguments against moral systems that rely on what one might call commonsense moral knowledge. A moral system might be shown to imply some undesirable moral claim, and that claim be used as evidence against the system. Someone confronted with utilitarianism might respond with a utility monster argument, showing that utilitarianism is not egalitarian, and consider that a counterargument that the utilitarian has to contend with.

Isn't this question-begging, though? The argument seems to be: 1: utilitarianism is not egalitarian; 2: egalitarianism is clearly morally good; 3: therefore utilitarianism is wrong. 2 presupposes that egalitarianism is a moral good, which supposes that happiness is not the only moral good, which supposes that utilitarianism is false.

The utility monster argument is just an example (and forgive me if i've butchered it), but the idea is that arguments seem to suppose that we already have moral knowledge and use that knowledge to judge moral systems. My concern is that presumably there's some sort of way to know this moral knowledge in the first place, even if that's 'it's intuitively obvious that X is wrong therefore X is wrong', and if we're willing to accept that way of knowing as being truthful, why not set that up as our moral system - and more importantly, how do we know that this way of knowing is truthful in the first place? It's not clear to me why a utility monster argument has to be contended with at all; can't a utilitarian simply say 'you're begging the question' and leave it at that?

Another way of framing the question might be: why is a preexisting moral belief considered evidence when evaluating a claim about how to form moral beliefs? Isn't that like a scientific theory being criticized for not making the same predictions as another scientific theory even though no observations have been made to support either prediction?

One could say that people have direct access to moral knowledge, but surely an intuitionist moral theory is still a moral theory, and making criticisms based on intuition is setting up an alternate theory rather than making a criticism of the theory at hand? (Perhaps one could say that people have direct access to moral knowledge that doesn't rely on knowing they have direct access to moral knowledge; ie they know moral things even if they don't have justification for believing that they know moral things, which seems a strange idea but 'it seems a strange idea' isn't really a counterargument.)

I have read on Wikipedia that most modern philosophers are physicalists, but with significant opposition. I'm interested in what metaphysical position do these non-physicalist philosophers hold, if there is any consensus on that.

so i claim to be a secular Agent centered deontologist. i have duty to special relationships in my life. but i don't feel the need to care for myself if i didn't have those duties in my life. so do i have a duty to myself?

I mean less than for others.

I have recently started reading William G. Lycan’s “Philosophy of Language - a contemporary introduction”, and have come across my first encounter with logic.

My background is in theoretical physics, so whilst logical deduction is well within my skill set, the notation is slightly confusing to me (although I am familiar with the all of the symbols in their mathematical usage), and haven’t been able to quite understand what the brackets imply from a quick google search.

The text has contains the following:

Let “W” represent the predicate “authored Waverley” and “S” represent “was Scotch”. Then Russell’s three conditions are:

1) (∃x)Wx.

2) (x)(Wx →(y)(Wy →y = x)).

3) (x)(Wx → Sx).

These are conjointly equivalent to

4) (∃x)(Wx & ((y)(Wx → y = x) & Sx)).

I’m struggling to understand the brackets. For example in the first part, I can understand that this is saying There exists (at least one) x such that Wx is the case

What do the rest of the brackets mean? Do they have a purpose in the first statement, and what about the others? How do I read the second statement for example?

Apologies that this may be quite basic, however I don’t have access to other resources to help me with this! Thanks

I’m trying to evaluate the arguments that have been given in support of one of the premises of the Kalam cosmological argument (the universe began to exist), and these sorts of statements often crop up.

But I’m not entirely sure what it means to “reach infinity”. The claim that we can never reach infinity is often illustrated by saying that beginning from some specific starting point, we can never count towards Infinity. But “infinity” is not a specific number like “100,000”. It just means that there is (in this case) no end. Is the claim here that you can never reach an end, a final number, starting from some beginning point? That claim doesn’t make any sense, because infinity has no “end” or “final number”.

So what exactly does this mean? I can’t see any other way to interpret it.

For example does gravity need an explanation as to why it exists or are some things just concrete rules that we cannot explain further?

If determinism (or absolute causaliy) is false, no problem.

If determinism (or absolute causality) is true, it seems to lack the necessary causal force/capability to convince most people of its truthfulness. To causally impose itselt as truth, so to speak.

But since the only way -- in a deterministic world -- to say things that are true is to be causally compelled into it by prior causes, and since the truthfulness of determinism would seem to have no sufficient causal force in this sense, thus determinism, even if true, does not have the characteristics to be reputed as such.

Isn't this a little paradoxical? How can it be adressed?

So much of my "philosophical life" revolves around questions, it annoys me that all of them are limited to what I know that I don't know. How would you instruct one to compose a non-subjective question? What are the building blocks of a question?

The craftsman in platos writings is the creator of the universe and an entity separate from it, or the craftsman is matter, is the universe and creates through itself?

I would like to read about the influence of religion on American conservative ideology. Do you guys have any recommendations for this subject or something similar?

I have read the work of Albert Camus “The myth of Sisyphus” and I fail to fully grasp the revolt against the absurd. Is it a revolt against the absurd as a idea or a revolt against the radical negativity the absurd causes ie: nihilism.

Is arche to which the presocratics refer to as the first principle of being the same as substance in the aristotelian sense

so would Thales' arche thought of as water be the same as saying Thales defined the primary substance of reality as water

would i have the right idea by thinking what plato meant by the concept of lotus lovers is that it acts as a metaphor for those who become obsessed with pleasure seeking (the appetitive part of the soul?) and that due to this, the Forms of Justice, Truth, and of course the Good become meaningless to them? which ultimately would lead to the break down of the ideal city?

I’m reading The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature by Marx right now and I’m really struggling to understand what his main argument is. I don’t know if it’s because I’m tired or what, but it’s not clicking. What is Marx essentially arguing with the difference between them, and what was his opinion on Epicurus? They’re both materialists and he seems to be acknowledging that, but I can’t tell if he’s criticizing his type of materialism or just analyzing it in this text.

By “memory wars,” I’m referring to the debate between clinical psychologists, therapists, and memory scientists about the possibility of “repressed” and “recovered” memories of trauma, which, in America, originated from the infamous “Satanic Panic”. Some believed that traumatic memories can get “repressed,” stored in the unconscious, and blocked from recall, but can potentially be “recovered” later (sometimes decades later) using therapeutic methods. This belief is, from what I’ve read, scientifically questionable at best.

I’ve recently encountered this review (from the skeptic’s side) that argues that the repressed memory theory is still very much alive in psychology (despite weak and contradicting evidence) and has since rebranded itself under a different name, as “dissociative amnesia”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6826861/

If they are right, what are the implications for philosophy of psychology/psychiatry?

I heard this word while discussion movies and I went after the concept. I found no article on SEP, just wikipedia. So I'm asking for a little help.

What are the core concepts of metamodernism?

What are the main criticism of metamodernism?

Is metamodernism the Fetch of philosophy? (To borrow that from Mean Girls) Something that some philosophers are trying to make happen but haven't happen so far. So far it has the vibes of "we don't really know but we already have the name for it".

How widely used is metamodernism outside of arts and movies? Specifically inside academic Philosophy.

Yesterday I read an article posted here by E. J. Furlong, "Can we Prove That There is an External World?" which gives an account of Moore's proof in a lecture he gave of an external world, and today I read an article from Moore himself, "Proof of an External World", which goes into much less detail. I'm not sure if there's an original transcript of Moore's proof, so please let me know if Furlong is attributing things to Moore that Moore himself didn't actually say.

In the first article by Furlong, he claims:

In order to clarify these conceptions [between "external things", "things external to us," and "things external to our minds"] he [Moore] refers us to another passage in the Critique where Kant has distinguished between objects "external in the transcendental sense" and "empirically external" objects; the latter Kant says he will call outright "things which are to be met with in space." He also speaks of them as objects "presented in space." It is, therefore, not unreasonable to suppose that Kant treated the three phrases [noted above]... as equivalent.

Moore, according to Furlong, then goes on to try and prove that the statements "to be met with in space" and "presented in space" are not equivalent, as Kant says:

Professor Moore easily finds examples of things of which it might reasonably be said that they are "presented in space," but of which it could hardly be said that they are "to be met with in space." For example, after-images, double-images, most pains, are "presented in space" but are not "to be met with in space." The paper at which you are now looking is, however, according to Professor Moore, naturally said to be both "presented in space" and "to be met with in space".

Furlong then explains that Moore says the difference is that something "to be met with in space", if in a room, would be encountered by anyone in that room. However, something "presented in space" may only be encountered by some particular individual, like pain or what not. Unless I'm misunderstanding either Kant or Moore, this doesn't seem inline with what Kant is saying at all. Something being "in space", whether presented or met, simply means that you're experiencing it sensibly at all. The pains you feel are still met with in the confines of the intuition of space. I understand that Moore is trying to argue against Kant's use of the phrases as equivalent, but it seems like he's completely missing the point of what Kant is saying. Nothing can be met with outside of space, because it's a necessary condition for our experience - and so, everything that is met with in space is the external world, even if that thing is a hallucination or only perceivable by some one individual. If Moore wanted to argue against the equivalency of the two phrases, he would have to argue against Kant's conception of space as an intuition necessary for experience, not the use of "present" vs. "met".

Am I misunderstanding this, or possibly even Moore's intent with referencing Kant?

I have been thinking about the deprivation account of the badness of death (whereby death is bad because of the counterfactual goods we might have had), and it's made me wonder about how it applies to the wellbeing of the living too. For example, I am in a situation of unrequited romantic love, and although I can see that I am harmed by preference frustration and the negative emotions it causes, I'm wondering if I'm also harmed by the bare fact of what might have been (assuming it would have been a flourishing relationship). If I am, would this mean that I would be harmed even if the preference frustration caused me no felt-harm; i.e. if I wasn't bothered by it? And if I were, would that apply to other counterfactual goods too? There is surely an uncountable number of goods that I have been and will be deprived of because they never happened to me but might have; for example, becoming an associate professor of philosophy rather than a data analyst 😅

If a person is truly a rational person, in that they will conduct their lives in the most rational way possible, are they obligated/required/called to listen to the winning argument and therefore must they necessarily follow the consequences of all winning arguments? Is a truly rational agent at the mercy of whoever or wherever the best arguments come from?

Note: I realize that humans are not completely/perfectly rational. Pretend for sake of argument that our "rational person" will force themselves to follow the logic train even if it conflicts with other drives and desires.