Damascene Philosophy

6 paths

Reading paths

Curated routes through the site. Each one builds, step by step, so that every entry makes the next one richer.

First steps

About 2 hours · 6 entries

Never read philosophy before? Start here. Six of the most famous ideas, each short, each a doorway to a whole field.

  1. Plato's caveThe oldest image of philosophy itself: prisoners mistaking shadows for the world.
  2. The Ship of TheseusA simple puzzle about planks that turns out to be about you. Try the slider.
  3. The trolley problemPull the lever or not. Your answer reveals which moral theory you already hold.
  4. Is free will an illusion?The big question underneath the trolley: were you ever free to choose?
  5. Are you a brain in a vat?How do you know any of this is real?
  6. Does life have meaning without being given one?Where all the other questions lead in the end.

Are you free?

About 3 hours · 7 entries

From physics to neuroscience to moral blame: a route through the free will debate that builds each step on the last.

  1. Could a perfect mind predict everything?The picture of a clockwork universe that started the modern worry.
  2. Is the future already fixed?What determinism actually claims, and whether physics supports it.
  3. Does your brain decide before you do?The experiments said to show your brain decides before you do, and what they really show.
  4. Is free will an illusion?The full debate, with every position at its strongest.
  5. Could you be responsible without any alternatives?A clever case suggesting you can be responsible even if you could not have done otherwise.
  6. Can you be free in a determined universe?The most popular answer among philosophers, and why many find it unsatisfying.
  7. Can anyone deserve blame?What follows for praise, blame and punishment.

What is a mind?

About 4 hours · 8 entries

Can science explain consciousness? Could a machine have it? A path through the hardest problem in philosophy of mind.

  1. Is the mind just the brain?The original problem: how thought relates to flesh.
  2. What is it like to be a bat?Why the subjective point of view is so hard to capture.
  3. Why is there something it is like to be you?The modern statement of the puzzle.
  4. Mary's roomDoes knowing all the physical facts tell you what red looks like?
  5. Could there be a zombie you?Could there be a perfect physical copy of you with no inner life?
  6. The Chinese roomIs following rules the same as understanding?
  7. Could a machine be conscious?The question as it now stands, with real machines on the table.
  8. Two minds in one head?What happens to a single mind when the brain is divided.

Who are you?

About 3 hours · 7 entries

What makes you the same person as the child in your old photographs? A path from planks to teleporters to the Buddhist denial of the self.

  1. The Ship of TheseusIdentity over time, with no people involved yet.
  2. Are you the same person you were at eight?The main theories of personal identity, side by side.
  3. Are you your memories?Are you your memories? Locke thought so.
  4. Would you step into the teleporter?Would stepping into the machine be travel or death?
  5. Could you upload your mind?The same question, asked about a technology people are seriously pursuing.
  6. Is the self an illusion?The radical answer: there was never a self to lose.
  7. Should we fear death?If the self is less than we thought, what does death take from us?

How should I live?

About 4 hours · 8 entries

From ancient advice to modern dilemmas: the main ethical theories, tested against the cases that make them hard.

  1. Would you be good if no one could see?Would you be good if no one could ever find out?
  2. What makes an action right?The three great theories, and what each gets right.
  3. The trolley problemWhere the theories collide.
  4. The drowning childHow much do we owe strangers?
  5. Would you plug into the experience machine?Is pleasure all that matters?
  6. Should you only care about what you control?An ancient answer to living well when much is out of your hands.
  7. Are you born with a nature?The existentialist answer: no one can tell you, not even nature.
  8. Must we imagine Sisyphus happy?And if nothing has ultimate meaning, Camus asks, why go on?

When logic breaks

About 3 hours · 7 entries

Arguments that look airtight and end in absurdity. Each paradox here forced someone to rethink logic, mathematics or rational choice.

  1. Zeno's paradoxesThe first and most famous: motion is impossible.
  2. The sorites paradoxWhen does a heap stop being a heap?
  3. The liar paradox'This sentence is false.'
  4. Russell's paradoxThe contradiction that shook the foundations of mathematics.
  5. The unexpected hangingA surprise that logic proves cannot happen, and then happens.
  6. Newcomb's problemA predictor, two boxes, and a split among decision theorists.
  7. The St. Petersburg paradoxA game with infinite expected value that no one would pay much to play.