23 entries
Questions
The big open questions: free will, consciousness, the self, morality, meaning, and how we know anything at all. Each one explored from every serious side.
- I.Is free will an illusion?You feel like the author of your choices. The question is whether that feeling tracks anything real.Free will · Introductory
- II.Is the future already fixed?If the laws of physics plus the state of the universe settle everything that happens, then everything you will ever do was settled before you were born.Free will · Intermediate
- III.Can you be free in a determined universe?Perhaps freedom never meant escaping causes. Perhaps it means acting from your own reasons, which can be caused like anything else.Free will · Intermediate
- IV.Can anyone deserve blame?Blame assumes a person could have done better. If that assumption fails, what happens to praise, punishment and gratitude?Free will · Intermediate
- V.Why is there something it is like to be you?Science can explain what the brain does. The hard problem asks why any of that doing is accompanied by experience at all.Mind · Intermediate
- VI.Is the mind just the brain?Thoughts seem to have no weight, colour or location. Brains have all three. How are the two related?Mind · Introductory
- VII.Could a machine be conscious?Machines can now talk, reason and seem to care. Whether anyone is home inside them is a different question, and no one knows how to answer it.Mind · Intermediate
- VIII.Are you the same person you were at eight?Almost every cell, belief and memory has changed. Something makes that child you. The question is what.Identity · Introductory
- IX.Are you your memories?John Locke argued that you extend exactly as far back as you can remember. The idea is powerful, and it has holes you could drive a carriage through.Identity · Intermediate
- X.Is the self an illusion?Look inward for the one who is looking, and you find thoughts, feelings and sensations. You never seem to find the looker.Identity · Intermediate
- XI.Why is there something rather than nothing?Nothing at all would have been simpler. No universe, no laws, no questions. Yet here everything is.Reality · Intermediate
- XII.Is time real?Time feels like a river carrying us from past to future. Physics describes it more like a map, with no moving 'now' anywhere on it.Time · Deep
- XIII.Are there other versions of you?On one serious reading of quantum mechanics, every possible outcome happens, each in its own branch of reality, with its own copy of you.Reality · Deep
- XIV.Is morality objective?Is 'cruelty is wrong' true the way '2 + 2 = 4' is true? Or is it more like 'chocolate is delicious'?Ethics · Intermediate
- XV.What makes an action right?Three great traditions give three different answers: the results it brings, the rules it follows, or the kind of person it expresses.Ethics · Introductory
- XVI.Do animals have moral rights?A pig can feel pain, fear and something like joy. Does that give it a claim on how we treat it, and how strong a claim?Ethics · Introductory
- XVII.Does life have meaning without being given one?If no one designed us for a purpose, is a human life meaningful anyway, or do we have to make meaning ourselves, or is the search itself the problem?Meaning · Introductory
- XVIII.Should we fear death?Epicurus argued that death is nothing to us: when it comes, we are gone. Few have found the argument convincing, and fewer have refuted it.Meaning · Introductory
- XIX.Are you born with a nature?A knife is made for cutting before it exists. Sartre argued that people are the reverse: we exist first, and only then decide what we are.Meaning · Intermediate
- XX.Should you only care about what you control?The Stoics divided the world into what is up to you and what is not, and argued that peace comes from caring only about the first.Meaning · Introductory
- XXI.How do you know anything at all?You believe you are reading a screen. Can you rule out every way that belief might be false? If not, do you really know it?Knowledge · Intermediate
- XXII.Why trust that the future will be like the past?The sun has risen every day of recorded history. Hume asked a question no one has fully answered: what makes that a reason to expect it tomorrow?Knowledge · Intermediate
- XXIII.Is science the only path to truth?Science has been astonishingly successful. Does that make it the only reliable source of knowledge, or only the best tool for some questions?Knowledge · Intermediate