Is there anyone with some basic expertise that can give me some more info since it seems pretty complex from what i’ve read.

I just got a revise and resumbit for a paper on punishment (arguing against positive retributivism). I thought the reviewer raised some very good points, and that the best way forward for the paper would be to collaborate with someone who has worked on the topic more closely. I'm not a specialist in punishment- I just had an idea I thought might be worth adding to the literature. No one at my university works on punishment unfortunately.

If you've got a background in the literature on punishment, shoot me a DM if you'd be interested in looking at the manuscript and considering joining the project as an author.

I believe that at the core of fascism lies a fundamental rejection of ideology, especially ideology with moral characteristics. Many will say that this is incorrect because fascism is itself an ideology - but I believe that even if you characterize it as such, it differs markedly from any other ideology, in that it refuses to subscribe to any real system of values or beliefs.

The only 'belief' at the core of fascism is that the defining struggle in history isn't between good and bad, but between power and weakness. And even this is less an ideological belief and more a claim of truth, an observation of history.

Now, one may argue that fascism does have ideological tenets, such as:

• Extreme nationalism and promotion of the nation/race as superior
• Authoritarian governance and rejection of liberal democracy
• Militarism, glorification of violence, and aggressive expansionism
• Idea of purging perceived "biological weaknesses" for a stronger nation

However, my argument is that all of these are nothing but strategies in the pursuit of power and manifestations of this pursuit.

• Extreme nationalism fosters in-group loyalty and a power base.
• Authoritarianism consolidates power in a centralized state.
• Militarism builds up armed might as the ultimate source of power.
• Racial supremacy theory rationalizes oppressing outgroups seen as threats to power. In other words, a fascist may be racist, but the motivation behind this racism is not actually racial ideology, but the desire to remove heterogeneity which threatens to fracture power.

Look forward to counterarguments.

Disclaimer: This is not a justification or promotion of fascism, but an attempt in understanding it. I am not a fascist.

Both were highly accomplished philosophers and both died around the same time yet Dennet's death got considerable coverage (which in its own regard is a good thing) while few have talked about Adams'.

The position is in Northern Europe and I've already drafted a project plan.

Which things do you wish you knew before you started your PhD? Useful softwares, writing and studying strategies, good routines etc.

What should I do to make the most of it and to become a better researcher?

The Sokal affair is the opposite of what I seek (here is Derrida’s response to that sorry conjuncture: https://www.critical-theory.com/read-derridas-response-sokal-affair). I find few works that seem respectful and knowledgeable about both sides. For me, some good examples of this kind interaction would be the early vs late Wittgenstein or early and late Whitehead. Also some philosophers perform a kind of an exploration of continental problematics within their desire for analytic certainty: Hume and Peirce. These are all power players. Who else?

I know this sounds bad but I genuinely cannot take Camus, Foucault, Hegel, or any of those Continental philosophers seriously. It’s unclear whether they are saying anything meaningful, and it all just sounds like nonsense. Another thing I can’t wrap my head around is people who are scholars of ancient, medieval, “modern” (1600-1800) philosophers. What even is the point? They were wrong about almost everything. No one yells “hey I’m a Newton scholar!”

Obviously there’s not as hard as a divide between analytic and continental as some make it to be, but I think the general idea / distinction still has merit.

Hi there,

I am a PhD student, also a folk-singer/musician endeavoring to transform philosophy and esotericism into music. I have for you an alchemical poem by the great German Romantic poet-philosopher-mage Novalis that I have rendered into musical form; I also provide a philosophical commentary at the end of the video, and illuminate the alchemical and magical references within it.

The effect that Novalis sought to achieve with his poem "Astralis" was nothing less than the completion of the alchemical work, the hieros gamos conjunctio, the unification of the realms of life and death, personal and transcendent, past and future. At the time that Novalis wrote it, he knew he was dying. His true love, Sophie Kuhn, had died a few years previously. While in outward life he had moved on, even becoming engaged to Julie Charpentier, in his inner life, he had not, composing extensive poetry about Sophie. To him, Sophie had been a personal instantiation of Sophia, and had become a mediatrix to the beyond. Privately, he confessed to friends in letters that whilst he felt with Julie more loved than ever before, he would prefer death, in the company of his true beloved. Not much later, his wish would be granted, death ushering him to an early grave.

In the "Astralis" poem, Astralis is the alchemical progeny born from the kiss of the characters of Heinrich and Matilde, who are literary representations of Novalis and Sophie. Like Sophie, in Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Matilde has also met an early death; the unfinished novel has Heinrich undertaking an Orphic and alchemical journey. She is his soul, also the soul of the world. A love that overcomes death, Astralis presents a creation myth of the new world engendered by love.

Featuring images from alchemical manuscripts animated by me and a slew of stop motion sequences created by yours truly, including of a collection of bones that I found in a lake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soaVmA-dh8k

I recently watched a video of where to start reading Nietzsche and it said to go find the best philosophy department in universities of your language, check their first curriculum and use their textbooks to receive a good secondary source of the Philosophers ideas before diving into reading the philosopher himself. I checked NYU, Vale, Harvard, Stanford, none of them have textbooks for their philosophy courses. Do you guys have any suggestions for textbooks I could use for Nietzsche?

I need to submit an assignment on Myth of Sisyphus by Camus. Can someone please suggest a text ( short novel, poem, short story or anything that doesn't take much time) that reflects his theory of the absurd so that i can draw parallels.

I am Canadian and my top choice for grad school would be the university of Toronto but I am fully open to other schools globally (only if they're considered top schools for philosophy grad programs).

Just got done with my second year of undergrad. I didn't do terrible, but also not fantastic...did about average. I'm a bit discouraged by it and am wondering now if I might as well write off any hopes of getting into a top graduate program, or if I could redeem myself in the next two years.

I hope I am not sounding too picky by emphasizing top programs. It's just a personal thing for me and I don't really want to get into academia anyway as a full-time career, I have other career plans I'm already set up for. I am just passionate about philosophy and would love to continue to be in that academic space for a while but really only if it's in a top school (NYU, Rutgers, UofT, etc.).

I’ll be heading into university next year and I’m seriously considering a degree in philosophy, but the thing is my ‘end goal’ of this is to eventually publish papers and start lecturing myself (as I think most people who choose this degree also want).

The problem I find is that my country only has 1 university and jobs regarding this position or anything in general to do directly with philosophy are scarce.

So practically my questions are

1. What do you recommend I do?
2. For graduates of philosophy, what did YOU do?

Thanks

Namaste. These conference proceedings, freely accessible below, contribute to academia by sharing interdisciplinary insights across the sciences and humanities from Eastern and Western perspectives regarding life and cognition. The conference resulted in our realization of the congruence between nonreductionist systems approaches to modern science (especially biology) and Hegelian philosophy, thus we intend to explore this further and encourage others to consider the same.

The proceedings include summaries of presentations from Denis Noble, Brian J Ford, B Madhava Puri, J Scott Turner, Alicia Juarrero, and others.

https://www.academia.edu/117033217/Life_and_Cognition_at_the_Intersection_of_Science_Philosophy_and_Religion_Science_and_Scientist_2023_Conference_Proceedings

I don’t know if this is the right subreddit, but I was thinking of majoring in philosophy and was wondering what kind of jobs are out there for philosophy majors. I have seen the information online, just wanted some real life experiences and examples of people. If this is not the right subreddit please guide me to the right one. Thanks

Few concepts in reality are as abstract and arguable as the concept of time. It’s the phenomenon we all wish we had control over, the mysterious force that keeps on pushing life – as we understand it – forward. On contemplating the vast and elusive meaning of time, I was stirred to remember Chuang Tzu’s “Dreaming and Awakening,” when he asserted,

Suppose you and I argue … Since between us neither you nor I know which is right, others are naturally in the dark. Thus, among you, me, and others, none knows which is right. (Chuang Tzu, 303-304)

The conquest to understand time feels much like Tzu’s hypothetical argument. If no one person knows ‘which is right,’ then all of humanity is ‘naturally in the dark’ on the nature of time altogether. Yet, one of the most characteristic and persistent traits of humans – curiosity – urges us to reflect on the abstract, the unknown. Our need to ask hard-hitting questions, like “Why is there something rather than nothing?” as Heidegger explores, broadens the horizons “for all authentic questions,” like those having to do with time (299).

In order to dissect time’s meaning and value, we must treat it as what it is in its current Western state: a unit of measurement – coined to both calculate and rationalize change. Contrastingly to the Western notion, Deutsch explains that the Eastern concern of time’s understanding is “to distinguish between time as a quantifiable measure (chronos) and time as a qualitative feature of experience … (kairos)” (Duetsch, 345). One of the more notable explorations of chronos and kairos is Dōgen’s “Being Time,” or Uji theory, asserting that “all being is time,” and therefore, the “self is time” (Dōgen, 436), which combines both Eastern sections of time.  

Interestingly, Russell’s “Correspondence Theory of Truth” can also be applied to Dōgen and Heidegger’s understandings of reality: as truth does not exist without falsehoods (Russell, 261), essents, things that are (Heidegger, 298), cannot exist without first identifying nothings, things that are not. Through synthesizing Russell and Heidegger’s dualities of truth and existence, a similar mechanism of opposite yet complimentary forces – yin-yang – may be applied to time, specifically Dōgen’s uji, as he states: “since oneself exists, time cannot leave” (Dōgen, 346).  In considering time and self to be yin-yang, a few interesting deductions could be made.

The nature of yin-yang indicates that one force cannot exist without its opposing other. As Dōgen suggests, time cannot exist without the self, as it actually exists inside the self (Dōgen, 346). Therefore, could be theorized that the self cannot exist without time. This side of the temporal coin may be more difficult to support, however I believe that uji, or being time, implies the absolute duality of being, or self, and time. In this argument, it would be helpful to explore the subdivisions of time, chronos and kairos. Chronos, the ‘quantifiable measure’ of time should be classified as the invention of the human mind. It is the aspect of time that could be omitted, and the self would be preserved – confused, perhaps, but still capable of kairos, the ‘qualitative feature of experience’.

If kairos is the experiential aspect of the temporal, the feeling of the self in the now, it is sufficient to say that it is the more substantial, most sought-to-be-understood aspect of time altogether. If that is true, and kairos is the so-called ‘heart’ of time that we seek to understand, then it could be concluded that the self can exist without the measure of time but cannot exist without the experience of time. Such would be the case with homo-sapiens’ ancestors, who likely experienced time well before the ability to measure it, as primitive as those methods may have been.

Perhaps through releasing chronos and embracing kairos, the self may be able to “abide in the realm of the infinite,” in the words of Chaung Tzu (304).  

Works Cited:

Deutsch, Eliot. Introduction to World Philosophies. Prentice Hall, 1997.

Please submit any recruitment type posts for conferences, discords, reading groups, etc in this stickied post only.

This post will be replaced each month or so so that it doesn't get too out of date.

Only clearly academic philosophy items are permitted

Abstract:

My theory tackles this by proposing a mechanism that links these two seemingly disparate phenomena:

• Physical Processes: Brain activity generates fluctuating electromagnetic (EM) fields.
• Subjective Experience: The EM field, in turn, influences the probability of neural pathways firing, potentially shaping the content of qualia.

Here's how my theory bridges the gap:

1. Probabilistic Qualia: Qualia themselves aren't seen as fundamental building blocks, but rather as emergent properties arising from the probabilistic interaction of neurons.
2. EM Feedback Loop: The EM field reflects the overall state of qualia processing in the brain. This affects the probability of neural activity, potentially influencing the nature of future qualia.
3. Awareness as Measurement: Awareness itself is proposed to be a form of "measurement" within this loop. It selects and amplifies certain qualia within the probabilistic landscape.

Key Points for Addressing the Hard Problem:

• Explains Emergence: The theory suggests how subjective experience (qualia) could emerge from the interplay of objective physical processes (brain activity and EM fields).
• Connects Physical and Mental: The EM field acts as a bridge between the physical activity of the brain and the subjective realm of qualia.
• Probabilistic Nature: By incorporating a probabilistic element, the theory acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in how physical processes translate to subjective experience.

By incorporating a probabilistic element, the theory acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in how physical processes translate to subjective experience, specifically the 'what it is like' aspect of qualia. The EM field, reflecting the overall state of qualia processing, might influence the probability of neural activity in a way that shapes the content of subjective experience. Awareness, as a form of measurement within the loop, could play a role in selecting and amplifying certain qualia within this probabilistic landscape, potentially contributing to the unique character of our subjective worlds.

Qualia as interactions between Metadata (Data about data):

This theory conceptualizes Qualia in the metaphor of metadata. When our senses observe the world, they observe the world in inaccurate pieces. If your brain didn't (seemingly) play a bunch of tricks to maintain consistency, being aware would be painfully disorienting.

I frame Qualia as interactions between this metadata, because it's quite literally connections between metadata about the world that's used to reconstruct the world and perpetuate it in a coherent state.

Individual Pieces of metadata hold no real meaning, if you observe the metadata red, but have no other metadata to relate that to, then Red means nothing. The value of Qualia therefore isn't in the collected data itself, but the relationships between the data.

So what is it like to be you?
You can't know what it's like to be another person, unless you become that other person entirely and lose semblance of yourself.

This is because the value of Qualia lie in their relationships to other metadata in the same system. If your Qualia were compromised by introducing relationships to Metadata which evolved outside of the system, Then the relationships in your mind would become vastly compromised, essentially leading to corruption of the system.

Metadata travels through the neurons:
When Metadata from the senses is sent through the Brain, the more malleable hippocampus serves as the short term memory store. The Metadata then goes throughout the brain, following the relevant neural pathways, and helping to provide information about the experience throughout the brain, so that it can react by forming connections/qualia.

The neural pathways aren't deterministic, they're probabilistic. This is a key point to note.

At this point, the Brain is still just a computer with a sense of randomness, we'd still be biological robots without awareness if this is where it stopped

The spark of awareness:

As we know, brain activity leads to increases in observable Electromagnetic emissions. We also know that Electromagnetism can affect our cognition. When we sleep, and are unaware (Besides during REM when we become aware during dreams), this activity decreases significantly.

Electromagnetism is key to awareness, but awareness is not Electromagnetic
When the Electromagnetic field is generated, it's generated based on the brain activity. The Electromagnetic waves are a holistic reflection of the countless Qualia that we process in any given moment.

It's a mirage, representing the state of our mind(qualia) in an encoded manner.

As the Electromagnetic fields shift in accordance with qualia/neural activity, the Electromagnetic field changes the condition of the environment, affecting probability on the quantum level, and thus affecting the probabilities in the neural pathways

This leads to a feedback loop:
As Metadata begins to enter our awareness, the Electromagnetic changes are a wholesome representation of the metadata in our mind at any moment. This "reflection" is Qualia generated from this Metadata, inevitably modifying the probabilities within the neural pathways, feeding a wholesome representation of the world right back into the system, by changing the probabilities of the neural pathways themselves.

A Blank slate: Neuroplasticity

Our brains are Neuroplastic from the start. The only Qualia that we have are the base instincts encoded into our genetics when we are born, and the little that our senses comprehend. Because the Metadata we observe is only valuable when used in relation to other metadata in the system.

Every piece of Metadata we observe begins to form relations with others, forming Qualia, eventually leading to a comprehensive view of the world, which we perceive through relationships. Throughout this, the probabilistic changes incurred from the Electromagnetic variances inevitably end up intertwined with the training data.

The Brain is learning from the Electromagnetic Field caused by Neural activity, making a subtle feedback loop inevitable, tying the brains experience together with itself in a unique representation of countless Qualia.

Our Awareness lives in between the electromagnetic activity and its effects on probability creating an unimaginably complex weave of information from simple and well known processes.

Awareness is not just an observer, but a conductor:

Awareness is a tool of measurement. We can't just stop our thoughts, our control is limited, many think it doesn't exist. But Awareness is unique. With it, we can focus, and by focusing, we change the probabilistic landscape of the mind. By changing our focus, we change how we measure the metadata, influencing the probability of the mind and the resulting Qualia. So some free will is possible, because our awareness exists outside of classical phenomena and instead exists in the realms between classical neurology and it's effects on it's own probabilities.

Sleep:

The brain always has some electromagnetic activity, a baseline. Sleep is the cessation of awareness so that the neural pathways can return to the baseline, else they would become incoherent and lose their patterns. REM sleep is the movement of data in the hippocampus to long term storage, so awareness is activated and we dream, but it's manipulated as a tool to enforce Neuroplasticity, setting a new "baseline" with new long term data for the next day.

Finally

And there it is, a full explanation of awareness, a feedback loop that is highly likely to occur based on what we know about the adaptability of the mind. An explanation of qualia, and how these seemingly useless pieces of metadata can form into a coherent phenomena that can reflect back onto neural activity.

It seems insane to propose such a grandiose theory, but most of the theories for awareness are either far fetched with a lot of mythical pieces yet to be discovered or trying to make us magical quantum beings, or they're ridiculously simplistic and try to make awareness electrical or chemical, which it's a different phenomena entirely.. Then after years of philosophical speculation and reading research on google, I came up with this.

I'm no PhD (self-taught Software engineer by trade), so maybe I'm a fool. But the majority of this explanation seems like probability would necessitate it to be true, it doesn't rely on any unknown laws or mythical parts. But it gives an opportunity to separate awareness from observable neurology, and consider it in a different light.

I also have some ideas on hardware to simulate this.. I'll save those for a patent though lol.

I have recently decided I’d like to go back to school. Some back story. I have a good paying office job in I.T administration and it’s alright, however it’s just not my passion.

What are the pros and cons to going back to school for Philosophy? Also does anyone know the ballpark for jobs where I could utilize an undergraduate degree. I’d like to be realistic but also would like to get into a higher education at some point in my life. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

My partner and I are philosophy Ph.Ds. Her yearly planner contains the quote, attributed to Plato, "courage is knowing when not to fear." We've read our share and couldn't place it. That's when the curiosity got the better of me. Many, many quote aggregator websites attribute it to Plato, but some articles (AI generated? can't tell) attribute it to Aristotle. Some just call it "Ancient Greek wisdom." Nothing contains an actual reference to any text. Can anyone help us verify this?

Hi all - first time posting here. I'm looking for someone to help explain if Brandom's take on Kant is idiosyncratic or not. I'm reading the beginning of MiE he seems to interpret Kant's key insight as making normativity central, which obviously fits with his project, but from my uni days when I did a course on Kant I don't at all remember this being central. Is this suggesting a deeper rift here in the way Kant is interpreted? (Maybe a Hegelian thing?) (also interested to know if there’s an interesting difference re McDowell’s Kant).

Many thanks in advance!

I'm a 22 year old undergrad going into my 3rd year. This is more of a personal thing for me, but I'm quite insecure about being behind. I'll graduate at the minimum age of 24. It's very disheartening, but I'm wondering what the average age is of those going for their MA or PHD. If I were to go for a graduate degree straight after undergrad, graduating at 24 probably wouldn't feel so bad if that's where most other students begin. I only know one person doing their PHD, and they started at 23.

Edit: These replies have been super helpful 😭 this is something I've been bothering myself about a lot, but I also recognize that it's an unsubstantiated worry. One of my friends is my age and just began his undergrad in psychology, I didn't even think twice about his age. It's a weird metric I have for myself only, and it's just been causing unnecessary stress.

I am an undergraduate student who is very interested in political (and all types of) philosophy. I am done my courses and want to get involved in an online group/program (hopefully free) to practice my analyzing, exegetical, and writing skills and overall explore essays and texts I have not read. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or recommendations they are greatly appreciated!

Which of the following schools has the best philosophy department: UCLA, Boston University, UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, The New School (Lang), or Columbia (School of General Studies)?

Any insight regarding the philosophy programs of any of the schools mentioned above would be greatly appreciated 🤓

I’m a current A level student, about to undertake a BA in philosophy, just wondering how much content the undergraduate course overlaps with my A level in philosophy, and how much my A level will help with the degree itself, as the a lot of the course content looks similar to areas I have already studied

I have been studying philosophy for the last four years and there have been some ups and downs, but I have overall understood the content rlly well and gotten best scores in my class. However, I only took classes that had nothing to do w the philosophy of science/logic/math etc.

Unfortunately this quarter I had to register for a class on the philosophy of computation because no other courses were open. Math and logic have always been incredibly difficult for me, I haven’t even taken a math course past algebra. I know that I will have to go to office hours every week and form study groups, but I’m scared of the professors thinking I’m completely dense. Are there any other resources for understanding the philosophy of computation for dummies, like audiobooks?