r/askphilosophy

I've been reading Kierkegaard and have had a question about whether or not his arguments are pro-religion as opposed to pro-Christianity

Kierkegaard's arguments about the limits of reason, the necessity of faith, the leap of faith, and existential commitment are persuasive, but however they don't seem to privilege Christianity over other religions.

A Muslim, Jew, or another theist could probably adopt Kierkegaard's framework when talking about how reason has limits, faith not being reduced to objective proof, and how a relationship with God involves risk rather than certainty.

If that's true, then Kierkegaard appears to defend the structure of religious faith, not necessarily Christianity in particular.

Here's my question:

Does Kierkegarrd's philosophy justify faith in any religion, and not just Christianity? If so, what would stop someone from saying "if this applies to all religions then how does that prove that Christianity is the religion to follow" or some variation of that

Might be parts i'm missing or have oversimplified/misunderstood, if so I'm happy to learn more from your comments

Cheers

In some of Alex O’Connor’s discussions of mereological nihilism, he appears to argue roughly as follows:

1. The world contains particles, fields, or lower-level physical structure.

2. Ordinary composite objects such as tables, microphones, or sports teams depend on our classificatory interests.

3. Since different ways of grouping matter are possible, no one grouping is objectively privileged.

4. Therefore ordinary composite objects do not really exist, except as mind-dependent divisions or projections.

I am trying to understand whether this is considered a serious argument by anyone in contemporary metaphysics, or whether it commits a fairly basic mistake.

My worry is that the argument seems to move too quickly from: “There are many possible ways to describe or partition the world” to:
“Ordinary objects are not real.”

But that inference looks invalid. Lots of real things seem description-relative, scale-relative, context-sensitive, socially constituted, or non-fundamental without being unreal. Sports teams, organisms, artifacts, institutions, storms, and biological species may all raise hard questions about individuation, but that alone does not obviously imply eliminativism.

So my questions are:

Is this kind of argument actually representative of serious mereological nihilism, or is it a popular-level oversimplification?

Does the appeal to arbitrary divisions of matter establish nihilism, or only establish that ordinary-object boundaries are vague, interest-relative, or non-fundamental?

Are examples like sports teams even good evidence for nihilism about material objects, or do they conflate social/institutional ontology with mereology?

What are the strongest academic arguments for mereological nihilism, and how do they differ from this kind of argument?

Which philosophers give the best replies to the “arbitrary grouping” argument against ordinary objects?

genuinely wondering because I’ve been thinking about this for days now and can’t seem to come up with any sort of answer. like, NO answer seems to work. is this just an actual unsolvable paradox?

I've been learning about ancient Greek philosophy (such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) through whatever sources I can find.

These are typically sources from the last 100 years or so, such as modern university courses, online lectures, interviews / podcasts with various credentialed experts on YouTube and books by authors such as A. C. Grayling, Bertrand Russell and Martha Nussbaum.

I tried to be fairly diverse in who I read and listen to – I try to get opinions from a variety of genders, ethnicities, economic backgrounds, schools of thought, etc.

I think the above represents a pretty wide sample of opinions and is actually quite well rounded.

However there is one thing all these people have in common: they were all born within the last ~100 years.

Does the modern west properly understand ancient philosophers and philosophies?

Might there be various blind-spots and biases embedded in the modern understanding of these philosophies? For example: political, ideological or maybe "recency bias" (focussing too much on recently relevant issues and not enough on what might have been relevant to the ancients in their own contexts)?

Any ideas?I haven't really heard much on this topic from anyone

We are products of our circumstances.

But is it morally justifiable to turn against a system that enabled our flourishing? Morality in practice, I believe is, is subjective evolving through time just like all else.

Would I be a hypocrite for opposing a system that was fundamentally flawed from its inception, yet allowed me to prosper and which I now wish to see dismantled?

For eg. I have directly benefited from my parents capitalist earnings to secure my education, comforts and experience life yet I now in my mid 30s stand against capitalism despite being a product of its privileges.

Any identity forced upon us without a choice would fall under this category, such as religion or place of birth.

I keep hearing conversations regarding this line of thinking but I'm never sure what it means. For example, the conversation will usually go like Person A: "What's your moral framework?" Person B: "Utilitarianism" Person A: "Could you please provide your justification for utilitarianism?" To which Person B, in my personal experience, is never really sure how to answer.

Like would Kant's categorical imperative or universalism be an apt justification for moral absolutism, or not?

Thank you in advance for all help!

If you imagine something, wouldn’t it be real for that second inside of your head? if you can see something in your head then it has to exist somewhere, whether it’s just a bunch of electrical and chemical reactions creating something in your head or if it exists on a dimensional plane that only our consciousness can interpret. sorry if i’m not explaining this right but I believe thoughts and mental images have to exist somewhere physically (or in wtv material way, could be something we don’t know about yet like when we found plasma). i’m not satisfied with how many questions this question opens up and consciousness itself, it’s confusing and weird and almost godly to an undereducated person like myself :p

Is there a field of philosophy that would deal with the general concept of a rational conclusion separated from what is a rational conclusion in our world for example, what field of philosophy would help answer this question; was it a rational conclusion in the 12th century to say that the Earth was the center of the universe? Evaluating the claim on the available evidence to what would be the rational conclusion from thence, rather than asking, what is the correct answer to the question?

My understanding of the traditional secular moral realist arguments (naturalism or non-naturalism) do not seem to overcome the main arguments for anti-realism (which I understand to be both Mackie's arguments). Personally I find Mackie's error theory to be a particularly convincing basis for morality, and was wondering if that was an opinion shared by many philosophers today.

I apologize that I'm struggling fully with explaining the concept.

I don't inherently believe that humans are better than another species. Roughly, I believe humans believe ourselves to be superior, but we have made our own rules.

I'm looking for philosophers and works that could better help me articulate arguments against the notion that humans are the superior species.

Given the title, I know many will claim that consciousness is an illusion or other approaches like determinism and compatibilism take on free-will. But for the sake of this question's relevancy, we ignore all that and premise that free agency is truly metaphysically real even if our behavior is influenced by environmental factors. Is it ontologically possible to create conscious beings that does not possess free-agency? For example, it is ontologically impossible for a square to only have 3 sides because it goes against the nature of being. so in a similar manner, i am asking if it is ontologically sound to produce a type of reality where consciousness exist without free-agency.

Biology says that humans evolved from monkeys and consists of bones, meat, skin. Also human microbiome has likely played a big part in why human brains are so big and so effective. Psychology says that humans have id, ego and superego and that they are social beings. Religion says that humans are made by the God and have to be good, so they would be able to go to Heaven. Of course all of that very simplified. But what is human according to philosophy? Answers from all possible philosophy branches are welcome.

I was recently watching a debate between William Lane Craig and Rebecca Goldstein and I noticed that WLC used what seems to be a very dishonest trick in that he actively misquoted something. To keep it short, the original quote was something "some people believe that A is true, but it is clearly not so" and he shortened it to "A is true" and argued that the original source defended "A is true" as well. To make things worse, this was a quote from Rebecca's husband Steven Pinker so it was clearly intentional and deliberate. This seems to me like an extremely dishonest tactic. I think it is ine thing if you are just pushy or articulate at debates, but this seems like something else. However he clearly is a philosopher with a very impressive and serious academic body of work. I'm having a very hard time dissociating both things, because to me it puts his commitment to truth in question. Can it be disentangled?

I think that he don't get enough recognition he deserves, he really was a great philosopher.

I’m looking for philosophers or philosophical frameworks that have written things related to how I feel, whether agreeing or disagreeing. I’m trying to start researching but I don’t really know where to start. Thanks in advance

“If people werent in cognitive dissonance that average was okay they would end it. But they are convinced by a capitalist society that they are needed (to work) so they believe they can find happiness.

I believe that an average ordinary life is a fate worse than death.”

I'm not trying to be funny and am honestly interested in philosophy. I don't mean a picture book, like for children with a story with philosophic themes, but an actual non-fiction book about real philosophers, but illustrated and less continuous text, rather short paragraphs.

Currently, I'm kind of aware of all the important names and the rough timeline of everything, at least in western philosophy. So you can recommend me high quality stuff thats just entry-level, but im also curious if there are somehow parts of philosophy which are maybe more visual than others?

I am starting, bit by bit to believe that this paradox is pretty unreal, can someone please help me see if I actually understood the paradox correctly?

1- Whoever explained the rules to me about the predictor, how do they know that such predictor is extremely accurate? if there is no answer to that then its unreal, and if they do, then its no longer a paradox because then people have been tested from before therefore there is a percentage that can be created mathematically (Exactly like how supervised training works with AI)

2- Regardless of point 1, The 2-Boxer argument is that the prizes are fixed, so the results wont change by your actions, but the paradox says otherwise because actions like changing your mind midway, trying loopholes (or fuck it even hypnotize yourself before you answer) is all already predicted therefore is there really a point to the paradox?

Edit: I am a one-boxer because I am told that it is extremely accurate (Also that thousands before me have been guessed correctly, therefore breaking the numbers to way over 1 in a 10^46, this number is basically what would happen if 1000 were guessed correctly with even a 90% chance (or well "accurate", just not "extremely". Still also too high if lowered to even 70% btw), which makes it almost impossible for our entire population to be guessed in a wrong way even once, therefore I 1 boxed because the predictor is definitely many many many decimals close to 100%)

First, English is not my native language, but I consider myself a reasonably proficient reader of English.

I'm currently reading A Cyborg Manifesto, and I've found that the biggest difficulty isn't actually the concepts or references, but rather the grammar of some sentences, which often feels genuinely ambiguous.

For example, in the third paragraph:

>Modern medicine is also full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices, in an intimacy and with a power that was not generated in the history of sexuality.

I genuinely can't tell what "each" refers to here. Does it refer to "organism" or "machine"? To the "coupling between organism and machine"? Or to "cyborgs" or "couplings"?

Another example is from the second paragraph:

>The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women's experience in the late twentieth century.

Should this be parsed as "a matter of [fiction and lived experience]", where fiction and lived experience are coordinated? Or as "[a matter of fiction] and [lived experience]", where lived experience is parallel to a matter of fiction?

Native speakers, did you have the same experience when reading A Cyborg Manifesto?

If this ambiguity is really present in the text (and not just a result of my English ability), I'm curious whether Haraway intended it, and if so, for what purpose. Why didn't she choose a more precise and syntactically transparent writing style?