Topic: Philosophy/Contemporary philosophy
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๐ Simulacra and Simulation
Simulacra and Simulation (French: Simulacres et Simulation) is a 1981 philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard, in which the author seeks to examine the relationships between reality, symbols, and society, in particular the significations and symbolism of culture and media involved in constructing an understanding of shared existence.
Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original. Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time.
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- "Simulacra and Simulation" | 2026-08-12 | 83 Upvotes 35 Comments
- "Simulacra and Simulation" | 2020-05-12 | 135 Upvotes 79 Comments
- "Simulacra and Simulation" | 2017-09-24 | 139 Upvotes 93 Comments
๐ What is it like to be a bat?
"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" is a paper by American philosopher Thomas Nagel, first published in The Philosophical Review in October 1974, and later in Nagel's Mortal Questions (1979). The paper presents several difficulties posed by phenomenal consciousness, including the potential insolubility of the mindโbody problem owing to "facts beyond the reach of human concepts", the limits of objectivity and reductionism, the "phenomenological features" of subjective experience, the limits of human imagination, and what it means to be a particular, conscious thing.
Nagel asserts that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organismโsomething it is like for the organism." This assertion has achieved special status in consciousness studies as "the standard 'what it's like' locution". Daniel Dennett, while sharply disagreeing on some points, acknowledged Nagel's paper as "the most widely cited and influential thought experiment about consciousness".
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- "What is it like to be a bat?" | 2025-09-03 | 181 Upvotes 294 Comments
๐ Against Method
Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge is a 1975 book about the philosophy of science by Paul Feyerabend, in which the author argues that science is an anarchic enterprise, not a nomic (customary) one. In the context of this work, the term anarchy refers to epistemological anarchy.
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- "Against Method" | 2022-12-22 | 134 Upvotes 64 Comments
- "Against Method" | 2015-09-27 | 133 Upvotes 59 Comments
๐ Gรถdel's ontological proof
Gรถdel's ontological proof is a formal argument by the mathematician Kurt Gรถdel (1906โ1978) for the existence of God. The argument is in a line of development that goes back to Anselm of Canterbury (1033โ1109). St. Anselm's ontological argument, in its most succinct form, is as follows: "God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist." A more elaborate version was given by Gottfried Leibniz (1646โ1716); this is the version that Gรถdel studied and attempted to clarify with his ontological argument.
Gรถdel left a fourteen-point outline of his philosophical beliefs in his papers. Points relevant to the ontological proof include
- 4. There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind.
- 5. The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived.
- 13. There is a scientific (exact) philosophy and theology, which deals with concepts of the highest abstractness; and this is also most highly fruitful for science.
- 14. Religions are, for the most part, badโbut religion is not.
Discussed on
- "Gรถdel's Ontological Proof" | 2019-07-28 | 125 Upvotes 124 Comments
- "Gรถdel's ontological proof" | 2014-12-28 | 55 Upvotes 52 Comments
- "Gรถdel's ontological proof" | 2009-01-03 | 12 Upvotes 9 Comments
๐ Gรถdel's Loophole
Gรถdel's Loophole is a "inner contradiction" in the Constitution of the United States which Austrian-German-American logician, mathematician, and analytic philosopher Kurt Gรถdel claimed to have discovered in 1947. The flaw would have allowed the American democracy to be legally turned into a dictatorship. Gรถdel told his friend Oskar Morgenstern about the existence of the flaw and Morgenstern told Albert Einstein about it at the time, but Morgenstern, in his recollection of the incident in 1971, never mentioned the exact problem as Gรถdel saw it. This has led to speculation about the precise nature of what has come to be called "Gรถdel's Loophole". It has been called "one of the great unsolved problems of constitutional law."
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- "Gรถdel's Loophole" | 2025-08-06 | 21 Upvotes 11 Comments
- "Gรถdel's Loophole" | 2023-07-24 | 21 Upvotes 4 Comments
- "Gรถdel's Loophole" | 2023-04-05 | 12 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "Gรถdel's Loophole" | 2023-01-20 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Gรถdel's Loophole" | 2021-03-25 | 131 Upvotes 130 Comments
๐ Stochastic Parrot
In machine learning, "stochastic parrot" is a term coined by Emily M. Bender in the 2021 artificial intelligence research paper "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?" by Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Margaret Mitchell. The term refers to "large language models that are impressive in their ability to generate realistic-sounding language but ultimately do not truly understand the meaning of the language they are processing."
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- "Stochastic Parrot" | 2023-06-13 | 125 Upvotes 161 Comments
๐ The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle (French: La sociรฉtรฉ du spectacle) is a 1967 work of philosophy and Marxist critical theory by Guy Debord, in which the author develops and presents the concept of the Spectacle. The book is considered a seminal text for the Situationist movement. Debord published a follow-up book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle in 1988.
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- "The Society of the Spectacle" | 2025-04-09 | 31 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "The Society of the Spectacle" | 2019-12-16 | 125 Upvotes 69 Comments
๐ Maria Montessori
Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori ( MON-tiss-OR-ee, Italian:ย [maหriหa montesหsษหri]; August 31, 1870 โ May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy. At an early age, Montessori broke gender barriers and expectations when she enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she graduated โ with honors โ in 1896. Her educational method is in use today in many public and private schools globally.
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- "Maria Montessori" | 2025-02-05 | 82 Upvotes 47 Comments
- "Maria Montessori" | 2012-08-31 | 34 Upvotes 19 Comments
๐ Ship of Theseus
In the metaphysics of identity, the ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The concept is one of the oldest in Western philosophy, having been discussed by the likes of Heraclitus and Plato by ca. 500-400 BC.
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- "Wikipedia article "Ship of Theseus" has changed entirely since its inception" | 2026-08-04 | 14 Upvotes 5 Comments
- "Ship of Theseus" | 2022-12-10 | 28 Upvotes 13 Comments
- "Ship of Theseus" | 2015-08-19 | 46 Upvotes 50 Comments
๐ Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (widely abbreviated and cited as TLP) is the only book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that was published during his lifetime. The project had a broad goal: to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science. Wittgenstein wrote the notes for the Tractatus while he was a soldier during World War I and completed it during a military leave in the summer of 1918. It was originally published in German in 1921 as Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung (Logical-Philosophical Treatise). In 1922 it was published together with an English translation and a Latin title, which was suggested by G. E. Moore as homage to Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670).
The Tractatus is written in an austere and succinct literary style, containing almost no arguments as such, but consists of altogether 525 declarative statements, which are hierarchically numbered.
The Tractatus is recognized by philosophers as one of the most significant philosophical works of the twentieth century and was influential chiefly amongst the logical positivist philosophers of the Vienna Circle, such as Rudolf Carnap and Friedrich Waismann and Bertrand Russell's article "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism".
Wittgenstein's later works, notably the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations, criticised many of his ideas in the Tractatus. There are, however, elements to see a common thread in Wittgenstein's thinking, in spite of those criticisms of the Tractatus in later writings. Indeed, the legendary contrast between โearlyโ and โlateโ Wittgenstein has been countered by such scholars as Pears (1987) and Hilmy (1987). For example, a relevant, yet neglected aspect of continuity in Wittgensteinโs central issues concerns โmeaningโ as โuseโ. Connecting his early and later writings on โmeaning as useโ is his appeal to direct consequences of a term or phrase, reflected e.g. in his speaking of language as a โcalculusโ. These passages are rather crucial to Wittgensteinโs view of โmeaning as useโ, though they have been widely neglected in scholarly literature. The centrality and importance of these passages are corroborated and augmented by renewed examination of Wittgensteinโs Nachlaร, as is done in "From Tractatus to Later Writings and Back - New Implications from the Nachlass" (de Queiroz 2023).
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- "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" | 2023-08-12 | 65 Upvotes 68 Comments