Questions

Philosophical questions and the positions that answer them, across schools of thought, eras, and traditions.

Aesthetics

  1. The Definition of Art

    What makes something a work of art?

Epistemology

  1. Experience or Reason?

    Does substantive knowledge ultimately depend on sense experience, or can reason provide it independently?

  2. Knowledge of the External World

    Can we know that a mind-independent external world exists?

  3. Science and Demarcation

    What distinguishes scientific knowledge from metaphysics, ideology, speculation, or ordinary belief?

  4. Space, Time, and Experience

    Are space and time features of things as they are independently of us, or forms through which human sensibility presents them?

  5. The Nature of Truth

    What makes a statement true — what is truth?

  6. The Possibility of Knowledge

    If certainty is unattainable, must we suspend judgment entirely, or may we still follow the probable?

Ethics

  1. Free Will

    Are human actions causally determined, and can people be free and morally responsible if they are?

  2. Moral Standing in Nature

    Which parts of the natural world have moral standing in their own right?

  3. The Basis of Right Action

    What ultimately makes an action right: its duties, its consequences, or the character it expresses?

  4. The Meaning of Life

    Does human existence have meaning, and what would confer it?

  5. The Origin and Cessation of Suffering

    What gives rise to suffering, and what makes its cessation possible?

Logic

  1. Logical Consequence

    What makes a conclusion follow logically from its premises?

Metaphysics

  1. Change and Being

    Is reality fundamentally stable, changing, processual, or both?

  2. Free Will

    Are human actions causally determined, and can people be free and morally responsible if they are?

  3. Space, Time, and Experience

    Are space and time features of things as they are independently of us, or forms through which human sensibility presents them?

  4. The Nature of Causation

    What makes one event a cause of another?

  5. The Problem of Universals

    Do general kinds, properties, or forms exist beyond the particular things that instantiate them?

Philosophy of Language

  1. Cognitive Meaningfulness

    What makes a sentence cognitively meaningful rather than meaningless?

  2. The Grounds of Linguistic Meaning

    What facts make a linguistic expression have the meaning that it has?

Philosophy of Mind

  1. Existence of the Self

    Is there an enduring, substantial self at all, or only a stream of changing states?

  2. Persistence of the Self

    What makes a person the same self across change, memory, embodiment, and time?

  3. Space, Time, and Experience

    Are space and time features of things as they are independently of us, or forms through which human sensibility presents them?

  4. The Mind–Body Problem

    Is the mind an immaterial reality distinct from the body, or is it entirely physical?

Philosophy of Nature

  1. Moral Standing in Nature

    Which parts of the natural world have moral standing in their own right?

Philosophy of Religion

  1. The Existence of God

    Does a God exist, and what would count as evidence either way?

Philosophy of Science

  1. Science and Demarcation

    What distinguishes scientific knowledge from metaphysics, ideology, speculation, or ordinary belief?

Political Philosophy

  1. Distributive Justice

    How should a society distribute goods, opportunities, and burdens among its members?

  2. Structural Injustice

    What makes a social structure unjust?