Author: Jonathan Spelman Category: Social and Political Philosophy, Ethics Word Count: 1000 Is it better for there to be many people, all of whom have a relatively low quality of life, or for there to be only a few people, all of whom have a relatively high quality of life? Imagine that you are a … Continue reading The Repugnant Conclusion
Author: 1000wordphilosophy
Quantum Mechanics & Philosophy II: Measurement and Interpretations
Author: Thomas Metcalf Category: Philosophy of Science Word Count: 1000 Editor’s Note: This essay is the second in a series authored by Tom on the topic of quantum mechanics and philosophy. Read the first essay here and the third essay here. I. Measurement The story in the previous article in this series corresponds to real experiments about properties of … Continue reading Quantum Mechanics & Philosophy II: Measurement and Interpretations
Just War Theory
War is a profoundly destructive institution, yet most of us still believe there are good wars. Authors as far back as Cicero, and in various cultural traditions, have sought to answer this question: When is a war just? This article will explore the criteria of traditional just war theory before briefly discussing the revisionist school’s critiques.
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument
Author: Ian Tully Category: Philosophy of Mind and Language Word Count: 1000 From roughly §243 to §315 in his Philosophical Investigations, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) lays out what later commentators have dubbed "the private language argument."1 Wittgenstein imagines a case roughly like the following: Suppose a person is stranded on a deserted island … Continue reading Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument
Idealism Pt. 1: George Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism
Author: Addison Ellis Category: Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Epistemology Word Count: 1000 Editor’s Note: This essay is the first of two essays in a series authored by Addison on the topic of philosophical idealism. Part 2 on Kant's Transcendental Idealism is here. We often take it for granted that we have some knowledge about the way … Continue reading Idealism Pt. 1: George Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism
The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God
Author: Andrew Chapman Category: Philosophy of Religion Word Count: 1000 1. God’s Greatness The Abrahamic conception of God is that he’s awesome—all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, creator of the universe, self-existent, and a host of other properties that make him not just very, very great, but the greatest that there is or could possibly be. “This is … Continue reading The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God
Quantum Mechanics & Philosophy I: The Superposition of Paths
Author: Thomas Metcalf Category: Philosophy of Science Word Count: 1000 Editor’s Note: This essay is the first in a series authored by Tom on the topic of quantum mechanics and philosophy. Read the second essay here and the third essay here. I. Introduction: A Story I’m going to tell a complicated and counter-intuitive story.1 The real-world situations … Continue reading Quantum Mechanics & Philosophy I: The Superposition of Paths
Thomas Kuhn, Paradigm Shifts, and Academic Rifts
Author: Michael Zerella Category: Philosophy of Science Word Count: 1000 This essay will discuss the important role played by Thomas Kuhn’s characterization of the scientific method in prompting on-going tension between two prominent schools of thought in academia: realism and constructivism. There are many subtle variations on these two schools, but they can broadly be construed … Continue reading Thomas Kuhn, Paradigm Shifts, and Academic Rifts
Kantian Deontology: Immanuel Kant’s Ethics
An introduction to Kantian ethics, the ethics of Immanuel Kant.
Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Author: Chelsea Haramia Category: Ethics, Metaphysics Word Count: 1000 You probably shouldn’t steal. Common sense tells us that stealing is wrong. But sometimes stealing seems less wrong, or not wrong at all, after we discover the cause of the stealing behavior. For example, if the fact that your family is starving causes you to steal … Continue reading Free Will and Moral Responsibility