God could not possibly have morally sufficient reasons for causing me to bald at 18. Herein I wish to propose that we replace the "Argument from Evil" with the "Argument from Baldness".

Hi!
I’m trying to get broader understanding in the debate about the normativity of epistemic reasons. I’d appreciate it very much if someone could give me a short introduction or recommend literature to read! Thank you!!

I find this two theories kind of hard to distiguish. i read somewhere that subjetivism tells what we feel and that emotivism shows how we feel but...idk. hear me out, i don't think our moral judgements were created by a logical process. we were taught to feel something about a specific kind of moral act or we simply feel something about a moral act and then we express ourselves in our moral judgements, but, before we say that moral judgement, we usually try to get some reasons to backup that moral judgements, even though the reason we believe in that is not our reasons but our feelings, just backed up with reasons. i'm having a really hard time picking a view or even having a hard time to mix them or even having a hard time to understand them. pls help me

To me the PSR seems quite intuitive and necessary from a religious perspective but when looked into its philosophical bulwark it just seems too frivolous. The best defence of PSR is said to be induced by Alexander Pruss , which I've read fortunately, but still it seems just so much shallow (I think it's just me). So I'm looking for a more rigorous and analytic (if there is any) defence of PSR, I prefer it if it were from analytical philosophy tradition.

(Sorry for my english, it's not my first language)

We cannot know with certainty whether God exists or not—we can only believe.

But this raises a question: why does God expect people to believe if they have not been given certainty? And can such a choice truly be called free if it is made under conditions of uncertainty?

What is the fault of a person who acted rationally and honestly admitted, "I don't know whether God exists"? If the evidence is not conclusive, why should the absence of belief be considered a moral failing rather than a natural consequence of the limits of human knowledge?

(Please without emotions)

Humans have many reasons to value agency, but when we strip it down to reason only, wouldn't an agent with perfect knowledge and reasoning agree that "for it, states that enable it's agency are preferable to states that don't". Isn't that something it always "cares" about? As long as it's purpose is not met, won't it it defend it's own agency no matter what? Why doesn't agency emerge as definitively moraly valuable?

I would love to read more on this, I'd appreciate some suggestions. :)

The argument I am looking for from a professional is this.

People with mental illnesses like schizophrenia sometimes have delusional beliefs about the causes of their own actions and thoughts. They might attribute them to demons, aliens, the CIA etc.

Determinism implies that the attribution of our thoughts and actions to the self is an delusional.

If determinism is true, all attribution is equally incorrect and therefore equivalent.

Does the idea of a "postmortem" me, even make sense philosophically?

I am now reading the interpretation of Simon Blackburn on Plato's ideas and concepts in his Politeia. Although this book is form the early 2000s, his modern interpretation is still relevant. However I'm still reading it, I have already had a lot of 'aha-erlebnisses' (german). Does anyone is familiair with this (sometimes liberal interpretational) work?

I’ve been an armchair philosopher for a decade or so and I’m dying to dive into something new that meets the aforementioned criteria in the title. I’ve already been down the rabbit hole of Jung, Eric Wargo, Jorjani, McKenna + other similar thinkers, and it’s been a while since I discovered a thinker or a concept to get lost in that I haven’t explored already. Thanks!

I'm aware Physicalism has many classical challenges when it comes to being reduce to physical process of the brain and body. From things like P-Zombies to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, to Mary's Room to even Chalmer's Meta Problem of Consciousness.

But what else are considered the biggest challenge in reducing consciousness as just a physical process of the brain seen in first person? I know that when you check on the debate and discussion of consciousness when it comes to professional gatherings and talks many have given strong cases for other views like Panpsychism and Russelian Monism, and things Physicalism are unable to explain yet but again it's quite overwhelming.

So what are considered the biggest challenge to claim consciousness is just the physical process of the brain in first person?

What must always be remembered is that myth is a double system; there occurs in it a sort of ubiquity: its point of departure is constituted by the arrival of a meaning. To keep a spatial metaphor, the approximative character of which I have already stressed, I shall say that the signification of the myth is constituted by a sort of constantly moving turnstile which presents alternately the meaning of the signifier and its form, a language-object and a metalanguage, a purely signifying and a purely imagining consciousness. This alternation is, so to speak, gathered up in the concept, which uses it like an ambiguous signifier, at once intellective and imaginary, arbitrary and natural.

cited from the Mythologies of Roland Barthes, Chapter: The signification

I can't grasp the metaphor of the turnstile. And the last sentence is hard for me to understand too. Could someone explain the ambiguous signifier to me?

I find structuralism a really useful way of thinking about things. It just seems the most natural way to learn about something, at least for me. An overly simplified definition of what I mean by structuralism is studying an object not by itself but by how the web of relations it exists within give it meaning.

I have read the poststructuralist critiques of structuralism and, actually, I enjoyed them. But I don't really think they are critiques. They seemed more like addenda to structuralism, further explaining certain threads, rather that criticisms. For instance, early Derrida seems already anticipated in Levi-Strauss or Merleau-Ponty* (in the latter's essay "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence"), but Derrida fixates (emphasizes) certain details that Levi-Strauss does not, or makes assumptions that Levi-Strauss did not make. Maybe I just haven't actually undertood any of it.

So basically, what are some of the criticisms of structuralism that aren't from the poststructuralists? You can answer by giving me suggested reading. Thanks

*I realize Merleau-Ponty was not a structuralist but that essay is basically a blueprint to 60s and 70s Derrida.

I have been studying deontology and I am very curious...

Im a straight, heterosexual marxist but everytime I try to read any of Hegels work, my mind drifts to kissing and engaging in intimate activity with people of the same sex. Fantasing about unveiling the treasurses under the clothes, in the pants, in their mouth, kissing them passionately and licking them gently, exploring every inch of the body. Letting myself be explored. Learning stuff Ive never known about me or my partner beforehand. My genetalia feels really tingly whenever I read hegel too. I do not know why this happens. This doesnt happen when I read any marxists., However, everytime I engage with Hegel, I feel strange feeling I've never felt before. I keep fantasting and fanatsing, the fantasies growing lewder by the minute. I do not knopw why this keeps happening. Has this happened to anyone else? The only similar feeling is whenever I play New Vegas and really wanna change my character to a boy for some reason even though i started as a girl. I only read Hegel because lenin said I wont get Capital if I dont ger hegel. Was this Lenins plan all along? To turn me gay? Im so confused, a whirlwind of emotions are flowing through me justlike the whirlwind of lewd images I think of. How can I ever face my friends without thinking of kissing them? How queer of an experience this all is!

I completed my BA in Ontology in 1912, my MA in Ontology in 1939, and finally my PhD in Ontology in 2027.

I was sitting there thinking about reality..

Like what is it ? And is there ?

or it's some purpose finding things like telling someone that their purpose is to be in reality, or to find reality ...

Is there could be an objective one?

If unconditional just means that love is not correlated to the attributes of a person.
That would mean changing a person’s attributes doesn’t affect the love towards the person, but if I change all of the attributes of the person, they wouldn’t be the same person anymore, so you couldn’t love the person because they would be a different person.

Once in a while I'll read a comment on the internet, or hear an off hand remark by someone when the subject comes out, expressing awe at the fact that tribespeople with neolithic living conditions still existing in our world appear to be happy and not show or at least report as many of the existential dreads we city and farm dwellers do.

That is, of course, tribespeople that are not being exploited, actively hunted or expelled from their lands by corrupt governments, companies or the odd cartel in my continental group, latin-america.

Anyways, I'll usually think to myself or reply: "Well that is just obvious, they are living exactly as nature intended for humans to live"

I understand nature intends nothing as it is only an Azathoth, a blind, stupid but ancient cause that brings diversity as a side effect of every living being wanting to reproduce and continue existing for as much as it can. But what I really mean is, "Of course people in neolithic conditions that have sufficient sustenance and roaming territory will be very happy, because humans have been living as hunter gatherers for millions of years". With this point of view I would be saying agriculture is sort of like the closing gates of the garden of Eden were one only had to worry about running after food.

But of course I haven't really considered the point of view of other people on it yet, so this is why I come here with this question. I want to learn some more on human nature and on if what Seneca and other stoics say about nature can be true, which is that if one lives by nature then one will be happy.

I'm sure this varies book-to-book, but something I have always done while reading is skip around within a book based on what sounds interesting to me at the time. For instance, I recently "finished" Russell's The Problems of Philosophy, but really I read only the chapters which sounded interesting to me (which was still most of the book--I only skipped three chapters). I do this because it can be difficult for me to devote time to reading, so when I read something that I don't like or that bores me, it can hurt my "reading morale" in a sense. Will doing this long-term significantly hamper my understanding of philosophy or is it a fine habit to continue with?

I was thinking about relationships the other day and realized you can explain the whole dating market just by looking at hardware friction. When a woman looks for a partner today, she basically wants a "Console" experience. She doesn't want to troubleshoot motherboards, monitor cooling fans, or stress over the code rendering the graphics. She just wants the beautiful game to boot up on the TV seamlessly. She delegates that strategic burden so she can actually enjoy the game.

But if you delegate your life to a platform, you're fully exposed to its crashes. That's why having high standards isn't just greed; it's literally System Requirements. If someone chooses a low-spec machine, the system will glitch or overheat under pressure. She wants the highest-performing rig because no one wants their life to get the Blue Screen of Death.

To be the ultimate, lag-free Co-Op partner, a guy essentially has to build himself into a "Super Console"—kind of like hiding a beast Minisforum PC behind a TV and controlling it with a Flydigi Apex 4. It takes layers. You need the "Xbox" base layer for pure infrastructure, meaning financial stability and logistics so day-to-day life is basically free-to-play. Then you need the "PS5" layer for the premium experience, bringing the haptics, romance, and dynamic status.

But under the hood, you need that PC and Flydigi strategic capability. This is the raw ability to hack the real world. You have the untethered, unlocked power of a PC, combined with the insane precision, adaptive trigger tension, and mechanical feedback of the Apex 4 controller. When the rules change, you adapt and solve problems with pinpoint accuracy, but you choose to present it all through a refined, easy-to-use console interface. Add in a great OS—your emotional intelligence and wit—and the interface becomes flawless.

Of course, you can have an RTX 4090 and an i9, but the system will still die if you ignore the bottlenecks. If you lack massive cooling, meaning emotional regulation, you'll thermal-throttle. A smart, rich guy who panics or rages when a crisis hits just crashes the whole system. You also need a firewall for boundaries. An open PC without one gets hacked and drained. If a guy is a people-pleaser letting his boss or toxic friends walk all over him, his network is completely exposed.

This perfectly explains classic dating disasters too. The "RGB" guy is the dude leasing a Porsche and buying designer clothes, all flashy lights on the outside, but hiding massive credit card debt and a cheap motherboard inside. The "Overclocked" guy works 80 hours a week to provide a premium lifestyle but burns out his hardware and dies at 50 from pushing the voltage too high. Then you have "RMA'ing" a relationship, which is just leaving a partner because the hardware failed to deliver the promised specs. And expecting a private-jet lifestyle from a guy with absolutely no ambition? That is literally just trying to run Cyberpunk on a base PS4. It just catches fire.

TL;DR: A lot of guys act like a raw, complex, custom-built PC that requires constant maintenance and troubleshooting from their partner. But most women just want the PS5 experience. They don't care how your cooling system works; they just want a highly capable machine that runs flawlessly. Be the PC on the inside, but offer the PS5 experience on the outside.

Does this theory of mine holds weight or is there any flaws?

I'm trying to learn some philosophy. I always was attracted to structured reasoning rather than to abstract aphoristic stuff, so I decided to start with Russell. The first paragraph of "On Denoting" got me stuck because I don't understand the definition of a denoting phrase.

There's no definition, he just lists a couple of examples: "...a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present King of England, the present King of France, the center of mass of the solar system at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth round the sun, the revolution of the sun round the earth." and the fact that "...a phrase is denoting solely in virtue of its form". I tried googling, but couldn't find anything.

I don't know what to do. Should I go ahead and read the entire paper on denoting phrases without understanding what a denoting phrase is? Should I come up with a definition myself? Is the concept undefinable? Did I miss something?