Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

http://plato.stanford.edu/

by shliachtx • 12 years ago

160 43 12 years ago

plato.stanford.edu

jbarrow• 12 years ago

I used the SEP when reading about Epistemology, and I must say that it is both a comprehensive and comprehensible resource. Although it was (for me, at least) a bit dense at times, it was perhaps the best introduction to the subject that I found.

If anyone is interested in some philosophical concept, I would recommend starting here, and branching out to books and linked papers only after using the SEP.

And if anyone has any other good resources they would like to point me towards, I would greatly appreciate it.

adventured• 12 years ago

I also found it to be incredibly fair in treatment to what is ultimately an extremely varied and vast base of ideas, philosophies and philosophers. A difficult balancing act indeed.

timtadh• 12 years ago

SEP is one of the best sites on the net for learning philosophy. The biogrhphies of the personalities are comprehensive and I find the articles to provide nuance other resources sometimes lack. It is a great site for some casual reading on the subject.

sebastianconcpt• 12 years ago

Fantastic resource. Thanks for the heads up

stupandaus• 12 years ago

Anyone have recommendations for interesting entries?

thisjepisje• 12 years ago

From my history:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cellular-automata/suppleme...

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathphil-indis/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

anateus• 12 years ago

Try this one: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/

Jun8• 12 years ago

The one on Language of Thought is good: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/.

This is an extremely interesting subject: Does our thought process follow linguistic patterns? Do we use our native language to think or is there a deeper, universal "language" we think in? If the latter, how can that be? Etc.

shliachtx• 12 years ago

I found it by searching for Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/]

aet• 12 years ago

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/

dinglefuk• 12 years ago

http://www.iep.utm.edu/math-app/

atmosx2• 12 years ago

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." - A. N. Whitehead (co-author of Principia Mathematica along with B. Russel)

dome82• 12 years ago

Epictetus: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epictetus/

Marcus Aurelius: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcus-aurelius/

Stoicism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/

Seneca: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/seneca/

jonhmchan• 12 years ago

SEP is easily the best online resource for philosophy, especially in the analytic tradition. It can be a bit dense sometimes, but I've always used it as an introduction or overview of a philosophy text before diving in during college.

samolang• 12 years ago

Previous discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fplato.stanford.edu%2F...

Xcelerate• 12 years ago

This is cool! But there's a lot in there, so I don't even know where to start. Does anyone know of a good introduction to philosophy? My work is in the hard sciences, and I know next to nothing about philosophy, but am very interested in learning. Something that kind of gives an overview of the whole field I think would be best.

Osmium• 12 years ago

This might be somewhat controversial, but Bertrand Russell has a good introduction to Western philosophy. For something a little lighter, AC Grayling is good.

leephillips• 12 years ago

Simply read Plato's dialogues. Everything after that is just a footnote.

kenko• 12 years ago

AN Whitehead, ladies and gentlemen.

parenthesis• 12 years ago

The aforementioned A.C Grayling edited the fantastic:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0198752431/

thanatropism2• 12 years ago

This will be _super_ controversial, but I read Deleuze's "What is philosophy?" after reading a lot of philosohpy (and a lot of Deleuze), and it really makes sense of things.

That, of course, will cover next to nothing in the post-Wittgensteinian analytical camp. But eh, you could do worse if you have one book to read.

jjgreen2• 12 years ago

Deleuze is incisive, an unexpectedly readable

primelens• 12 years ago

Apart from Russel's book, Will Durant's _The Story of Philosophy_ provides a fun light introduction. If you'd rather read primary texts there are many choices - the history of philosophy can seem like a summit conference between dazzlingly brilliant but at the same time really dense, almost obtuse masterworks. I'd recommend starting with Plato's _Republic_, skipping forward to Descartes' _Meditations_ and then directly on to Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_ for a whirlwind tour of the subject with three of the sharpest people you'll ever meet. If you finish these three, I would bet that you'll continue to read on your own and will forever remain a student of philosophy.

nessus42• 12 years ago

Philosophy is such a broad field that I think it would be hard to give a good overview of the entire field.

Philosophers love formal logic, so that's one thing that's of interest.

Once you have a good understanding of logic, Philosophy aims to investigate important questions that other fields don't seem to have a good grasp of. Here are some of them:

- How can that sensation of redness that you experience when you look at a ripe tomato arise from or be explained by scientific law, which seems to only answer questions that are very qualitatively different from this question? And how do you know that your friend has that same sensation of redness? Perhaps when he looks at a ripe tomato, what he experiences is what you experience when you look at a blueberry.

- If Star Trek transporters work by ripping apart all your atoms and then making a copy of you at the other end from atoms at the destination, would that still be you? Or would you have died, and there be a new person who is deluded into thinking he's you.

- When you push around a wrinkle in your bed-spread, is that wrinkle itself a real thing, or is it just similar different bunches of your bed-spread?

- If you could murder one innocent person to save ten people, would that be the right thing to do? If so, why? If not, why not? What if you could save a million people instead?

aggie• 12 years ago

These are some great examples to get yourself thinking philosophically. If anyone reading would like to explore them a bit more, here are some wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

jjgreen2• 12 years ago

A Flew, "An Introduction to Western Philosophy"

walterbell2• 12 years ago

Charles Sanders Peirce is worth a look, http://peirce.org

"Who is the most original and the most versatile intellect that the Americas have so far produced? The answer "Charles S. Peirce" is uncontested, because any second would be so far behind as not to be worth nominating. Mathematician, astronomer, chemist, geodesist, surveyor, cartographer, metrologist, spectroscopist, engineer, inventor; psychologist, philologist, lexicographer, historian of science, mathematical economist, lifelong student of medicine; book reviewer, dramatist, actor, short story writer; phenomenologist, semiotician, logician, rhetorician and metaphysician. He was, for a few examples, the first modern experimental psychologist in the Americas, the first metrologist to use a wave-length of light as a unit of measure, the inventor of the quincuncial projection of the sphere, the first known conceiver of the design and theory of an electric switching-circuit computer, and the founder of "the economy of research." He is the only system-building philosopher in the Americas who has been both competent and productive in logic, in mathematics, and in a wide range of sciences. If he has had any equals in that respect in the entire history of philosophy, they do not number more than two."

Quotes: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce

Edit: from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/, "Currently, considerable interest is being taken in Peirce's ideas by researchers wholly outside the arena of academic philosophy. The interest comes from industry, business, technology, intelligence organizations, and the military"

jseliger• 12 years ago

Does anyone know of a good introduction to philosophy

I don't know if this qualifies as "good", but it is certainly interesting: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html .

dinkumthinkum2• 12 years ago

I tend to disagree with all those commenting to you. If you want a broad understanding of philosophy, well there is a lot to it, so "where to start" is a loaded question. It is not like Plato or any particular philosopher is a one-stop-shop . If you have an expertise in physics, well you didn't master it from just one book. I recommend starting with the novel "Sophie's World;" it is very accessible and it can give a good springboard for what to study next.

I think it is important to read Plato closely. It would probably be helpful to have a glance through "Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers.

To really understand it, I recommend going through a survey book of Western Philosophy to go through Plato and the other Greek and Roman philosophers, particularly Aristotle. Then move on to the medieval philosophers and toward the likes of Spinoza. Studying the history of Skepticism from Descartes onward, I find to be critical.

You want to familiarize yourself with the famous problems of philosophy (problem of evil, problem of induction, etc).

You may be interested in the philosophy of science, people like Carl Hempel, Karl Popper, Kuhn, essays from people like Gould. I recommend "Readings in the Philosophy of Science: From Positivism to Postmodernism."

This is sort of scattered because it is a broad field. Some people mention the Analytics and Continentals, I would definitely start from the ground before you get into the differences of Pragmatism and Pragmaticism.

A major reason I suggest this path is that if you start reading later philosophers, you are missing an entire context and discussion that goes back to Plato and Socrates, even the Pre-Socratics like Heraclitus.

But, you can do a lot worse than reading "Sophies World" and then skipping to the Philosophy of Science text I mentioned and then filling in the gaps later. This is just one suggestion. :)

jchrome• 12 years ago

I don't really support trying to get a broad understanding of philosophy. It's much better to get in-depth with a specific philosopher and then move on to the next, chronologically.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that often, Philosophers of a certain generation are building their theses in reaction to the previous generation. So there's a great reason to read Ancient philosophy, starting with the pre-Socratics.

I highly recommend "Retrieving the Ancients". David Roochnik (the author) was my professor for both Ancient and Modern philosophy. Trying to be unbiased here but this is a great introduction to the pre-Socratics and it even connects their ancient issues with modern ones.

CodeDiver• 12 years ago

"The Story of Philosophy" by Bryan Magee "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant

These are what you're looking for. You won't regret either of these.

atlantic• 12 years ago

There is an excellent podcast by Peter Adamson on the history of philosophy at www.historyofphilosophy.net. I've listened to 100+ episodes already, and have yet to feel disappointed.

A good start would be to listen to all the episodes on ancient philosophy, and then to approach the original texts directly, with particular emphasis on the Platonic dialogues. As Whitehead said, "The safest general characterization of the philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." The Stoics are also very approachable.

In the opinion of my teachers, the pivotal figures in the history of philosophy were Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Kant. If you master those four, you won't go wrong.

dasmithii• 12 years ago

Wow, I've been looking for something of this caliber for a long while. Thanks for sharing.

jessriedel• 12 years ago

It's possible to find a few weak articles on the SEP, but by and large the quality is very high even with lots and lots of topics. If you want to learn about an unfamiliar philosophical concept, briefly scan the Wikipedia page and then head to the SEP.

thanatropism2• 12 years ago

Also: http://www.iep.utm.edu/

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) (ISSN 2161-0002) was founded in 1995 as a non-profit organization to provide open access to detailed, scholarly information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of philosophy. The Encyclopedia receives no funding, and operates through the volunteer work of the editors, authors, volunteers, and technical advisers. At present the IEP is visited over 950,000 times per month. The Encyclopedia is free of charge and available to all users of the Internet world-wide. The staff of 30 editors and approximately 300 authors hold doctorate degrees and are professors at colleges and universities around the world, most notably from English-speaking countries.

The SEP is unusually in-depth about certain subjects, though. (Right now, I have "Dutch book arguments" and "Dialetheism" open).

josu• 12 years ago

"Error establishing a database connection"

ethnt• 12 years ago

My philosophy of science teacher turned me onto this site last semester and it was really quite invaluable. The amount of thought and work that is put into each article is amazing, and it certainly helped me understand topics I would not have otherwise.

gojomo• 12 years ago

An interesting aspect of this project is how it's funded.

Per a presentation I saw a while back, when the site sees visits from Universities that have an associated degree-granting program, or visits from traditional related libraries, it nags the users that their institution should join (if it hasn't already). It's a bit like Shareware/Nagware/Guiltware, applied to a live service, and only targeted at specific related learning institutions with existing acquisition budgets.

Here's the schedule of suggested dues:

http://plato.stanford.edu/support/SEPIA-dues-schedule.html

..and benefits once joined...

http://plato.stanford.edu/support/sepia.html

walterbell2• 12 years ago

Good transparency on their business model, http://plato.stanford.edu/support/problems.html

"a subscription-based funding model would lead the SEP project towards a situation where it loses it focus and character as a project developed, administered and maintained by academics. Not only would the SEP reach a tiny fraction of the audience it once reached, but it might be forced to scramble each year to make ends meet, distracting its central staff from the academic mission of enhancing the encyclopedia's content and technological underpinnings. By contrast, if its basic operations and growth were covered by an endowment, the SEP staff could focus their fund-raising efforts on innovative grant proposals (taking advantage of their location at the Center for the Study of Language and Information) to push the technological limits of humanities computing"

Confusion• 12 years ago

I'm subscribed to their RSS feed[1], which is a wonderful way to be regularly introduced to new interesting articles and subjects whenever one is updated. Alas, it results in a large backlog...

[1] http://plato.stanford.edu/rss/sep.xml

lmarinho• 12 years ago

Thanks for bringing this back to the surface. I see that SEPs design has greatly improved since I last visited it. The new looks make for a much more pleasant reading experience, right on par with the excellent content.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Related Stories