PEOPLE AND TRADITIONS
Who enters each question?
These are not a hall of fame. Every entry appears because a specific question, work, and evidence requires it.
45 entries
- Person1 questions
Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī
Around 1095
Does observed regularity prove necessary causation, or does that add a stronger metaphysical assumption?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Albert Camus
1942
If the clash between our demand for meaning and a silent world persists, can one live on without suicide or false hope?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
Aldo Leopold
1949
How does development change if soils, waters, plants, and animals are fellow members of a community rather than mere property?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Anselm of Canterbury
1077–1078
Does the concept of the greatest conceivable being entail that it exists in reality as well as thought?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person3 questions
Aristotle
4th century BCE · Fourth century BCE
Is a good life a happy feeling, or a life of acting well in accordance with excellence?
10 evidence-backed moments · 4 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
Baruch Spinoza
1677
If every action has causes, can understanding those causes make us freer?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
Bertrand Russell
1905
If there is no person to refer to, is the sentence meaningless, or can we analyze a structure under which it is false?
7 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Confucius
Confucius, 6th–5th century BCE; later transmitted text
Is a good life a property one possesses alone, or something cultivated through relationships and repeated practice?
6 evidence-backed moments · 2 timeline events · 0 places
- Person4 questions
David Hume
1748 · 1748–1779
Can we speak of knowledge in ordinary life when our grounds fall short of complete proof?
17 evidence-backed moments · 4 timeline events · 2 places
- Person1 questions
Derek Parfit
1984
If a better policy would have meant that this person never existed, can the present policy be said to make that person worse off?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 1 places
- Tradition1 questions
Early Buddhist not-self tradition
From the fifth century BCE
If experiences form a causal stream, must we posit an unchanging owner behind it?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Tradition1 questions
Early Buddhist tradition
Around the fifth century BCE
What changes if suffering is read not as a pessimistic verdict on all life but as a diagnosis with causes and a possible cessation?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Edmund Gettier
1963
If truth, belief, and reasonable justification are all present but their connection is accidental, is it knowledge?
4 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Epictetus
First to second century CE
Can we be free by governing assent to impressions even when external events are not ours to choose?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person2 questions
Epicurus
4th–3rd century BCE · Fourth to third century BCE
Does treating pleasure as good mean pursuing more of every pleasure?
8 evidence-backed moments · 3 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
Francis Bacon
1620
What changes when observations are designed to eliminate possible explanations rather than collect favorite examples?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Frantz Fanon
1952
When a dominant language and others’ gaze alter the meaning of one’s body, can a neutral observer explain the experience fully?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Gottlob Frege
1892
Does pointing to the same Venus make the meaning and information of the two expressions the same?
6 evidence-backed moments · 2 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
Hans Jonas
1979
When effects are global, long-term, and irreversible, is an ethics designed for nearby contemporaries sufficient?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Harry Frankfurt
1969
If an intervener could block every alternative but never touches the actual decision, does the absence of alternatives remove responsibility?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Helen Longino
1990
Does objectivity depend less on a neutral individual than on structures that expose assumptions to criticism and revision?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Ibn Sina
Around 1027
Does extensive repetition yield absolute universality, or only a strong judgment within specified conditions?
6 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person2 questions
Immanuel Kant
1781 · 1790
If space and time are forms of our experience, are they a veil over reality or the conditions that make knowledge possible?
4 evidence-backed moments · 2 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
John Dewey
1934
Can cooking, making, or moving become art when an ordinary activity gains tension and consummation?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
John Locke
1694
If consciousness cannot reach a past action, is the present person the one who performed it?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
John Rawls
1958 and 1971, twentieth century
If I did not know my social position, which rules for liberty, opportunity, and inequality could I accept?
6 evidence-backed moments · 3 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
John Stuart Mill
1843
Can one well-designed contrast provide stronger grounds than a thousand identical records?
7 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
Karl Popper
1934
Does what a theory forbids matter more than the number of observations that seem to support it?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1945 and 1953
Can the meaning of the same word be explained only by pairing it with one object?
7 evidence-backed moments · 2 timeline events · 2 places
- Person2 questions
Mencius
4th century BCE
Does having a capacity for goodness mean one is already good, or that small and incomplete responses still need cultivation?
12 evidence-backed moments · 4 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Miranda Fricker
2007
Beyond one false belief, what capacities and participation are taken away when someone is not recognized as a knower?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Tradition1 questions
Mozi and the Mohists
Mohist texts, 5th–3rd century BCE
Can a standard checkable by all restrain a ruler's arbitrariness, or can it also suppress disagreement?
6 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Nāgārjuna
Second to third century CE
If nothing has an independent essence, are things unreal or real only through relations?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Nelson Goodman
1946–1955
With the same observations, why treat some classifications as guides to the future but not others?
6 evidence-backed moments · 2 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
Parmenides
Early fifth century BCE
When we speak of coming-to-be and passing-away, are we really thinking what is not?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person2 questions
Plato
Probably around 369 BCE · Fourth century BCE
If knowledge is perception, true judgment, or true judgment with an account, why does the dialogue stop without settling on one?
5 evidence-backed moments · 2 timeline events · 0 places
- Person2 questions
René Descartes
1641
Should every belief be withheld whenever error is possible, or is doubt a test used for a particular purpose?
6 evidence-backed moments · 2 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
Saul Kripke
1970 and 1980
Could the same name still refer to the object if that object did not satisfy the description?
6 evidence-backed moments · 2 timeline events · 2 places
- Person1 questions
Simone de Beauvoir
1949
If “woman” is shaped by social norms rather than natural fact alone, what does the lived standpoint add to knowledge?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 1 places
- Person2 questions
Søren Kierkegaard
1843 · 1849
If Abraham's action cannot be explained by universal ethics, is faith a higher justification or a publicly unverifiable danger?
4 evidence-backed moments · 2 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
Thomas Kuhn
1962
Should a successful research tradition keep solving puzzles despite an anomaly, and when should it change frameworks?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 1 places
- Person1 questions
Thomas Nagel
1974
After every observable fact is collected, does the fact of what it is like for that creature remain?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Val Plumwood
1993
If human/nature, reason/body, and male/female hierarchies reinforce one logic of domination, can environmental problems be solved by resource management alone?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
W. E. B. Du Bois
1903
Is seeing oneself through both one’s own and a dominant society’s eyes only a wound of division, or also an epistemic resource?
2 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places
- Person1 questions
Xunzi
Xunzi, 3rd century BCE; later compilation
Do clear standards create a fair order by themselves, or does who applies them and how also matter?
6 evidence-backed moments · 1 timeline events · 0 places