PHILOSOPHY_FUNDAMENTAL_INQUIRY

Study of being and existence. Core question: what does it mean to exist?

Understanding the difference between substances (independent entities) and their properties.

Debates between abstract universals and concrete particular instances of things.

Examining cause and effect relationships, determinism, and free will in physical systems.

Analysis of necessary truths, possible worlds, and contingent facts.

Philosophical theories about dimensionality, temporal flow, and relational space.

The Ship of Theseus problem: what maintains identity through change?

How objects persist across temporal intervals and maintain sameness.

Study of wholes and their parts, composition and decomposition.

Difference between abstract objects (numbers, propositions) and concrete objects.

Kripke possible worlds framework for understanding modality and counterfactuals.

Philosophical issues in quantum mechanics, relativity, and field theory.

Classical JTB analysis: what makes a belief count as knowledge?

Cases showing justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge.

Knowledge derived exclusively from sense experience and observation.

Knowledge available through reason alone, defending innatism.

Cartesian skepticism, radical doubt, and foundational skeptical arguments.

Beliefs justified by foundational beliefs immune from doubt.

Beliefs justified by coherence relationships within integrated systems.

Beliefs justified by reliable processes that track truth in environment.

How testimonial evidence justifies belief in others' claims.

Knowledge not dependent on experience: logic, mathematics, analytics.

Reconciling how objects appear with how they actually are.

Inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning patterns and validity.

Classical deductive logic of categorical propositions and syllogistic inference.

Modern logic using truth tables, connectives, and well-formed formulas.

Quantified logic with universal and existential quantifiers.

Logic of necessity, possibility, and counterfactual conditionals.

Ad hominem, begging question, equivocation, false dilemma detection.

Liar's paradox, Russell's paradox, and semantic self-reference.

Fundamental limits of formal systems and unprovable truths.

Constructive logic rejecting law of excluded middle.

Multi-valued logic allowing degrees of truth between true and false.

How context affects truth conditions and interpretation of statements.

Inference to best explanation and hypothesis generation.

Grice's maxims and conversational implicature in meaning.

Defining aesthetic experience, beauty standards across cultures.

How art represents reality and different representational theories.

Art's independence from moral and political purposes.

Subjectivity vs objectivity in aesthetic preferences and critical standards.

Form vs content debate: what matters in aesthetic appreciation?

How we interpret artworks and assign meaning to creative works.

Burke and Kant on the sublime as mixture of pleasure and fear.

Digital art, appropriation, postmodern aesthetics, and new media.

Chalmers' problem: why physical processes produce subjective experience.

Mind-body problem: substance dualism against physicalist reduction.

Mental states as functional roles in information processing systems.

How mental states have content and are about external objects.

The raw feeling quality of experiences and philosophical zombies.

What makes me the same person over time despite physical change.

Turing test, Chinese room, and machine consciousness debates.

Libertarian freedom against determinism and compatibilist synthesis.

How agents cause events and the logic of practical reasoning.

Direct realism vs representational theory of sensory experience.

Role of imagination in cognition, counterfactual thinking, empathy.

Emotional experiences as judgments and their rational evaluation.