Utilitarianism judges actions and policies by their consequences, choosing whatever maximizes overall good. Critics say it permits wrongs, demands too much, and treats people as resources.
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The Stoics taught that happiness comes from virtue alone, understood as perfected reason and a life in agreement with nature. Health, wealth and reputation they called indifferent.
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The is-ought problem asks whether claims about what should be can be logically derived from claims about what is. David Hume raised it, and most readers take him to say no.
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John Searle's 1980 thought experiment claims that running a program, however convincing its output, cannot give a computer real understanding of language.
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It is the question of why physical processes in the brain come with subjective experience, a puzzle that explaining brain functions does not appear to settle.
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Language models are trained to predict words. Researchers disagree on whether this yields understanding, and the answer depends on how meaning and understanding are defined.
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Kuhn said science alternates between stable normal science and revolutions, which begin when stubborn anomalies cause a crisis and a rival framework wins over leading researchers.
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The problem of induction asks what justifies expecting the unobserved to resemble the observed. Hume argued that any justification is circular, and forecasting methods inherit that question.
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Falsifiability is the idea that a scientific claim must be able to conflict with some possible observation. Popper proposed it to separate science from pseudoscience and metaphysics.
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The sorites paradox shows that vague words like 'heap' seem to lead from true premises to an absurd conclusion. Philosophers disagree about where the reasoning fails.
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Zeno argued that a faster runner can never catch a slower one with a head start. The standard modern answer is that infinitely many shrinking steps add up to a finite distance and time.
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Newcomb's problem is a thought experiment about choosing one box or two when a reliable predictor has already filled them. It divides people because two accepted decision principles give opposite answers.
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It is a thought experiment in which people choose principles of justice without knowing who they are in society, so that the choice is impartial and fair.
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It asks whether a ship with every part replaced is still the same ship. Philosophers have no agreed answer, and the puzzle bears on objects, time and personal identity.
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Parfit used the teletransporter to argue that no further fact makes someone the same person over time. What matters is psychological connection and continuity, which he called Relation R.
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Compatibilism holds that free will and moral responsibility can coexist with determinism. Neuroscience has not settled the free will question, though it may inform responsibility.
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Plato's allegory of the cave is a story in the Republic about prisoners who mistake shadows for reality, used to illustrate education and the ascent of the soul toward knowledge.
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Descartes meant that the act of doubting or thinking cannot be doubted. Whenever I think, I must exist. Scholars still debate whether this is an inference or an intuition.
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Nietzsche did not claim a deity had died. He meant that belief in the Christian God had become unbelievable, leaving Europe's morality and values without their foundation.
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