School #38
Analytic Metaphysics / Logical Atomism
Russell, Wittgenstein (early), Quine
Logical Atomism holds that the world consists of logically independent atomic facts, and that an ideal logical language should mirror this structure with perfect transparency. Bertrand Russell's 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism' (1918) argued that ordinary language disguises the true logical form of propositions, and that philosophical analysis must decompose complex statements into their simplest components — atomic propositions that correspond one-to-one with atomic facts. Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' (1921) radicalized this: "The world is the totality of facts, not of things" (1.1), and what cannot be expressed in logically well-formed propositions must be passed over in silence. W. V. O. Quine's 'Word and Object' (1960) continued the analytic tradition while naturalizing it, arguing that ontological commitments are determined by the variables we quantify over in our best scientific theories — "to be is to be the value of a bound variable" — dissolving the boundary between philosophy and natural science.
Worldview
The analytic metaphysician inhabits a world of discrete, logically independent facts that can be decomposed through rigorous analysis into their simplest components and reassembled into a transparent, logically structured picture of reality. To hold this ontology is to experience intellectual clarity as the highest virtue and vagueness as the chief enemy — every meaningful statement must be expressible in precise logical form, and what cannot be so expressed must be passed over in silence. The fundamental orientation is one of austere precision: the world has a definite logical structure, and the philosopher's task is to discover it through careful attention to language, logic, and the findings of natural science. Living inside this worldview means treating philosophical problems as puzzles to be dissolved through logical analysis rather than mysteries to be contemplated. There is a bracing clarity in this position, a confidence that good philosophy is closer to mathematics than to poetry. The framework classifies this as None: analytic metaphysics typically restricts its ontology to facts, objects, and properties without invoking personal deities, cosmic ordering principles, or operative spirits as part of the basic furniture. The framework reads this as None for moral authority: analytic metaphysics is a descriptive enterprise about what exists and in virtue of what; it nominates neither Scripture, Tradition, Reason, nor Experience as normatively ultimate over how to act.
Moral Implications
Analytic metaphysics tends to approach ethics with the same demand for logical clarity and precision that it brings to ontology, favoring well-defined moral theories (utilitarianism, deontology, contractualism) over vague appeals to intuition or tradition. Moral claims are evaluated by the same standards as empirical and logical claims: they must be clearly formulated, internally consistent, and responsive to counterexamples. The analytic tradition has produced influential work on the logic of rights, the structure of obligation, and the analysis of moral concepts, though it has been criticized for abstracting ethics from the lived texture of moral experience. Quine's naturalism suggests that ethics, like ontology, should be continuous with the empirical sciences, evaluated by its contribution to the best overall theory of the world. The analytic ethicist seeks to replace moral confusion with argumentative rigor.
Practical Implications
Analytic metaphysics provides the philosophical toolkit for formal logic, computer science, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of science, all of which depend on the precise formulation and analysis of propositions. In policy and governance, the analytic tradition supports evidence-based reasoning, cost-benefit analysis, and the rigorous evaluation of competing claims. Technology is embraced insofar as it extends the capacity for precise measurement, computation, and logical inference. Environmental and social questions are approached through careful empirical investigation and the logical analysis of competing arguments, with a preference for quantitative evidence over qualitative narrative. Education in the analytic tradition emphasizes logic, argumentation, and the careful reading of texts, training students to identify fallacies, clarify ambiguities, and construct valid arguments.
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I. Time
Time is substantival and infinite — a real dimension of the world that is logically analyzable into discrete atomic temporal facts. Time is continuous, linear, deterministic, and uni-directional. The logical atomist treats temporal propositions as straightforwardly true or false, rejecting metaphysical obscurity about time's nature.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Deterministic
Traversability: Linear
Dimensionality: One
Direction: Uni-directional
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II. Space
Space is substantival, infinite, and flat — an objective, logically analyzable dimension of the world. It is local and three-dimensional: spatial facts are atomic and logically independent. The analytic philosopher treats spatial concepts with the same precision and clarity as logical notation.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Curvature: Flat
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
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III. Matter
Matter is substantival, finite, and locally situated — it consists of whatever entities our best scientific theories quantify over. Matter is conserved through natural law and logically analyzable into atomic material facts. The analytic metaphysician defers to physics for the inventory of material reality while insisting on logical clarity in the description.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
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IV. Observer
The observer is an embodied logical subject situated at a single point in space and time, analyzing reality into its most basic constituents — atomic facts and logical relations. Knowledge begins with immediate acquaintance with sense data and logical truths, and accumulates through rigorous logical analysis into a structured picture of the world. The observer is passive: it does not create the logical structure of reality but discovers it through careful analysis. Language, properly purified, can mirror the structure of facts. Multiple observers share a common logical space and can in principle arrive at the same analysis of any given state of affairs.
Attributes
Time Instance: Single
Space Instance: Single
Extent of Knowledge: Mediated
Retainment of Knowledge: Partial
Physicality: Embodied
Agency: Passive
Number: Plural
Metaphysical Agency: None
Moral Authority: None
Theological Method: N/A
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V. Energy
Energy is substantival and finite — a real, scientifically measurable quantity. Conservation holds as one of the best-confirmed empirical regularities. Dispersibility is irreversible, a straightforward physical fact amenable to clear logical analysis.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dispersibility: Irreversible
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VI. Information
Logical atoms are the fundamental units of information — reality is composed of atomic facts, each a discrete, irreducible unit of informational content. Information is substantival because these atomic facts are real features of the world. It is conserved because logical truths are necessary and cannot be destroyed. It is discrete because logical atomism insists on a fundamental level of indivisible informational units (atomic propositions). The framework distinguishes scales: information is conserved at the cosmic scale because the totality of atomic facts is a stable feature of reality, but non-conserved at the personal-identity scale — a person is a complex bundle of facts whose configuration ends at death.
Attributes
Ontological Status: Substantival
Cosmic Conservation: Conserved
Personal Conservation: Non-conserved
Granularity: Discrete
Experiments This School Responds To (79)
Mary's Room
Following late Jackson and representationalists (Tye, Lycan): Mary learns no new fact, only a new first-person mode of presentation of the same physical fact. The …
The Chinese Room
The intuition pump is powerful but not probative: it shows we *can imagine* syntax-without-semantics, not that the imagined scenario is coherent at the scales required …
The Ship of Theseus
Four-dimensionalism (Lewis, Sider): A and B are distinct space-time worms that share an early temporal segment. Each is "Theseus's ship" relative to a different counting …
Newcomb's Problem
The case is a stable boundary between two reasonable theories of rational choice; neither side has definitively dislodged the other. Treat the verdict as theory-relative.
The Michelson–Morley Experiment
Modern substantivalists (Earman, Maudlin) deny the result kills substantivalism — it kills only the *Newtonian* version. The manifold structure of spacetime in GR can still …
Schrödinger's Cat
A live debate: the case rules out naive realism about classical states without singling out a winner among collapse, hidden-variable, and many-worlds readings. Treat the …
Wigner's Friend
Frauchiger–Renner shows that at most three of {standard QM, single outcomes, observer-independence, locality} can be retained. The metaphysical work is choosing which to drop.
Brain in a Vat
Putnam's semantic externalism: "brain" and "vat" in the mouth of a BIV refer to vat-image-features, not to brains or vats. The BIV hypothesis is self-undermining …
Twin Earth
Externalism became orthodox after Putnam (and Burge's "Individualism and the Mental"). The standard view: narrow content (in-the-head) is real but does not fix reference; wide …
Philosophical Zombies
A canonical fault line. The two-dimensional semantics machinery the argument relies on is itself contested. Treat as the cleanest formal statement of the hard problem, …
Parfit's Teletransporter
Parfit's reductionism: persons are nothing over and above their physical and psychological continuants. Identity questions can have indeterminate or empty answers without anything morally important …
The Trolley Problem
A canonical battleground: deontologists read the asymmetry as tracking real moral structure (doctrine of double effect; agent-relative constraints); consequentialists read it as moral illusion.
Einstein's Elevator
The equivalence principle is itself contested in fine print: at second order, tidal forces distinguish gravity from acceleration. The thought experiment works as a heuristic, …
Maxwell's Demon
The Landauer-Bennett resolution is widely accepted but remains contested in detail (Earman & Norton, Maroney). The case is a live boundary between physics and metaphysics …
Boltzmann Brains
A live debate: the philosophical action is in whether self-locating uncertainty across observer-moments is a coherent setting for Bayesian reasoning. Several proposed solutions; no consensus.
Hafele–Keating
Compatible with multiple metaphysical readings of time. The experiment narrows the space of viable options but does not adjudicate between eternalism, growing-block, and neo-Lorentzian presentism.
The Wu Experiment
Forces a question: is handedness an intrinsic property of physical space, or only of the embedded matter content? Modern field-theoretic readings tend to place chirality …
Libet's Free Will Experiments
Modern reanalyses (Schurger 2012) argue the readiness-potential is largely noise that crosses a threshold rather than a deterministic causal chain. The case is empirically alive; …
The Rutherford Gold-Foil Experiment
The classical Rutherford atom was quickly replaced by the quantum atom (Bohr 1913, quantum mechanics 1925); the metaphysics of "empty space" inside atoms is more …
Descartes' Evil Demon
Modern descendants (BIV, simulation, dreaming) inherit the structural argument while shedding the theological packaging. The semantic-externalist replies (Putnam) target the dreaming version more cleanly than …
Swampman
A live battleground: teleosemanticists (Millikan, Papineau) follow Davidson; internalists (Fodor, Searle) hold Swampman has thoughts. The case reveals which theory of content one is implicitly …
The Beetle in the Box
The argument cuts cleanly against Cartesian private introspection but is consistent with a wide range of externalist and functionalist views of mind. Its positive consequences …
Gettier Cases
The post-Gettier "fourth condition" project has produced reliabilism, tracking theories, sensitivity, safety, virtue accounts — no consensus. The case rules out JTB; it does not …
The Sorites Paradox
The paradox is alive: supervaluationism, epistemicism, and degree theories all have defenders. The choice reflects deeper commitments about logic and meaning.
The Sleeping Beauty Problem
A genuine live debate: leading thirders include Elga, Bostrom; leading halfers include Lewis (early), White. The disagreement turns on whether self-locating beliefs are subject to …
Frankfurt Cases
Libertarians have produced sophisticated replies (the "flicker of freedom" strategy, agent-causation variants). The case is the central battleground; consensus is partial at best.
Bostrom's Simulation Argument
The argument depends on substrate-independence, computational sufficiency for consciousness, and a controversial use of self-locating priors. Treat each disjunct as a separate research programme.
Pasteur's Swan-Neck Flask
On the origin-of-life question itself, the experiment is silent: it rules out continuous spontaneous generation, but a unique abiogenetic event in deep time is consistent …
The Higgs Boson Discovery
The detection settles the SM but leaves open deeper questions: hierarchy problem, naturalness, origin of the Higgs potential itself. Live metaphysics around what the Higgs …
Block's Chinese Nation
The case reveals what functionalism is committed to; whether that commitment is acceptable depends on broader views about the relation between functional and phenomenal properties.
The Repugnant Conclusion
A canonical impossibility result in axiology: no theory simultaneously satisfies all plausible adequacy conditions. Each choice of theory accepts some counterintuitive verdict.
Newton's Bucket
A live foundational dispute through three centuries. The substantivalism / relationalism / structural-realism debate over spacetime continues to descend from Newton's scholium.
Hilbert's Hotel
The hotel illustrates that "consistent" and "intuitive" come apart; it does not by itself decide whether actual infinities can be physically instantiated.
The Liar Paradox
A live battleground: hierarchies, gappy, glutty, contextualist, and revision theories all have defenders. The paradox constrains theories of truth but does not single out a …
Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis
Strong proposal, slim arguments: the MUH faces serious problems about "existence," about typicality across structures, and about what makes our structure observable. Live but speculative.
Dennett's 'Where Am I?'
The case puts pressure on theories of personal identity: psychological-continuity views locate Dennett with the brain; bodily-continuity views with the body; each option has uncomfortable …
The Hershey–Chase Experiment
Hershey-Chase plus Watson-Crick (1953) demonstrate that biological information reduces to chemical sequence; reductive naturalism (the analytic-metaphysics inheritance of Quinean reductionism) is empirically supported at the …
Milgram's Obedience Experiments
A canonical empirical input for moral responsibility theorising; situationist findings have been used (Doris) to argue against virtue ethics and (Sreenivasan) to qualify but rescue …
Asch's Conformity Experiments
The case bears on social epistemology of testimony: when is deference to group judgement rational? Asch's subjects had decisive perceptual evidence; the rationality of conformity …
CP Violation in Kaon Decay
Forces a sharpening of what symmetry "violation" means at the foundational level: the CP-violating term in the SM is a single complex phase, suggesting the …
Bose–Einstein Condensation
Forces refinement of macroscopic/microscopic distinctions: the BEC is macroscopic yet quantum-coherent, complicating the standard story of where the classical regime sets in.
The Doomsday Argument
A canonical battleground for self-locating priors: thirder-style reasoning supports doomsday; halfer-style reasoning does not.
The Lottery Paradox
Live debate: defenders of closure (Williamson) deny that high credence suffices for belief; defenders of high-credence belief (Foley) deny closure. No consensus.
The Two Envelopes Paradox
Multiple resolutions (Broome's conditioning analysis; Albers' bounded-utility resolution); the case continues to motivate careful decision theory.
The Surprise Examination Paradox
A canonical puzzle in epistemic logic; multiple resolutions (Quine: backward induction fails at step 1; Fitch: knowledge operators do not iterate as assumed). Live debate.
Hesperus and Phosphorus
Foundational: every modern theory of meaning has to explain the Frege puzzle. Descriptivist, causal, direct-reference, and two-dimensionalist accounts all descend from it.
Quine's Gavagai
Live debate: descendants of Quine's argument shape contemporary externalism and the metasemantics of "facts about meaning"; Davidson refined it; Kripke and Lewis pushed back.
Hempel's Ravens
Various resolutions (Goodman's grue exacerbates the puzzle; Bayesian, eliminative, and tacking-paradox responses persist). A live foundation for confirmation theory.
Goodman's Grue
A canonical pressure-test for theories of natural properties, projectibility, and induction. Goodman's entrenchment, Lewis's natural properties, and causal-structural readings all leave residual issues.
Russell's Five-Minute Hypothesis
Bayesian: H5 has lower prior than old-universe cosmology. But the rate at which that prior should be set is itself debated.
Fitch's Knowability Paradox
A canonical pressure-test for anti-realism. Restricted-KP responses (Tennant), intuitionist responses, and Salerno's extensive analyses keep the debate active.
The Bilking Argument
Live debate: defenders of backward causation (Price, Dowe) deny that bilking generalises; opponents (Mellor) maintain the asymmetry. Quantum retrocausal interpretations make the question live again.
The Aharonov–Bohm Effect
Live debate over the ontology of gauge: are potentials real, or are gauge-invariant quantities the only physical ones? AB raises but does not settle the …
The Top Quark Discovery
The top's extreme mass is one of the SM's genuine mysteries (the hierarchy problem). The discovery confirms the SM while sharpening foundational questions.
Trapped Anti-Hydrogen at CERN ALPHA
The matter-antimatter asymmetry of the cosmos remains a mystery; antihydrogen precision constrains but does not resolve it.
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
A live foundation for the hard-problem literature; alongside Mary's Room and zombies, it shapes contemporary philosophy of mind.
Block's Blockhead
A canonical case in psychofunctionalism vs functionalism: machine-state functionalism distinguishes architectures, behavioural functionalism does not.
Wittgenstein's Lion
Davidson's response: there cannot be a "wholly other" form of life — radical translation is constrained by the principle of charity. The lion case is …
Reid's Brave Officer
Modern psychological-continuity theories (Parfit, Shoemaker) handle Reid via overlapping chains: identity is preserved by ancestral memory connection, not by direct memory.
Locke's Prince and the Cobbler
A founding text of psychological-continuity theory; modern descendants (Parfit, Shoemaker) refine the criterion but preserve the Lockean core.
Williams' Self and the Future
A canonical pressure point: the case forces psychological-continuity theorists to refine their criterion, and reveals how thought-experiment intuitions are framing-sensitive.
Strawson's Reactive Attitudes
A founding text of practical-stance compatibilism; debate continues between Strawsonian and metaphysical compatibilists.
Russell's Paradox
Foundational: the paradox forced the development of type theory, ZFC set theory, and modern mathematical logic. Russell himself never fully recovered from confronting it.
Cantor's Diagonal Argument
The argument is the structural template for incompleteness, undecidability, undefinability — central to twentieth-century logic.
The Cogito
Lichtenberg's objection: "it thinks" is all the data warrants; "I think" smuggles in a substantial self. The Cogito is performative-true but the ontological inference is …
Kripke's "Plus" vs "Quus"
A canonical pressure-test for theories of meaning; dispositionalist, communitarian, and platonist responses all have defenders.
The Survival Lottery
A classic counterexample to act-utilitarianism; defenders of deontic constraints (Nagel, Scanlon) treat the case as decisive against pure aggregation.
Meno's Slave Boy
Bears on debates about the *a priori*, the analytic/synthetic, and tacit knowledge. The metaphysical apparatus is contested; the phenomenon Socrates points to is genuine.
BonJour's Clairvoyant
Live debate: internalists (BonJour, Chisholm) treat the case as decisive; externalists (Goldman, Sosa) bite the bullet or refine reliabilism.
Williamson's Anti-Luminosity Argument
A foundational argument in contemporary epistemology; defenders of privileged access have produced detailed responses (some accepting margin-of-error structure, some rejecting safety).
The Frame Problem
A live foundational issue in philosophy of mind and AI; debates continue over whether the problem is technical, conceptual, or deep.
Pascal's Mugging
A live foundational problem for decision theory. Bounded-utility responses, leverage penalties, and reference-class-based priors all have defenders.
Curry's Paradox
A live constraint on theories of truth: any responsible treatment must address Curry as well as the Liar. Standard responses block one or another of …
Berry's Paradox
A canonical semantic paradox; alongside Liar, Curry, Grelling, it forces refinement of truth and definability across formal languages.
Searle's Wisdom Tooth
A live position with both supporters and critics. The supervenience-without-reduction structure remains contested.
Anscombe's Intention
Foundational for modern philosophy of action; Davidson's and Bratman's work extend Anscombe's framework, while contesting details.
Davidson's Triangulation
Davidson's argument is influential but contested; defenders of robust solitary content (Fodor) press back.
The Discovery of the Muon
Rabi's reaction expresses the live foundational question: why are there three generations? No consensus answer.
High-Tc Superconductivity
A live empirical and theoretical question: the mechanism of high-Tc superconductivity is unresolved despite decades of intensive work.
Films Reading Through This School (7)
Primer
The film is one of the few science-fiction works with the temperament of analytic metaphysics: it cares about the consistency conditions of its metaphysics, refuses …
Wittgenstein
The film treats Wittgenstein's engagement with Russell, Frege, and the Cambridge analytic tradition as the institutional context within which his work has its bite. Russell's …
The Imitation Game
The film's background is the analytic-metaphysical commitments of Cambridge between the wars: formal systems as the proper object of philosophy, decidability and computability as proper …
I ❤ Huckabees
Despite its comic tone, the film is unusual in taking its metaphysical positions seriously as competing philosophical claims rather than as character traits. The Jaffes …
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The film maps directly onto Parfit's personal-identity puzzles: Joel-after-erasure is psychologically discontinuous with Joel-before but biologically continuous; does that matter? The film argues, with Parfit, …
Blade Runner
Engages personal-identity puzzles: Rachael's implanted memories raise the Lockean question of memory-based identity in pointed form. Are they really her memories? On a psychological-continuity view …
Ex Machina
A clean illustration of the Chinese Room limits (see Experiments #2): even if you doubt Ava's consciousness, the question becomes uninteresting in the face of …
Debates Where This School Is Allied (35)
The Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence
Relationalist
The Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence
Substantivalist
The Russell–Copleston Debate
Atheist analytic philosopher
The Newton–Hooke Disputes
Mathematical natural philosopher
The Russell–Frege Correspondence
Discoverer of the paradox
Carnap–Quine on Analyticity
Logical empiricist
Aquinas–Siger on Latin Averroism
Latin Averroist
Galileo and the Inquisition
Mathematical natural philosopher
Anselm and Gaunilo on the Ontological Argument
Critical monk; defender of "the fool"
Carnap vs Heidegger on Metaphysics
Logical empiricist
Kant and Hume
Transcendental idealist
Spinoza and Leibniz
Rationalist substance-pluralist
Plato vs Protagoras
Philosophical realist; defender of objective truth and virtue
Aristotle vs Plato on the Forms
Hylomorphist; defender of immanent forms
Russell vs Bergson on Time
Analytic philosopher; defender of mathematical time
Wittgenstein vs Russell
Later Wittgenstein; ordinary-language philosopher
Wittgenstein vs Russell
Logical analyst; defender of foundational philosophy
The Positivismusstreit
Critical rationalist
Searle vs Derrida on Speech Acts
Analytic philosopher of language
Frege vs Husserl on Psychologism
Anti-psychologist logician
Mill vs Whewell on Induction
Polymath philosopher of inductive sciences
Newton vs Leibniz on Calculus Priority
English natural philosopher; President of the Royal Society
Newton vs Leibniz on Calculus Priority
German polymath; court librarian at Hanover
Bergson vs Einstein on Time
Theoretical physicist
Putnam vs Rorty on Truth
Pragmatist-realist
The Wittgenstein–Popper Poker
Therapeutic philosopher
The Wittgenstein–Popper Poker
Critical rationalist
James vs Russell on Pragmatism
Analytic realist
Kuhn vs Popper on Scientific Change
Critical rationalist
Lewis vs Stalnaker on Counterfactuals
Modal logician; pragmatist philosopher of language
Lewis vs Stalnaker on Counterfactuals
Modal realist; analytical philosopher
Aristotle vs Democritus on Atoms
Ancient atomist
Anscombe vs C.S. Lewis at the Socratic Club
Analytic philosopher; Catholic
Hobbes vs Descartes
Rationalist dualist
Abelard vs Bernard of Clairvaux
Dialectician; rationalist theologian
Works that name Analytic Metaphysics / Logical Atomism in their embodiments
Foundational texts that draw on this school, with each work's declared weight.
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The Foundations of Arithmetic
Gottlob Frege · 1884
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Early)
Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1918 (drafted in the trenches); 1921 (German pub.); 1922 (Ogden English ed.)
On the Plurality of Worlds (Late (Lewis's mature systematic statement of the modal-realist programme))
David Lewis · 1986
Two Dogmas of Empiricism
Willard Van Orman Quine · 1951 (Philosophical Review)
Word and Object (Mid)
W.V.O. Quine · 1960
Naming and Necessity (Mid)
Saul Kripke · 1972 (Princeton lectures); 1980 (book)
Counterfactuals (Early)
David Lewis · 1973
Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (Early)
P.F. Strawson · 1959
Speech Acts (Early)
John R. Searle · 1969
An Essay on Free Will (Mid)
Peter van Inwagen · 1983
The Philosophy of Philosophy (Late)
Timothy Williamson · 2007
On Sense and Reference (Mid)
Gottlob Frege · 1892
The Structure of Objects (Mid)
Kathrin Koslicki · 2008
Things and Their Parts (Mid)
Kit Fine · 1999
Writing the Book of the World (Mid)
Theodore Sider · 2011 (1st ed.); 2014 (paperback)
The Problems of Philosophy (Early)
Bertrand Russell · 1912
Principia Mathematica (Early (both authors))
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell · 1910 (vol. 1), 1912 (vol. 2), 1913 (vol. 3); 2nd edition 1925-27
The Conscious Mind (Early (Chalmers's breakthrough book, derived from his 1993 Indiana PhD))
David J. Chalmers · 1996
Essays on Actions and Events (Mid)
Donald Davidson · 1980 (essays 1963-78)
Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Mid)
Donald Davidson · 1984 (essays 1965-83)
Truth and Other Enigmas (Mid)
Michael Dummett · 1978 (essays 1954-77)
The Construction of Social Reality (Late)
John R. Searle · 1995
Reasons and Persons (Mid)
Derek Parfit · 1984
On Bullshit (Late)
Harry G. Frankfurt · 1986 (Raritan); 2005 (book)
Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Mid)
Wilfrid Sellars · 1956
Principia Ethica (Early)
G.E. Moore · 1903
How to Do Things with Words (Late)
J.L. Austin · 1955 (William James Lectures at Harvard); 1962 (book, posthumous)
Intentionality (Mid)
John Searle · 1983
Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Late)
J. L. Mackie · 1977
Proof of an External World (Late)
G. E. Moore · 1939 (British Academy lecture)
The Unreality of Time (Late)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1908
Scientific Thought (Mid)
C. D. Broad · 1923
Past, Present and Future (Late)
Arthur N. Prior · 1967
Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? (Mid)
Nick Bostrom · 2003 (Philosophical Quarterly)
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Mature (Kripke's second major book after Naming and Necessity, 1980))
Saul Kripke · 1982 (Harvard UP; based on 1976 Wolfson College lecture, 1977 Princeton seminars)
Some Remarks on Logical Form (Transitional)
Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1929 (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 9)
Formal Logic (Early)
Arthur Norman Prior · 1955 (1st ed.), 1962 (2nd ed.)
A Theory of Conditionals (Early)
Robert Stalnaker · 1968
Ways a World Might Be (Late-middle)
Robert Stalnaker · 2003
Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (Late)
David Lewis · 1999
Inquiry (Mid-career)
Robert Stalnaker · 1984
Parts of Classes (Late-middle)
David Lewis · 1991
A History of Western Philosophy (Late)
Bertrand Russell · 1945
On Interpretation
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (early in the Organon)
Prior and Posterior Analytics
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (the core logical works of the Organon)
Reason, Truth and History (Mid (the major mid-career book, the systematic statement of internal realism))
Hilary Putnam · 1981
Representation and Reality (Mid)
Hilary Putnam · 1988
Time and Modality (Early (Prior's first major synthesis of tense logic, derived from his 1955-56 Oxford Locke Lectures))
Arthur N. Prior · 1957
Aspects of Scientific Explanation (Mid)
Carl G. Hempel · 1965
Mind and World (Late)
John McDowell · 1994 (1991 John Locke Lectures at Oxford)
Making It Explicit (Mid)
Robert Brandom · 1994
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Mid)
Bernard Williams · 1985
Intention (Mid)
G.E.M. Anscombe · 1957
Consciousness Explained (Mid)
Daniel C. Dennett · 1991
The View from Nowhere (Mid)
Thomas Nagel · 1986
Warranted Christian Belief (Late)
Alvin Plantinga · 2000
Ways of Worldmaking (Late)
Nelson Goodman · 1978
The Many Faces of Realism (Mid)
Hilary Putnam · 1987
The Social Construction of What? (Late)
Ian Hacking · 1999
The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages (Mid)
Alfred Tarski · 1933 (Polish); 1935 (German); 1956 (English)
The Methods of Ethics (Late)
Henry Sidgwick · 1874 (1st edn); 1907 (7th, definitive)
The Concept of Mind (Mid)
Gilbert Ryle · 1949
The Blue and Brown Books (Mid)
Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1933-35 (dictations); 1958 (published posthumously)
The Language of Thought (Mid)
Jerry Fodor · 1975
Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Late)
Alan Turing · 1950 (Mind)
Sense and Sensibilia (Late)
J. L. Austin · 1947-58 (lectures); 1962 (posthumous, reconstructed by G. J. Warnock)
The Analysis of Mind (Mid)
Bertrand Russell · 1921
The Analysis of Matter (Mid)
Bertrand Russell · 1927
On What Matters (Late (Parfit's final, three-decade-in-the-making work — his second after Reasons and Persons, 1984))
Derek Parfit · 2011 (Vols I & II, Oxford UP); 2017 (Vol III, Oxford UP — published months after Parfit's death)
Convention: A Philosophical Study (Early (Lewis's first book, published at 28, the year he began at UCLA))
David Lewis · 1969 (Harvard UP; based on his 1967 Harvard PhD dissertation under W. V. O. Quine)
Quantum Theory and Measurement (Mid)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1983
Past, Present and Future (Mature)
Arthur Norman Prior · 1967
Papers on Time and Tense (Late)
Arthur Norman Prior · 1968
Objects of Thought (Late)
Arthur Norman Prior · 1970-71 (drafted), 1971 (posthumous publication)
Der Gedanke (The Thought) (Late)
Gottlob Frege · 1918-19
Posthumous Writings (Posthumous)
Gottlob Frege · c. 1879-1925 (composed); 1969 (German collection); 1979 (English)
Function and Concept (Mature)
Gottlob Frege · 1891
The Mind and its Place in Nature (Mid)
C. D. Broad · 1923 (lectures), 1925 (book)
Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (Mature)
C. D. Broad · 1933 (vol. 1), 1938 (vol. 2)
Five Types of Ethical Theory (Mid)
C. D. Broad · 1930
Lectures on Psychical Research (Late)
C. D. Broad · 1959-60 (lectures), 1962 (book)
The Principles of Mathematics (Early)
Bertrand Russell · 1903
Our Knowledge of the External World (Mid)
Bertrand Russell · 1914
Mysticism and Logic (Mid)
Bertrand Russell · 1918
Anthropic Bias (Early)
Nick Bostrom · 2002
Interpretation and Preciseness (Mid)
Arne Næss · 1953
Constructing the World (Mid)
David J. Chalmers · 2012 (2010 Locke Lectures, Oxford)
Our Knowledge of the Internal World (Late)
Robert Stalnaker · 2008
On Behalf of the Fool
Gaunilo of Marmoutiers · c. 1078
Context and Content (Mid-to-late)
Robert Stalnaker · 1999
Set Theory and Its Logic (Mid-career)
Willard Van Orman Quine · 1963 (revised 1969)
Minds, Brains, and Programs (Mid-career)
John Searle · 1980
Papers in Philosophical Logic (Late)
David Lewis · 1998
A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic (Earliest)
Saul Kripke · 1959 (Kripke aged 18)
Philosophical Troubles (Late)
Saul Kripke · 2011 (essays 1962-2008)
An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Mid-career)
G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe) · 1959 (2nd ed. 1971)
Collected Philosophical Papers (Late)
G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe) · 1981 (papers c. 1950-1980)
The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Early)
Karl Popper · 1934 (Logik der Forschung); 1959 English
Conjectures and Refutations (Mid)
Karl Popper · 1963
The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Late)
Imre Lakatos · 1978 (posthumous; key essays from 1968-71)
The Logical Syntax of Language (Mid)
Rudolf Carnap · 1934 (German; English 1937)
The Uses of Argument (Early)
Stephen Toulmin · 1958
Patterns of Discovery (Early)
Norwood Russell Hanson · 1958
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Mid)
Robert Nozick · 1974
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Early)
Michael J. Sandel · 1982 (2nd edn 1998)
The Claim of Reason (Mid)
Stanley Cavell · 1979
Natural Goodness (Late)
Philippa Foot · 2001
Reality+ (Late (Chalmers's major popular-and-technical synthesis on virtual reality and the simulation hypothesis))
David J. Chalmers · 2022
Begriffsschrift (Early)
Gottlob Frege · 1879
The Philosophy of Space and Time (Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre) (Mid)
Hans Reichenbach · 1928
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Late)
Nick Bostrom · 2014
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Mid)
Noam Chomsky · 1965
Realism with a Human Face (Late)
Hilary Putnam · 1990
The Structure of the World (Late)
Steven French · 2014
Modern Moral Philosophy (Mature (the journal paper that reshaped Anglophone moral philosophy))
G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe) · 1958 (Philosophy 33, no. 124)
Topics (Mid-mature)
Aristotle · c. 350-340 BC (one of Aristotle's earlier mature logical works)
Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (Early)
Iris Murdoch · 1953 (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge)
Words and Life (Late)
Hilary Putnam · 1994
The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (Late)
Hilary Putnam · 1999
Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1998
A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1990
Quantum: The Search for Links (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1989
Correspondence with Arnauld (Mature)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686-1690
Treatise on Predestination, Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents (Mature)
William of Ockham · c. 1321-24
The Demon-Haunted World (Late)
Carl Sagan · 1995
Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Late)
David Bohm · 1980
Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (Mid)
David Bohm · 1957
The Undivided Universe (Late)
David Bohm · 1993 (posthumous; Bohm died October 1992)
De Motu (Mid)
George Berkeley · 1721
De Veritate (On Truth) (Mid)
Anselm of Canterbury · 1080-86
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Basic Laws of Arithmetic) (Mature)
Gottlob Frege · 1893 (vol. 1), 1903 (vol. 2)
Ilāhiyyāt (Metaphysics of the Shifāʾ) (Mature)
Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · c. 1014-1020
From a Logical Point of View (Mid-career)
Willard Van Orman Quine · 1953 (essays 1939-1952)
Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (Mid-to-late)
Willard Van Orman Quine · 1969
Pursuit of Truth (Late)
Willard Van Orman Quine · 1990 (revised 1992)
Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic (Early)
Saul Kripke · 1963
Expression and Meaning (Mid-career)
John Searle · 1979
The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis (Middle)
Kurt Gödel · 1940
The Nature of Existence (Late)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1921 (vol. 1); 1927 (vol. 2, posthumous, ed. C. D. Broad)
Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology (Late)
Rudolf Carnap · 1950
Context (Late)
Robert Stalnaker · 2014
Mind: A Brief Introduction (Late)
John Searle · 2004
Theaetetus (Late)
Plato · c. 369 BC (late dialogue)
Why I Am Not a Christian (Mid-late)
Bertrand Russell · 1927 (lecture); 1957 (collected essays as a book)
Discourse on the Method (Mid (1637, in mature middle age; preceding the Meditations of 1641))
René Descartes · 1637 (published anonymously as the preface to three scientific essays — Optics, Meteorology, Geometry)
Logical Investigations (Early (the breakthrough work that founds phenomenology))
Edmund Husserl · 1900 (vol. 1, Prolegomena to Pure Logic); 1901 (vol. 2, six investigations); revised editions 1913, 1921
The Copernican Revolution (Early (Kuhn's first book))
Thomas Kuhn · 1957
The Logical Structure of the World (Early (Carnap's breakthrough work))
Rudolf Carnap · 1928 (Carnap's habilitation; the founding text of the Vienna Circle's constructive-philosophical programme)
Science and the Modern World (Mid (the major statement of philosophical-cultural critique, preceding the technical metaphysics of Process and Reality))
Alfred North Whitehead · 1925 (the Lowell Lectures, Harvard; the proximate prelude to Process and Reality, 1929)
The Archaeology of Knowledge (Mid (methodological transition between archaeological and genealogical phases))
Michel Foucault · 1969
A System of Logic (Early (Mill's first major book, the foundation of his philosophical reputation))
John Stuart Mill · 1843 (Mill's first major book); revised through 1872 (8th edition)
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Early)
George Berkeley · 1713
Parmenides
Plato · c. 370 BC
Sophist
Plato · c. 360 BC
Oneself as Another (Late)
Paul Ricoeur · 1990 (French; English 1992)
Spheres of Justice (Mid)
Michael Walzer · 1983
Two Concepts of Liberty (Mid)
Isaiah Berlin · 1958 (Inaugural Lecture as Chichele Professor at Oxford)
Summa Logicae (Late)
William of Ockham · c. 1323
Frontiers of Justice (Late)
Martha C. Nussbaum · 2006
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt) (Early)
Franz Brentano · 1874
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Late)
John Rawls · 2001
Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (Late)
Kwasi Wiredu · 1996
The Emperor's New Mind (Late)
Roger Penrose · 1989
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Mid)
Douglas R. Hofstadter · 1979
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (Mid)
Mary Midgley · 1978
On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems (Early)
Kurt Gödel · 1931
The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (La Théorie physique: son objet, sa structure) (Late)
Pierre Duhem · 1906
Science and Hypothesis (La Science et l'hypothèse) (Late)
Henri Poincaré · 1902
The Essential Tension (Late)
Thomas S. Kuhn · 1977
The Language Instinct (Late)
Steven Pinker · 1994
Syntactic Structures (Early)
Noam Chomsky · 1957
Animal Liberation (Mid)
Peter Singer · 1975
Language, Truth, and Logic (Early)
A.J. Ayer · 1936
The Sources of Normativity (Mid)
Christine Korsgaard · 1996 (Tanner Lectures 1992)
Course in General Linguistics (Late)
Ferdinand de Saussure · 1906-11 (lectures at Geneva); 1916 (posthumous from students' notes)
Foundations of Geometry (Mid)
David Hilbert · 1899 (1st ed.); 1903-1971 (multiple subsequent eds)
An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solution to Einstein's Field Equations (Mature (the Princeton period — Gödel's only published paper in general relativity))
Kurt Gödel · 1949 (Reviews of Modern Physics 21, in the Einstein 70th-birthday Festschrift)
Upheavals of Thought (Late-mature (Nussbaum's magnum opus, eight years in the writing after the Gifford Lectures))
Martha Nussbaum · 2001 (Cambridge UP; based on the Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1993)
Ocean of Reasoning (Mature (Tsongkhapa's major philosophical-Madhyamaka work))
Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa · c. 1407
Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (Early (Spinoza's first published work))
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza · 1663 (Renati Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I et II, Amsterdam: Rieuwertsz)
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (Mid-mature)
Albert Einstein · 1916 (Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie); English translation 1920
The Born-Einstein Letters (Mature-late)
Albert Einstein · 1916-55 (correspondence across four decades); published in 1971 (German); English 1971 (Walker)
Discourse on Metaphysics (Mature)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686 (composed February 1686; first published 1846)
The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Last)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1715-16 (5 letters from Leibniz, 5 replies from Clarke); published 1717
Consequences of Pragmatism (Mid)
Richard Rorty · 1982
Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Mid)
Richard Rorty · 1991
Tattvodyota (Mature)
Madhvācārya · 13th century
New System (Mature)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1695
Quodlibetal Questions (Mature)
William of Ockham · c. 1322-1325
Commentary on the Sentences (Early)
William of Ockham · c. 1317-1319 (Oxford lectures)
Quantum Theory (Early)
David Bohm · 1951
An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (Early)
George Berkeley · 1709
Original Sin (Late)
Jonathan Edwards · 1757 (completed), 1758 (posthumous publication)
De Casu Diaboli (On the Fall of the Devil) (Mid)
Anselm of Canterbury · 1080-86
The Extended Phenotype (Mid)
Richard Dawkins · 1982
De l'Esprit Géométrique (Mid)
Blaise Pascal · c. 1655
Practical Ethics (Mid)
Peter Singer · 1979 (1st ed.), 1993 (2nd ed.), 2011 (3rd ed.)
Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Early)
René Descartes · c. 1628 (unfinished); 1701 (posthumous)
The Conquest of Happiness (Mid)
Bertrand Russell · 1930
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (Late)
Carl Gustav Jung · 1952
Global Catastrophic Risks (Mid)
Nick Bostrom · 2008
The Character of Consciousness (Mid)
David J. Chalmers · 2010
The Roots of Reference (Late)
Willard Van Orman Quine · 1974
On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (Early)
Alan Turing · 1936
Philosophical Investigations (Late)
Ludwig Wittgenstein · c. 1929–49 (drafted across two decades); 1953 (posthumous publication, ed. Anscombe & Rhees)
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes · 1651
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Isaac Newton · 1687 (first ed.); 1713, 1726 (second and third revised eds)
Monadology (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1714 (written in French for Prince Eugene of Savoy); published 1720 in German
De Cive (Early)
Thomas Hobbes · 1642 (Latin, Paris); English translation by Hobbes himself 1651
On Certainty (Latest)
Ludwig Wittgenstein · Written 1949–51 (in Wittgenstein's final eighteen months); published posthumously 1969
Relativity: The Special and General Theory
Albert Einstein · 1916 (German); first English 1920
Categories
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (early in the Aristotelian corpus, opening the Organon)
Theodicy (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1710 (the only philosophical book Leibniz published in his lifetime)
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Mid-late (after The Human Condition, before The Life of the Mind))
Hannah Arendt · 1963 (New Yorker articles 1962-63, then book)
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Mid (the breakthrough book))
Richard Rorty · 1979
On Revolution (Late (after Eichmann in Jerusalem))
Hannah Arendt · 1963
The Sovereignty of Good (Mid (her major philosophical statement, alongside Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals 1992))
Iris Murdoch · 1970 (collecting essays from 1956-67)
Science of Logic (Mid (the central work of the mature Hegelian system))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1812 (Book I, Being); 1813 (Book II, Essence); 1816 (Book III, Concept); 1832 (Hegel's revised Book I, posthumous)
The Concept of Nature (Early-mid (preceding Science and the Modern World, 1925))
Alfred North Whitehead · 1920 (the Tarner Lectures, Trinity College Cambridge)
On Christian Doctrine (Mid-late (composed across three decades))
Augustine of Hippo · 397 (Books 1-3.25); 426-27 (Books 3.25-4, completed near the end of Augustine's life)
The Imaginary (Early (preceding Being and Nothingness))
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1940
Discourse on Metaphysics (Mid (Leibniz's breakthrough philosophical statement))
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686 (sent to Antoine Arnauld; not published in Leibniz's lifetime)
New Essays on Human Understanding (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1704 (completed; Leibniz suppressed publication after Locke's 1704 death); 1765 (posthumous publication)
Psychological Types (Mid (the major systematic work after his 1912-13 break with Freud))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1921
The Interpretation of Dreams (Early (the founding work of psychoanalysis))
Sigmund Freud · 1899 (dated 1900); revised through 1929 (8th edition)
Structural Anthropology (Mid (the methodological consolidation))
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1958
Tradition and the Individual Talent (Early (Eliot's major early critical statement))
Thomas Stearns Eliot · 1919 (first published in The Egoist, September-December 1919)
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Early)
Arthur Schopenhauer · 1813 (doctoral dissertation); 1847 (revised 2nd edition)
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Mid-late)
David Hume · 1751
Gravitation (Mid-late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1973
It from Bit / Information, Physics, Quantum (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1989-90 (the "It from Bit" thesis articulated in conference papers and essays)
Principles of Nature and Grace (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1714
Time and Narrative (Late)
Paul Ricoeur · 1983-85 (3 vols; English 1984-88)
Memory, History, Forgetting (Late)
Paul Ricoeur · 2000 (French; English 2004)
Between Facts and Norms (Late)
Jürgen Habermas · 1992 (German; English 1996)
The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Early (Lévi-Strauss's breakthrough work; the foundation of structural anthropology))
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1949
Tool-Being (Early (Harman's breakthrough work, derived from his 1999 DePaul PhD))
Graham Harman · 2002
Against Method (Mid)
Paul Feyerabend · 1975 (1st edn); 1988 (2nd); 1993 (3rd)
Ordinatio (Late)
John Duns Scotus (the Subtle Doctor) · c. 1300
Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Mid)
Catharine A. MacKinnon · 1989
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Late)
Thomas Reid · 1785
Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color (Mid)
Kimberlé Crenshaw · 1991 (Stanford Law Review)
Sic et Non (Yes and No) (Early)
Peter Abelard · c. 1121
After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (Après la finitude) (Late)
Quentin Meillassoux · 2006
Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Late)
John S. Bell · 1987 (papers 1964-86)
A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Mid)
Fung Yu-lan (Feng Youlan) · 1948
Metaphors We Live By (Late)
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson · 1980
The Life of the Mind (Late)
Hannah Arendt · 1977-78 (Vol I Thinking; Vol II Willing; Vol III Judging unfinished at her death)
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Late)
Daniel Kahneman · 2011
On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Late)
David Ricardo · 1817
Development as Freedom (Late)
Amartya Sen · 1999
A Realist Theory of Science (Mid)
Roy Bhaskar · 1975 (1st ed.); 1978 (2nd ed.); 2008 (3rd ed.)
The Divine Relativity (Mid)
Charles Hartshorne · 1948 (Yale Terry Lectures 1947)
The Quadruple Object (Late)
Graham Harman · 2011
The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language (Early-to-middle (Carnap's most polemical statement of the verificationist programme))
Rudolf Carnap · 1932 (Erkenntnis 2; English trans. Arthur Pap, 1959)
Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (Late (Murdoch's longest and most ambitious philosophical book, published nine years after the Gifford Lectures))
Iris Murdoch · 1992 (Chatto & Windus, based on the 1982 Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh)
Miracles: A Preliminary Study (Mature (after Mere Christianity and Screwtape; the most philosophical of Lewis's apologetic works))
C. S. Lewis · 1947 (Bles, London; revised 1960 chapter 3 after Anscombe's 1948 Socratic Club critique)
The Assayer (Mature (composed during the brief honeymoon between Galileo and the new Pope Urban VIII))
Galileo Galilei · 1623 (Rome: Accademia dei Lincei)
The Black Prince (Mature)
Iris Murdoch · 1973 (Chatto & Windus); James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1973
On Truth (Mature)
Anselm of Canterbury · c. 1080-85
Judgment Under Uncertainty (Mid)
Daniel Kahneman · 1982
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (Late)
Daniel Kahneman · 2021
Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life (Late)
Hilary Putnam · 2008
Choices, Values, and Frames (Mid)
Daniel Kahneman · 2000
An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (Late)
Bruno Latour · 2013 (French), 2013 (English)
Experiments and Observations on Electricity (Mid)
Benjamin Franklin · 1747-1750 (letters), 1751 (first edition)
Viṣṇu-Tattva-Nirṇaya (Mature)
Madhvācārya · 13th century
21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Mid)
Yuval Noah Harari · 2018
The Great World-System (Megas Diakosmos) (Mature)
Democritus of Abdera · c. 430 BCE
On Forms (Peri Ideōn) (Mature)
Democritus of Abdera · c. 430 BCE
Cosmos (Mid)
Carl Sagan · 1980
The Dragons of Eden (Mid)
Carl Sagan · 1977
The End for Which God Created the World (Late)
Jonathan Edwards · c. 1755 (composed); 1765 (posthumous publication)
The Nature of True Virtue (Late)
Jonathan Edwards · c. 1755 (composed); 1765 (posthumous publication)
De Processione Spiritus Sancti (On the Procession of the Holy Spirit) (Late)
Anselm of Canterbury · 1102
The Blind Watchmaker (Mid)
Richard Dawkins · 1986
The Raw and the Cooked (Mature)
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1964 (French), 1969 (English)
Academica (Academic Skepticism) (Mature)
Marcus Tullius Cicero · 45 BCE
Essay on Conic Sections (Early)
Blaise Pascal · 1640
Pascal-Fermat Correspondence on Probability (Mid)
Blaise Pascal · 1654
Principles of Philosophy (Mature)
René Descartes · 1644
The Ego and the Id (Late)
Sigmund Freud · 1923
Pali Canon: Abhidhamma Pitaka (Early-Mid)
Siddhārtha Gautama (the Buddha) · c. 3rd c. BCE-1st c. BCE (compiled later than other baskets)
Reclaiming Reality (Mid)
Roy Bhaskar · 1989
Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (Late)
Roy Bhaskar · 1993
De Corpore (Late)
Thomas Hobbes · 1655
De Homine (Late)
Thomas Hobbes · 1658
De Apice Theoriae (Late)
Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusanus) · 1464
The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (Early)
Stephen Hawking · 1973
The Universe in a Nutshell (Mid)
Stephen Hawking · 2001
The Grand Design (Late)
Stephen Hawking · 2010
Spirit in the World (Early)
Karl Rahner · 1939 (Geist in Welt)
Nyayakusumanjali
Udayana · c. 10th century CE
Slokavarttika (Early)
Kumarila Bhatta · c. 7th century
Religion and Philosophy (Late)
Frederick Copleston · 1974
Gödel's Ontological Argument (Late (private manuscript))
Kurt Gödel · c. 1941-1970 (manuscript); shown to D. Scott 1970; published posthumously 1995
Proslogion
Anselm of Canterbury · 1077–78 (Abbey of Bec)
Abhidharmakośa
Vasubandhu · c. 4th–5th century AD
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Late)
David Hume · Drafted 1751–61; revised continuously; published posthumously 1779
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins · 1976 (revised editions 1989, 2006)
Meno (Early)
Plato · c. 386–380 BC (transitional dialogue)
Opticks (Late)
Isaac Newton · 1704 (English first edition); 1706 (Latin)
Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology (Mid (the transcendental turn))
Edmund Husserl · 1913
The History of Sexuality (Late (his last major project))
Michel Foucault · 1976 (vol. 1); 1984 (vols. 2-3, shortly before Foucault's death); vol. 4 (Confessions of the Flesh) published posthumously 2018
Adventures of Ideas (Late (Whitehead's last major book))
Alfred North Whitehead · 1933
The Origins of Totalitarianism (Mid (Arendt's breakthrough book))
Hannah Arendt · 1951 (with later editions adding new prefaces and material through 1968)
The Principles of Psychology (Mid (the major early work; foundational for both psychology and pragmatist philosophy))
William James · 1890 (after twelve years of writing; James later said he should not have spent so much time on it)
Brave New World (Mid (Huxley's breakthrough novel))
Aldous Huxley · 1932
Ideas and Opinions (Late (the most comprehensive single-volume collection))
Albert Einstein · 1954 (collected from earlier essays and addresses)
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Late (third volume of the After Virtue trilogy))
Alasdair MacIntyre · 1990 (the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1988)
Sanctorum Communio (Earliest (Bonhoeffer's dissertation at age 21))
Dietrich Bonhoeffer · 1927 (Bonhoeffer's doctoral dissertation, completed at age 21)
The Irony of American History (Late (Niebuhr's major Cold War political-theological book))
Reinhold Niebuhr · 1952
Lectures on Aesthetics (Late (Berlin lectures))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1820s (delivered as lectures); 1835-38 (compiled and published posthumously by H. G. Hotho)
Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Mature (the most comprehensive single-text statement of the system))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1817 (1st edition); 1827 (2nd edition); 1830 (3rd and definitive edition, in three volumes)
Madness and Civilization (Early (Foucault's breakthrough work, his doctoral dissertation))
Michel Foucault · 1961 (Foucault's doctoral dissertation)
The Birth of the Clinic (Early-mid (between Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things))
Michel Foucault · 1963
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Early-mid (after the Interpretation of Dreams))
Sigmund Freud · 1905; revised through 1924
Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (Early (Suzuki's first major book; preceding the Essays in Zen Buddhism by twenty years))
Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki · 1907 (Suzuki's first major book in English, written during his work with Paul Carus at the Open Court Press)
Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (Mid-late (Averroes's major systematic philosophical defence))
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · c. 1180
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Late (the mature systematic statement of archetypal psychology))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1934-55 (essays composed across two decades); 1959 (compiled as Volume 9, Part 1 of the Collected Works)
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Mid)
Richard Rorty · 1989
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Late)
John Locke · 1693
Eudemian Ethics
Aristotle · c. 350 BC
Writing and Difference (Early)
Jacques Derrida · 1967 (French; English 1978)
Knowledge and Human Interests (Early)
Jürgen Habermas · 1968 (German; English 1971)
Gender Trouble (Early)
Judith Butler · 1990
Orientalism (Mid)
Edward W. Said · 1978
Modes of Thought (Late)
Alfred North Whitehead · 1938 (Wellesley & University of Chicago lectures, 1937-38)
Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Late)
Michael Polanyi · 1958 (Gifford Lectures 1951-52 at Aberdeen)
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Mid)
Ernst Cassirer · 1923-29 (Vol I 1923, II 1925, III 1929)
The Prose of the World (Mid)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty · composed 1950-52; published 1969 (posthumous)
Sources of the Self (Mid)
Charles Taylor · 1989
A Secular Age (Late)
Charles Taylor · 2007 (Gifford Lectures 1998-99 at Edinburgh, extensively expanded)
The Concept of the Political (Mid)
Carl Schmitt · 1932 (revised from 1927 essay; English 1976)
Lam rim chen mo (The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment) (Mid)
Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa · 1402
Justice and the Politics of Difference (Mid)
Iris Marion Young · 1990
Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Late)
Charles Hartshorne · 1984
Foundations of the Science of Knowledge (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre) (Early)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte · 1794-95
Isagoge (Introduction to Aristotle's Categories) (Late)
Porphyry of Tyre · c. 270
Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke · 1715-16
Freedom of the Will (Late)
Jonathan Edwards · 1754
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Mid)
Marshall McLuhan · 1964
Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue) (Late)
Mou Zongsan · 1971
Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation (Late)
Tu Weiming · 1985
Ficciones (Mid)
Jorge Luis Borges · 1944
Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds (Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre) (Mid)
Georg Cantor · 1883
The Science of Mechanics (Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung) (Mid)
Ernst Mach · 1883
Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann) (Mid)
Marcel Proust · 1913
The Sociological Imagination (Mid)
C. Wright Mills · 1959
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Mid)
Erving Goffman · 1959
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Late)
Robert D. Putnam · 2000
Our Mathematical Universe (Late)
Max Tegmark · 2014
Halakhic Man (Ish ha-Halakhah) (Mid)
Joseph B. Soloveitchik · 1944
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Late)
Jonathan Haidt · 2012
An Essay on the Principle of Population (Late)
Thomas Robert Malthus · 1798 (1st edn); 1803 (rev. 2nd edn)
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Late)
Jeremy Bentham · 1780 (privately printed); 1789 (published)
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Late)
James Clerk Maxwell · 1873 (2 vols.; 2nd ed. 1881; 3rd ed. 1891)
A Mathematical Theory of Communication (Mid)
Claude Shannon · 1948 (Bell System Technical Journal)
The Growth of Biological Thought (Late)
Ernst Mayr · 1982
Wonderful Life (Late)
Stephen Jay Gould · 1989
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Late)
Edward O. Wilson · 1975
The Character of Physical Law (Mid)
Richard Feynman · 1964 (lectures); 1965 (book)
Descartes' Error (Late)
António Damásio · 1994
The Road to Serfdom (Mid)
Friedrich Hayek · 1944
The Interpretation of Cultures (Late)
Clifford Geertz · 1973
Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics (Early)
Hugh Everett III · 1957 (Reviews of Modern Physics)
The Bell (Early-mature (Murdoch's fourth novel, the first to establish her mature manner))
Iris Murdoch · 1958 (Chatto & Windus)
Sidereus Nuncius (Early-mid (the breakthrough that established Galileo's international reputation))
Galileo Galilei · March 1610 (Venice: Tommaso Baglioni)
Éléments de la philosophie de Newton (Mid (the work that established Voltaire as a public intellectual of European reach))
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1738 (Éléments de la philosophie de Newton, Amsterdam; revised 1741)
The Sea, The Sea (Late-mature)
Iris Murdoch · 1978 (Chatto & Windus); Booker Prize 1978
Science in Action (Mid)
Bruno Latour · 1987
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Mid)
Yuval Noah Harari · 2011 (Hebrew), 2014 (English)
The God Delusion (Late)
Richard Dawkins · 2006
From Honey to Ashes (Mature)
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1967 (French), 1973 (English)
The Origin of Table Manners (Mature)
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1968 (French), 1978 (English)
The Naked Man (Late)
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1971 (French), 1981 (English)
Kitāb al-Shifāʾ (Book of Healing) (Mature)
Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · c. 1014-1020
Personas with Analytic Metaphysics / Logical Atomism as a declared influence
40% Bertrand Russell
40% Robert Stalnaker
35% Gottlob Frege
35% Saul Kripke
35% David Lewis
35% John Searle
30% Derek Parfit
30% Samuel Clarke
30% Siger of Brabant
30% Karl Popper
25% Ludwig Wittgenstein
25% Arthur Norman Prior
25% C. D. Broad
25% G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe)
25% Gaunilo of Marmoutiers
25% William Whewell
20% Nick Bostrom
20% Hilary Putnam
20% Rudolf Carnap
20% J. M. E. McTaggart
20% Kurt Gödel
20% Alan Turing
20% Willard Van Orman Quine
15% David J. Chalmers
15% Stephen Hawking
15% Richard Dawkins
15% Peter Singer
10% William of Ockham
10% Daniel Kahneman
10% Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa
10% Udayana
10% Kumarila Bhatta
5% George Berkeley
-10% Alasdair MacIntyre
How Analytic Metaphysics / Logical Atomism resolves each dilemma
56 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 9 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 1 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
Distinctive · only 10% of schools agree
(20/208)
Do you really choose?
If the brain is a physical system and physical systems are governed by laws, then every choice is also a chain of causes — which raises the question of what was really left to choose.
Choice is structural illusion — every event is fixed by the prior state.
On this view, the future is fixed by the present, and the observer is a recipient of causes rather than an originator of them. The sense of choosing is real — but what is being chosen is itself a consequence of brain states that were …
Roads not taken
The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it. (69%) ·
Choice is real within a determined order — agency and determinism aren’t opposites. (10%) ·
Even if the universe is undetermined, you are not the chooser. (6%)
Distinctive · only 10% of schools agree
(20/208)
Are addicts responsible for their addiction?
Addiction looks from one angle like the textbook case of agency failing — a person doing what they don't, in any meaningful sense, want to do. From another angle it looks like agency at work in hard conditions. Which it is depends on what agency is.
The addict's behaviour is the outcome of causes; 'responsibility' is a useful fiction, not a metaphysical fact.
On this view, the addict's brain state, history, genetics, and circumstances jointly produce the behaviour, and there is nothing inside the person that could have produced anything else. Calling the addict responsible is at best a social tool — useful for the deterrent and rehabilitative …
Roads not taken
The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real. (69%) ·
The addict is genuinely responsible within a determined order. (10%) ·
Even if the universe is undetermined, the addict isn't the chooser. (6%)
Distinctive · only 10% of schools agree
(20/208)
Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do?
When an autonomous AI takes an action that harms someone, the question of who or what is responsible — the developer, the operator, the model itself — turns on whether the model is the kind of thing that can be a responsible agent.
An AI's behaviour is fully determined by training and input; 'responsibility' applies if at all to its makers.
On this view, the AI's output is a function of its training data, its architecture, and the input it received. There is no extra fact about the AI that could ground its responsibility, because there is no extra fact about the AI that could have …
Roads not taken
An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible. (69%) ·
The AI can be a genuine agent within determined conditions — and therefore genuinely responsible. (10%) ·
Neither AIs nor anyone else are the locus of free agency; the question is the wrong one. (6%)
6 mainstream positions
How much weight do future people deserve?
Future people are as real as you are — and their interests count for as much.
47%
Is regret rational?
The past is as real as the present; regret is a real attitude toward a real thing.
47%
Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them?
Extinct species are as real as we are; they have standing.
47%
Is the universe running out of usable energy?
Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing.
47%
Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so?
Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time.
47%
Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide?
Time is unbounded but matter is not; we can owe more across long time than the matter can provide.
47%
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is the world created from nothing?
Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance.
56%
Is the physical world fully real?
Yes — the physical world is fully real, mind-independent, persisting.
56%
Does matter have intrinsic moral standing?
Matter is morally considerable insofar as it is created or conserved good.
56%
What is money?
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features.
55%
What is a nation?
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character.
55%
What makes someone male or female?
Sex is a real biological kind with given content.
55%
Should we edit the human germline?
Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given.
55%
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
Distinctive · only 12% of schools agree
(25/208)
What is our place in nature?
Whether humans are masters of nature, members of nature, or makers of nature is not a question climate science can settle. It depends on what nature is, what we are, and what kind of relationship is possible between us.
Subject to a real natural order we did not make.
On these views, nature is a real, ordered, mind-independent reality that we are inside of but did not construct. Our fundamental posture toward it is one of observation, discovery, and humility before laws that are not ours to make. Stewardship and conservation are real obligations, …
Roads not taken
Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform. (50%) ·
Nature is partly what we make of it — concepts, practices, and minds shape the world. (15%) ·
Embedded in a web — partners with the more-than-human world. (14%)
Distinctive · only 12% of schools agree
(25/208)
Should we colonize space?
The drive to extend human presence beyond Earth is sometimes framed as the next chapter of stewardship, sometimes as hubris, sometimes as escape from problems we ought to solve here. Which it is depends on what we take our relationship to nature to be.
Nature includes its limits; colonisation is bounded by what the cosmos allows.
On these views, humans operate within a given natural order whose laws and limits set the terms. Space colonisation is fine to the extent that it is actually possible — radiation, gravity wells, biological tolerances — and folly to the extent that it requires denying …
Roads not taken
Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship. (50%) ·
The 'space frontier' is partly what we make of it. (15%) ·
Colonisation continues the work that ended the wisdom of seven-generation thinking. (14%)
Distinctive · only 12% of schools agree
(25/208)
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
Editing the genomes of the plants and animals we eat is either the natural continuation of breeding — careful improvement of what is given — or a category error that treats biology as raw material rather than as living kind.
Biology is what it is; we modify it within real biological constraints.
On these views, organisms are real biological systems with real constraints, and genetic modification is reasonable when it works within those constraints and dangerous when it ignores them. The question is technical: does this modification do what its proponents say, with the unintended consequences they …
Roads not taken
Genetic modification is cultivation by other means. (50%) ·
What counts as a 'natural' genome is itself a construction. (15%) ·
Editing the genome cuts into the relational fabric; we should be very slow. (14%)
Distinctive · only 13% of schools agree
(27/208)
Is reality fundamentally digital?
Pancomputationalism, Planck-scale quanta, simulation theory and Kabbalistic letter-mysticism all say yes — but for very different reasons. The rest of the atlas says no.
Yes — bits, quanta, computational substrate.
On this view, the world is at bottom discrete and law-governed, with no metaphysical agency above or behind the substrate. Reality reduces to bits or their physical analogues; the continuous appearance of fields and flows is coarse-graining over discrete underlying structure.
Roads not taken
No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure. (44%) ·
No — continuous fields, classical limits, analog deep structure. (36%) ·
Yes — but divinely-discrete: divine letters, momentary cognitions, atomistic theism. (7%)
Distinctive · only 13% of schools agree
(27/208)
Are there indivisible units of experience?
Whiteheadian actual occasions, Buddhist moments of mind, Kabbalistic letter-cognitions, IIT phi-units — or the unbroken Jamesian stream? The atomism of experience cuts across naturalism and theism alike.
Yes — naturalist quanta of experience.
On this view, experience comes in discrete units defined by the substrate: information-theoretic phi-units, computational frames, discrete neural events. There is no further metaphysical agency that knits them; the appearance of a stream is the way many discrete events present to introspection.
Roads not taken
No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness. (44%) ·
No — continuous Jamesian stream, phenomenological lived time. (36%) ·
Yes, theistic atomism — actual occasions, divine letters, momentary cognitions. (7%)
31 mainstream positions
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Stored — discrete engrams, traces, weights.
13%
Could causation work backwards?
Causation runs one way — the arrow of time is real and structural.
68%
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
The asymmetry is real because time itself has a real direction.
68%
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
The arrow is real and structural; the asymmetry isn't an artifact of description.
68%
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
Damage is real and permanent on the relevant timescales. There is no recovery; there is only limitation.
66%
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
Civilizational complexity is hard to build and easy to lose; recovery is at best partial.
66%
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
Entropy is what time is. The moral weight, if any, is the weight of working against the current.
66%
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Truth is mind-independent, universal, accessible in principle to all.
66%
When does a person begin?
A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence.
55%
What is marriage?
Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make.
55%
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Moral obligation tracks the relations one is in; distance does matter, structurally.
50%
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
Prayer changes the pray-er, not the prayed-for.
47%
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
Coincidence is exactly what the math says it is. The pattern is in the noticer.
47%
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
The observer is in time; foreknowledge across times raises real freedom problems.
46%
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
Meditators are bounded observers reporting unusual brain states; the 'timeless' is metaphorical.
46%
Does prayer change God's mind?
If there is an addressee at all, it is in time; prayer is communication, and may genuinely change what comes next.
46%
Are the dead morally present to the living?
Observers are bounded by their own moment, and no further agency makes the dead present.
43%
What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize?
The category does not apply — the school is non-religious.
42%
Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species?
The discrete person is the moral primary.
38%
What makes someone the same person over time?
You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity.
36%
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Same body, same person — even when the cognitive pattern has changed.
36%
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
Different body, different person — you died in the scanner.
36%
Does history have a direction or meaning?
History is not where the deepest truth lives.
36%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
Animal minds are real because biology is the substrate of mind.
31%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
Brain tissue can in principle do what brains do; the question is integration.
31%
What happens to "you" when you die?
Death is genuinely the end.
29%
Could an AI have a mind that matters?
No — mind is what a biological brain does, and an LLM has no brain.
29%
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Through a priori reasoning and conceptual demonstration.
24%
Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it?
Trust the method, not the institutions or the persons — and remain wary.
8%
Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge?
Revelation is not knowledge in the descriptive-empirical sense.
8%
Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces?
An LLM produces tokens; calling that 'knowledge' is a measurement choice.
8%
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone.
50%
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys.
50%
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible.
50%
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away.
50%
Jump to school (208)
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