Free Will and Determinism
If every event is the necessary result of what came before, is choice still real, or just a story we tell about a process we don't control?
Primers
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Short introductions to the field's central debates, for readers meeting them for the first time: the terms and the disagreement, not yet anyone's argument. For a specific writer taking a position, see Essays; for how a primer, an essay, and an experiment connect on the same question, see Open Questions.
Mary's Room and the Knowledge Argument
A scientist knows every physical fact there is about color. She has just never seen one. When she finally does, does she learn something new?
Personal Identity
What makes you, years from now, the same person as you today? The obvious answers turn out to be surprisingly hard to defend.
The Chinese Room
A thought experiment about a man, a rulebook, and whether following instructions can ever amount to understanding.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
Why explaining behavior isn't the same as explaining experience, and why the gap might never close.
The Problem of Other Minds
You know your own experience directly. Everyone else's, you're only ever guessing at. How good is that guess, really?
The Reliability of Memory
Memory feels like a recording you can replay. The research says it's closer to a story you rebuild, slightly differently, every time you tell it.
The Trolley Problem
Pulling a lever to kill one person and save five feels obviously right. Pushing a stranger to his death to do the identical arithmetic feels obviously wrong. The gap between those two verdicts is where moral philosophy actually starts working.
The Turing Test
Alan Turing proposed sidestepping 'can machines think' with a simpler question: can a machine talk its way into being mistaken for a person?