Philosophy — Library Index
A reference library for philosophy, covering the major subfields and historical periods.
The library is organized so that each Tier 1 note is a self-contained survey of a subdomain.
Later additions drill into Tier 2 depth notes and Tier 3 catalogs.
Scope
Philosophy is treated here as the systematic inquiry into fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, value, reason, mind, and language.
The library aims for breadth across Western and selected non-Western traditions.
Emphasis is placed on the technical contemporary literature where it intersects with empirical sciences, mathematics, and AI.
Tier 1 — Subdomain surveys (done)
- metaphysics-and-ontology — being, substance, properties, time, modality, causation, free will, persistence
- epistemology — knowledge, justification, skepticism, sources, social epistemology, Bayesian and formal
- ethics-and-moral-philosophy — meta-ethics, normative theories, applied ethics, political philosophy, AI ethics
- philosophy-of-mind-and-language — consciousness, intentionality, mental content, semantics, pragmatics, LLMs
- philosophy-of-science — confirmation, explanation, laws, realism, philosophy of physics, biology, mathematics
Tier 2 — In progress
- ai-ethics-and-alignment — mesa-optimization, deceptive alignment, value learning, RLHF philosophy, interpretability ethics, governance frameworks
Tier 3 — Catalogs online
- Tier 3 index
- philosopher-catalog — ~140 named philosophers across 11 sections: pre-Socratic, Hellenistic, medieval, early-modern, 19th-c, 20th-c analytic + Continental, pragmatism, women philosophers, contemporary, non-Western Chinese/Indian/Japanese
Tier 1 — Planned subdomains
- Logic — propositional, predicate, modal, intuitionistic, relevance, many-valued, paraconsistent; proof theory; model theory; set-theoretic foundations
- Political philosophy (standalone, currently nested under ethics) — sovereignty, legitimacy, democracy, justice, rights, citizenship, multiculturalism, global justice
- Aesthetics — theories of beauty, art ontology, expression, representation, aesthetic experience, criticism, environmental aesthetics
- History of philosophy — ancient (Pre-Socratics through Hellenistic), medieval (patristic through scholastic), early modern (Renaissance through Enlightenment), 19th-century, 20th-century analytic, 20th-century Continental, contemporary
- Applied ethics standalone notes:
- Bioethics — clinical ethics, research ethics, end-of-life, reproductive ethics, neuroethics
- Environmental ethics — biocentrism, ecocentrism, climate ethics, intergenerational justice, sustainability
- AI ethics — alignment, fairness, transparency, autonomy, moral status of AI, longtermism
- Philosophy of mathematics — logicism, intuitionism, formalism, Platonism, structuralism, nominalism, neologicism
- Philosophy of religion — arguments for and against theism, religious epistemology, problem of evil, religious diversity, science and religion
Tier 2 — Planned depth notes
- Philosophy of physics — interpretations of quantum mechanics, relativity and time, cosmology, statistical mechanics, philosophy of spacetime
- Mathematical logic deep — Gödel, Tarski, set theory foundations, proof theory, computability
- Ancient Greek philosophy detailed — Pre-Socratics, Plato dialogues, Aristotle corpus, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, Neoplatonism
- Continental philosophy 20th century — Phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty), Existentialism (Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus), Frankfurt School, Structuralism, Post-structuralism (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze), Hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur)
- AI alignment and ethics — mesa-optimization, deceptive alignment, value learning, RLHF philosophy, interpretability ethics, governance frameworks
Tier 3 — Planned catalogs
- Philosopher catalog — biographical and bibliographical entries for roughly 300 major figures, including dates, key works, schools, and primary contributions
- Philosophical positions catalog — taxonomic listing of named positions (compatibilism, eliminativism, contextualism, etc.) with proponents, formulations, and standard objections
- Argument types catalog — canonical argument forms by name (ontological argument, Gettier cases, trolley problem, Chinese Room, brain-in-vat) with structure, source, and responses
Adjacent libraries
- Society — political philosophy overlaps with political-systems-and-governance; applied ethics with economics-and-finance and law-and-legal-systems
- Math and Compute — logic and philosophy of mathematics overlap with mathematical-logic-and-foundations; AI ethics overlaps with artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning
- Sciences — bioethics overlaps with biology-fundamentals; environmental ethics with climate-impacts-and-adaptation; philosophy of physics with physics-fundamentals
- Arts and Energy — aesthetics overlaps with arts catalog notes
Conventions
- Citations use author plus work plus year throughout
- Book titles are italicized via markdown italic
- Tier 1 notes target 500-650 lines
- Tier 2 notes target 800-1200 lines
- Tier 3 catalogs are atomic per entry
- Frontmatter tag
philosophy-referenceis canonical - Subarea tags include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, mind, language, science for filtering
- Each note ends with an “Adjacent” section listing 4-6 wikilinks to other vault notes