philosophical questions
which of the great questions would you most like answered
Philosophy has always been a questioning discipline. Since Socrates, its method has been less about delivering answers than about asking the right questions — and asking them well. This room gathers some of the questions philosophers have returned to for over two thousand years. Most are still open. That’s rather the point.
Philosophers have traditionally divided their biggest questions into branches. The collection follows those branches here — metaphysics, morality, knowledge and beauty — with Socrates’ favourite kind of question kept separate, since it cuts across them all.
metaphysical questions
Metaphysics asks what is really there, beneath and behind everything else — about existence, reality, time, mind and self.
Why is there something rather than nothing
What is time
Do we have free will
What is consciousness
Are you the same person you were ten years ago
What happens when we die
Does the universe have a purpose
Is the world really as it appears to us
Could everything around you be a dream or simulation
What is the relationship between the mind and the body
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Philosophy has long wrestled with the puzzle of ‘why there is something rather than nothing’ and ‘the nature of truth, happiness and freedom’.
moral questions
Moral philosophy (ethics) asks how we ought to live, and what makes actions right or wrong, good or bad.
What is a good life
What makes right actions right
Is it ever okay to lie
Do the ends justify the means
What do we owe to strangers
Is it better to suffer wrong than to do wrong
Should we always do what makes the most people happy
Are some things wrong everywhere, or does it depend on the culture
What is justice
Can a good person do a bad thing
Confucius offered one of the oldest answers, in the Analects: ‘What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others’ — a version of what later became known as the Golden Rule.
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These are the traditional philosophical questions that sit behind much of my work — ‘how do we know things, what does it mean to know, what exactly is knowledge and when does it go wrong’.
epistemological questions
Epistemology is the study of knowledge — my own field. It asks what we can know, how we know it, and whether we can trust what we believe.
What is knowledge
Can we ever really know anything
How do we know what we know
Is knowing something different from believing it
What is the difference between knowledge and understanding
Who controls what we know and what we don’t
What do we have a right to know
What is ignorance, and is it always a bad thing
How do we tell a reliable source from an unreliable one
Can two people each be certain and still disagree
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aesthetics questions
Aesthetics is the philosophy of art, beauty and taste — the questions raised when something stops us in our tracks.
What is beauty
What is art
Is beauty in the object, or in the eye of the beholder
Can there be a standard of good taste
Why does a piece of music move one person to tears and leave another cold
What is the sublime, and how does it differ from the beautiful
Can something ugly also be beautiful
Is a thing more beautiful if it is rare
Can a forgery be as good as the original
Can AI make real art
Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry (1757) drew the famous line between the beautiful and the sublime; the question of whether beauty lies in the object or the observer is older still.
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socrates’ favourite kind of question
I think of these as the bread and butter of philosophy — the ‘what is X’ questions that Socrates was famous (and famously annoying) for asking. Deceptively simple, they ask us to define the things we think we already understand and often lead to Socrates’ (and my) preferred state of aporia aka confusion and bafflement!
What is love
What is justice
What is a table
What is hope
What is virtue
What is a shadow
What is a cloud
What is meaning
What is knowledge
What is thinking
What is beauty
What is courage
What is wisdom
Notice how many of these ‘what is X’ questions belong directly to the branches of philosophy listed above.
questions about questions
The philosophy of questions turns the discipline’s favourite tool back on itself. These are the questions at the heart of my own work.
What is a question
Why do we ask questions
Where do questions come from
What do questions look like in the brain
Who asked the first question
What did they ask
Does a question need a question mark
What makes a question good or bad
Are there stupid questions
How can we ask better questions
Can a good philosophical contribution be made just by asking a question
That last one is a real published paper — by Habgood-Coote, Watson and Whitcomb — one of the shortest ever published, which consists entirely of its title.