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PonderAtlas

Source desk

Follow the argument beyond this site.

Every flagship guide exposes its own citations in context. This consolidated desk makes the main reference set easier to inspect.

How to read the list

Primary texts are used for historical wording and cases. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries are used to map debates and further reading. A link is evidence of consultation, not an endorsement by the linked institution.

Reference desk

Consolidated references

  1. 01
    Plutarch, Life of Theseus, section 23

    Primary ancient source for the maintained ship.

  2. 02
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  5. 05
    Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

    Primary text for the dream and deceiver arguments.

  6. 06
  7. 07
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Doing vs. Allowing Harm

    Section 3 relates the doing/allowing distinction directly to the trolley cases, including Foot's and Thomson's versions.

  8. 08
  9. 09
  10. 10
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Deontological Ethics

    Background for constraints against using persons as mere means.

  11. 11
    Plato, Republic, Book VII (514a–520a)

    Primary text of the cave allegory and its educational interpretation.

  12. 12
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  24. 24
    Plato, Symposium

    Primary text containing several dramatic accounts of love, not one simple doctrine.

  25. 25
    Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII

    Primary text on friendship.

  26. 26
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  28. 28
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Simone de Beauvoir

    Useful for freedom, situation and responsibility toward others.

  29. 29
  30. 30
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Well-Being

    Sets out hedonist, desire-satisfaction and objective-list accounts and the standard objections to each.

  31. 31
    Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I

    Primary text for the claim that a good life is an activity rather than a state.

  32. 32
  33. 33
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Hard Problem of Consciousness

    Sets out why functional explanation and experiential explanation are treated as distinct problems.

  34. 34
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Personal Identity

    Competing criteria for persistence through psychological and bodily change.

  35. 35
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  37. 37
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Moral Responsibility

    Relevant to whether blame requires alternative possibilities.

  38. 38
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Moral Relativism

    On what follows, and does not follow, from persistent disagreement.

  39. 39
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  41. 41
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Truth

    Correspondence, coherence and pragmatic accounts set side by side.

  42. 42
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  45. 45
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Being and Becoming in Modern Physics

    On how the passage question interacts with physical theory.

  46. 46
  47. 47
    Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

    Primary source for the argument that death is nothing to the one who dies.

  48. 48
  49. 49