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)

1. metaphysics-and-ontology — being, substance, properties, time, modality, causation, free will, persistence
2. epistemology — knowledge, justification, skepticism, sources, social epistemology, Bayesian and formal
3. ethics-and-moral-philosophy — meta-ethics, normative theories, applied ethics, political philosophy, AI ethics
4. philosophy-of-mind-and-language — consciousness, intentionality, mental content, semantics, pragmatics, LLMs
5. philosophy-of-science — confirmation, explanation, laws, realism, philosophy of physics, biology, mathematics
6. logic — propositional, predicate, modal, intuitionistic, relevance, many-valued, paraconsistent; proof theory; model theory; set-theoretic foundations
7. political-philosophy — sovereignty, legitimacy, democracy, justice, rights, citizenship, multiculturalism, global justice
8. aesthetics — theories of beauty, art ontology, expression, representation, aesthetic experience, criticism, environmental aesthetics
9. philosophy-of-religion — arguments for and against theism, religious epistemology, problem of evil, religious diversity, science and religion
10. 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
11. philosophy-of-mathematics — logicism, intuitionism, formalism, Platonism, structuralism, nominalism, neologicism

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

• 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

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 is surveyed in political-philosophy; 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 transformer-architecture
• Sciences — bioethics overlaps with cell-molecular-biology; environmental ethics with climate-impacts-and-adaptation; philosophy of physics with physical-chemistry
• 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-reference is 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