
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - shliachtx
http://plato.stanford.edu/
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jbarrow
I used the SEP when reading about Epistemology, and I must say that it is both
a comprehensive and comprehensible resource. Although it was (for me, at
least) a bit dense at times, it was perhaps the best introduction to the
subject that I found.

If anyone is interested in some philosophical concept, I would recommend
starting here, and branching out to books and linked papers only after using
the SEP.

And if anyone has any other good resources they would like to point me
towards, I would greatly appreciate it.

~~~
adventured
I also found it to be incredibly fair in treatment to what is ultimately an
extremely varied and vast base of ideas, philosophies and philosophers. A
difficult balancing act indeed.

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thanatropism
Also: [http://www.iep.utm.edu/](http://www.iep.utm.edu/)

> The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) (ISSN 2161-0002) was founded
> in 1995 as a non-profit organization to provide open access to detailed,
> scholarly information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of
> philosophy. The Encyclopedia receives no funding, and operates through the
> volunteer work of the editors, authors, volunteers, and technical advisers.
> At present the IEP is visited over 950,000 times per month. The Encyclopedia
> is free of charge and available to all users of the Internet world-wide. The
> staff of 30 editors and approximately 300 authors hold doctorate degrees and
> are professors at colleges and universities around the world, most notably
> from English-speaking countries.

The SEP is unusually in-depth about certain subjects, though. (Right now, I
have "Dutch book arguments" and "Dialetheism" open).

~~~
josu
"Error establishing a database connection"

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jonhmchan
SEP is easily the best online resource for philosophy, especially in the
analytic tradition. It can be a bit dense sometimes, but I've always used it
as an introduction or overview of a philosophy text before diving in during
college.

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gojomo
An interesting aspect of this project is how it's funded.

Per a presentation I saw a while back, when the site sees visits from
Universities that have an associated degree-granting program, or visits from
traditional related libraries, it nags the users that their institution should
join (if it hasn't already). It's a bit like Shareware/Nagware/Guiltware,
applied to a live service, and only targeted at specific related learning
institutions with existing acquisition budgets.

Here's the schedule of suggested dues:

[http://plato.stanford.edu/support/SEPIA-dues-
schedule.html](http://plato.stanford.edu/support/SEPIA-dues-schedule.html)

..and benefits once joined...

[http://plato.stanford.edu/support/sepia.html](http://plato.stanford.edu/support/sepia.html)

~~~
walterbell
Good transparency on their business model,
[http://plato.stanford.edu/support/problems.html](http://plato.stanford.edu/support/problems.html)

"a subscription-based funding model would lead the SEP project towards a
situation where it loses it focus and character as a project developed,
administered and maintained by academics. Not only would the SEP reach a tiny
fraction of the audience it once reached, but it might be forced to scramble
each year to make ends meet, distracting its central staff from the academic
mission of enhancing the encyclopedia's content and technological
underpinnings. By contrast, if its basic operations and growth were covered by
an endowment, the SEP staff could focus their fund-raising efforts on
innovative grant proposals (taking advantage of their location at the Center
for the Study of Language and Information) to push the technological limits of
humanities computing"

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timtadh
SEP is one of the best sites on the net for learning philosophy. The
biogrhphies of the personalities are comprehensive and I find the articles to
provide nuance other resources sometimes lack. It is a great site for some
casual reading on the subject.

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Xcelerate
This is cool! But there's a lot in there, so I don't even know where to start.
Does anyone know of a good introduction to philosophy? My work is in the hard
sciences, and I know next to nothing about philosophy, but am very interested
in learning. Something that kind of gives an overview of the whole field I
think would be best.

~~~
thanatropism
This will be _super_ controversial, but I read Deleuze's "What is philosophy?"
after reading a lot of philosohpy (and a lot of Deleuze), and it really makes
sense of things.

That, of course, will cover next to nothing in the post-Wittgensteinian
analytical camp. But eh, you could do worse if you have one book to read.

~~~
jjgreen
Deleuze is incisive, an unexpectedly readable

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samolang
Previous discussions:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fplato.stanford.edu%2F...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fplato.stanford.edu%2F#!/story/forever/0/http%3A%2F%2Fplato.stanford.edu%2F)

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stupandaus
Anyone have recommendations for interesting entries?

~~~
Jun8
The one on Language of Thought is good:
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-
thought/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/).

This is an extremely interesting subject: Does our thought process follow
linguistic patterns? Do we use our native language to think or is there a
deeper, universal "language" we think in? If the latter, how can that be? Etc.

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Confusion
I'm subscribed to their RSS feed[1], which is a wonderful way to be regularly
introduced to new interesting articles and subjects whenever one is updated.
Alas, it results in a large backlog...

[1]
[http://plato.stanford.edu/rss/sep.xml](http://plato.stanford.edu/rss/sep.xml)

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jessriedel
It's possible to find a few weak articles on the SEP, but by and large the
quality is very high even with lots and lots of topics. If you want to learn
about an unfamiliar philosophical concept, briefly scan the Wikipedia page and
then head to the SEP.

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dasmithii
Wow, I've been looking for something of this caliber for a long while. Thanks
for sharing.

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ethnt
My philosophy of science teacher turned me onto this site last semester and it
was really quite invaluable. The amount of thought and work that is put into
each article is amazing, and it certainly helped me understand topics I would
not have otherwise.

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lmarinho
Thanks for bringing this back to the surface. I see that SEPs design has
greatly improved since I last visited it. The new looks make for a much more
pleasant reading experience, right on par with the excellent content.

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sebastianconcpt
Fantastic resource. Thanks for the heads up

