There are many sites devoted to specific branches, eras, and schools of philosophy for the student, scholar, and lay person. Many of them have an introductory or entertaining perspective, but others are sources for serious reflection.
A Dictionary of Philosophy Terms & Names
This is a concise guide to technical terms and personal names often encountered in the study of philosophy. Although the entries are often brief, many include links to electronic texts and to more detailed discussions on this site or in other on-line resources.
Philosophical Essays on Many Subjects
There is a paradox surrounding philosophy that AskPhilosophers seeks to address. On the one hand, everyone confronts philosophical issues throughout his or her life. But on the other, very few have the opportunity to learn about philosophy, a subject that is usually taught only at the college level. (Why? There is no good reason for this and plenty of bad ones.) AskPhilosophers aims to bridge this gap by putting the skills and knowledge of trained philosophers at the service of the general public.
For over a hundred years the Gifford Lecture series has been one of the foremost lecture series dealing with religion, science and philosophy. In his 1885 will the jurist Adam Lord Gifford, convinced that true, felt knowledge of God when acted upon generated human well-being and progress, bequeathed £80,000 to the four Scottish universities (Universities of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and St. Andrews) for the establishment of a series of lectures dealing with the topic of natural religion. In dealing with their particular area of interest and expertise, lecturers are to discuss natural theology as a science, that is, "without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation."
Great Thinkers is a web resource aimed at introducing the great thinkers of Western thought, with a particular emphasis on political philosophy. Featuring biographies, introduction, bibliographies of the best secondary literature as well as multimedia content on thinkers from Plato to Nietzsche, the site seeks to aid students and other interested parties in their study of the most fundamental ideas, texts, and thinkers of the tradition. With the aid of these resources, the project hopes to stimulate the kind of serious reading and reflection that are prerequisites for free government and the highest form of liberal education.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) (ISSN 2161-0002) was founded in 1995 to provide open access to detailed, scholarly, peer-reviewed 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 has over a million visitors per month, and about 20 million page views per year. 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 universities around the world, most notably from English-speaking countries.
Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
I began collecting and studying logical fallacies about thirty-eight years ago, when I first became interested in logic. This collection took two forms: 1. [A collection of named fallacies—such as "ad hominem"—that is, types of bad reasoning which someone has thought distinctive and interesting enough to name and describe. This collection took the form, primarily, of the study and acquisition of books and articles on the named fallacies, especially textbooks and reference books. You can find individual files on the named fallacies via the Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies, or from the alphabetical index in the scroll bar to your left.] 2. [A collection of fallacious, or otherwise bad, arguments, that is, examples of reasoning which may commit one or more of the named fallacies under 1, or are bad in some way yet to be classified. This collection took the form of clippings from newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, photocopies of pages of books, and—in a few rare cases—entire articles or books which were rich sources of bad reasoning. I have used selections from my collection as examples in many of the files on named fallacies, and additional examples can be found in the file: Stalking the Wild Fallacy.]
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This website was initially created in 2008 as a personal project by Luke Mastin. He has no official training in philosophy, and this site is intended as an entry-level resource by a layman for the layman. Luke no longer operates the website, yet it continues to evolve. New information about philosophy is added based on feedback from the community. Articles on every page of the site have been updated to add clarity, correct typos, and add new information. The website is now viewed more often on mobile devices than it is on computers, so it has been redesigned to be easily-readable across all device types.
This database has been compiled by Peter Gibson from many years of philosophy reading. These studies led him to two MA's from London University, and to teaching philosophy to teenagers for twenty-four years (at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe). He has a PhD in metaphysics from Birkbeck, University of London. The big thought behind the project is that philosophy has became such a vast and specialised subject during the last hundred years that not even the most learned student can keep track of it. The obvious next step seems to be the production of a clear and comprehensive map of what has been achieved. PhilosophyIdeas is meant as a tiny contribution to that task, though it began as a tool for helping students to write essays.
Philosophy News is designed to:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
From its inception, the SEP was designed so that each entry is maintained and kept up-to-date by an expert or group of experts in the field. All entries and substantive updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board before they are made public. Consequently, our dynamic reference work maintains academic standards while evolving and adapting in response to new research. You can cite fixed editions that are created on a quarterly basis and stored in our Archives (every entry contains a link to its complete archival history, identifying the fixed edition the reader should cite).
The Voice of the Shuttle began in late 1994 as an introduction to the Web for humanists at the University of California, Santa Barbara." "VoS emphasizes both primary and secondary (or theoretical) resources, and defines its audience as people who have something to learn from a higher-education, professional approach to the humanities.