The Big Questions of Philosophy
Explore the central questions that have challenged thinkers for millennia. Learn how to weigh ethical dilemmas, spot flawed logic, question everyday assumptions, and examine what it means to live a meaningful life.
Like Duolingo, but for The Big Questions of Philosophy. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
21 levels across 4 sections, about 42 minutes end to end, roughly 8 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Deciding How to Live; Figuring Out What Is True; What Is Real, and Who Am I; and Living Together in a Society. It starts from scratch.
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Key ideas in The Big Questions of Philosophy
- Consequentialism judges whether an act was right or wrong strictly by its end results
- Deontology argues that certain moral rules—like telling the truth—must never be broken, even for a good outcome
- A deontologist views lying as inherently wrong even if it saves a life
- A moral dilemma happens when two equally valid principles clash directly
- Whichever choice you make in a true dilemma, you inevitably violate a moral commitment
- Dilemmas produce unavoidable moral regret because there is no win-win escape
- Both actors made the exact same reckless moral choice with identical intentions
- People assign far harsher moral blame based purely on an outcome determined by chance
- Moral luck exposes the contradiction that we hold people responsible for factors beyond their control
- The doctrine of double effect allows an action with bad side effects only if the bad effect was not the chosen goal or necessary means
- Using a bad outcome directly as the stepping stone to reach a good end is forbidden under this rule
- Foreseeing that harm will happen alongside your good act is morally distinct from aiming at the harm
- An entity inside your moral circle has interests that matter for their own sake, not just for how useful they are to you
- Expanding the circle means geographic distance or species boundaries no longer automatically disqualify someone from ethical consideration
- Entities outside your moral circle are treated merely as tools or resources
- Eudaimonia is human flourishing achieved through an entire lifetime of living and acting well
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives The Big Questions of Philosophy the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
What does deontology say about important rules like telling the truth?
Get it right to open this lesson and 20 more in the app.
Where The Big Questions of Philosophy takes you
- 1
Deciding How to Live
- Making Tough Moral Choices
- Defining a Good Life
- 2
Figuring Out What Is True
- Dissecting Arguments and Weak Logic
- Testing the Limits of Knowledge
- 3
What Is Real, and Who Am I?
- Personal Identity and Free Will
- Consciousness and the Nature of Reality
- 4
Living Together in a Society
- Designing a Fair Society
4 sections · 7 units · 21 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
The Big Questions of Philosophy is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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