Codex — Philosophy Plan
Drafted 2026-05-17. Final per-domain plan in the five-domain expansion. Sibling of PHYSICS_PLAN.md / CHEMISTRY_PLAN.md / BIOLOGY_PLAN.md. Subordinate to BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md. Authored last per the umbrella §6 sequence — philosophy is mostly a receiver of cross-domain hooks, so it benefits from seeing what shape the other four want to point at it.
Status: Draft. Locks the hybrid mode decision (philosophy gets both the existing synthesis essays AND a new tiered-units track for analytic philosophy of science), the subsection allocation under §20, anchor literature, mastery endpoints, the inbound-hook taxonomy that determines where new units are seeded, and the essay-ID retrofit.
Read before this plan: OVERVIEW.md; BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md (esp. §2.5 phil mode + §3 contract); the 6 existing essays at site/src/content/philosophy/01-reflexivity … 06-realization; PHYSICS_PLAN.md, CHEMISTRY_PLAN.md, BIOLOGY_PLAN.md outbound-hook taxonomies (they tell us what phil needs to land).
§1 What this plan does
- Resolves the mode question (open per umbrella): philosophy adopts hybrid mode, with two distinct content registers running parallel: synthesis essays (existing) + tiered analytic-philosophy units (new). Both forms have legitimate roles; neither subsumes the other.
- Retrofits the 6 existing essays with IDs
20.essays.01…20.essays.06so cross-refs from other domains resolve. This was a hard requirement fromBIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md§10 step 4. - Allocates subsections under §20 for analytic philosophy of science — one subsection per scientific domain we mirror, plus logic, phil-of-science-general, and phil-of-mind.
- Names Wave 1 seeds: complete the essay retrofit + produce 2 analytic units chosen because they are the highest-leverage inbound-hook targets across all four other domains.
- Specifies the cross-domain return surface — how phil emits "see also" hooks back into science units (the reverse direction of the dominant hook flow).
It does not:
- Lock the long-term shape of
20.essays(more essays will be added; this plan locks the format, not the count). - Decide whether
phileventually splits into multiple top-level sections (it stays at §20 for v1). - Override the existing 6 essays' content — those are kept verbatim; only frontmatter is touched.
- Pretend Tyler has analytic-phil expertise; reviewer recruitment is even more important here than in chem or bio.
§2 What philosophy is for in this project
Two complementary roles, both load-bearing:
2.1 Role A — synthesis and orientation (the existing essays do this)
The 6 existing essays (reflexivity, geometry-of-disclosure, perfected-figure, what-passes-between, practice, realization) are foundational orienting documents. Their function is to provide a stance from which the rest of the curriculum can be read. They are not philosophy-of-science in the analytic sense; they are wisdom-tradition synthesis with structural awareness — Vedanta-meets-Sufi-meets-mathematics-meets-contemplative-practice.
They serve a learner approaching the project who needs to see what shape of knowing the project assumes before stepping into math/physics/chem/bio. They will continue to exist, be added to over time, and be cross-linkable from any unit in the project.
2.2 Role B — analytic philosophy of science (new in this plan)
When a physics unit on the measurement problem hooks out to phil, what does it hook to? Not a synthesis essay — the physics unit wants a specific analytic treatment of "what the measurement problem is, what positions exist, what the canonical arguments are." That requires tiered analytic-philosophy units alongside the essays.
Role B fills this gap. Each tiered unit covers a specific analytic-phil topic at three depths, anchored to the standard analytic-phil literature, with operationalized mastery endpoints. These are the natural landing places for hooks_out from physics §10/12/13, chem §14/15/16, bio §17–19, and math §00–08.
2.3 Why two modes, not one
Could the synthesis-mode subsume the analytic mode (everything as essays)? No — analytic phil-of-science arguments have testable mastery endpoints (reconstruct the argument, identify the hidden premise, produce a counterexample) that the contemplative/synthesis mode does not. Forcing them into the same form would either reduce essays to argument-reconstruction practice (losing what makes them essays) or reduce units to free-form synthesis (losing the testability that justifies units).
Could the analytic mode subsume the synthesis mode (everything as tiered units)? No — the existing 6 essays would not survive being broken into prereq-graph atoms; their power comes from the integrative arc.
Two modes is the right answer; the umbrella's hybrid decision is right; this plan operationalizes it.
§3 §20 subsection allocation
Philosophy occupies a single top-level section (§20) per the umbrella prefix table. Within §20:
| ID prefix | Subsection | Role |
|---|---|---|
20.essays.NN |
Synthesis essays | Role A; existing 6 + future additions |
20.01.NN |
Logic and formal methods | Tiered units; covers propositional / first-order / modal logic, formal semantics, computability foundations |
20.02.NN |
Philosophy of mathematics | Tiered units; Platonism, structuralism, formalism, intuitionism, indispensability, set-theoretic foundations |
20.03.NN |
Philosophy of physics | Tiered units; interpretation of QM, classical-quantum boundary, spacetime ontology, the arrow of time |
20.04.NN |
Philosophy of chemistry | Tiered units; the bond ontology, reduction, structural realism in molecular chem |
20.05.NN |
Philosophy of biology | Tiered units; species, units of selection, fitness, teleology, life, agency, the gene concept |
20.06.NN |
Philosophy of mind | Tiered units; consciousness (hard problem), intentionality, computationalism, embodiment |
20.07.NN |
General philosophy of science | Tiered units; explanation, theory choice, evidence, scientific realism vs anti-realism, methodology |
Locked. This is the §20 layout.
The 20.essays.NN subsection is a single flat namespace; essays don't subdivide by topic because their integrative arc spans multiple. The 20.01–07 subsections subdivide because analytic phil-of-science has clearly distinct sub-disciplines that map onto the other domains' content.
Addressing-semantics note. §20 uses the same dotted-triple section.chapter.unit form as math/physics/chem/bio, but with a semantic asymmetry: in math/physics/chem/bio, level-2 is a chapter inside one section. In §20, level-2 is a sub-discipline (logic / phil-of-math / phil-of-physics / etc.) — there is no "chapter of philosophy" the way there is "chapter of QM". The validator regex (^\d{2}\.\d{2}\.\d{2}$) treats both forms identically; the asymmetry is in human-readable interpretation only. Cross-domain hooks_out targets like 20.03.01 parse as section=20, sub-discipline=03 (phil-of-physics), unit=01 — not as section=20, chapter=03 in the math sense. Document this so authors don't conflate the two readings.
3.1 Why these 7 subsections, not more or fewer
Not more: ethics, aesthetics, political phil, history of phil are out of v1 scope for Codex (math-and-sciences focus per OVERVIEW.md). Phil of language, epistemology, metaphysics-as-general appear only via the phil-of-X subsections that they bear on (e.g., the epistemology of testimony in science appears in 20.07; metaphysical commitments of QM interpretation in 20.03).
Not fewer: collapsing phil-of-physics and phil-of-chemistry into "phil-of-natural-science" would obscure the very different methodological commitments each touches. Keeping them parallel to the science sections makes the cross-domain hook contract clean (a physics unit hooks to 20.03; a bio unit hooks to 20.05; etc.).
§4 The hybrid mode operationally
BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md §2.6 locks the general unit-vs-essay criteria. Specific to phil:
4.1 When to write a synthesis essay (the 20.essays.NN slot)
- The content is integrative across multiple sub-disciplines of philosophy and/or across multiple traditions (analytic / continental / wisdom-tradition / contemplative). Cannot be anchored to a single prereq tree.
- The content is interpretive or orienting — its job is to make a stance visible, not to teach an argument.
- The author wants to draw a structural analogy across traditions (e.g., the 01-reflexivity essay drawing the same structure from Vedanta, Sufism, and mathematics).
- There is no operationalized mastery endpoint — the essay is intended to change how the reader sees, not to be tested.
4.2 When to write a tiered analytic unit (under 20.01 … 20.07)
- The content is a position, an argument, or a concept with a definable scope.
- It has standard literature anchors at Intermediate / Master (textbook canonical articles + primary papers).
- It has a testable mastery endpoint — reconstruct, identify, counterexample.
- It is the natural landing target for a
hooks_outfrom a science unit.
4.3 Default in ambiguous cases
Default to tiered unit when ambiguous — same default as BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md §2.6. Essays accumulate worse than units; phil already has 6 essays and adding 20 more without discipline would shift the section's character.
4.4 Essay budget for v1
The 6 existing essays form an initial cluster. New essays are added one-at-a-time with explicit justification ("couldn't be a unit because X"). Soft cap: 12 essays total by end of v1, allowing for ~1 essay every couple of waves. Hard cap: 20.
§5 Tier anchors
5.1 Essays (20.essays.NN)
No tier system. Essays are written at a single register — accessible-but-substantial prose, comparable to The Hedgehog Review or a long-form Aeon essay. Reading-time scope: 20–60 minutes per essay.
5.2 Tiered units (20.01–07)
Anchored to analytic-philosophy literature at three tiers, per subsection.
20.01 Logic and formal methods
| Tier | Anchor |
|---|---|
| Beginner | Tomassi Logic; Velleman How to Prove It; Logicomix (popular but rigorous structural intro) |
| Intermediate | Boolos-Burgess-Jeffrey Computability and Logic; Mendelson Introduction to Mathematical Logic |
| Master | Shoenfield Mathematical Logic; Marker Model Theory; Kanamori The Higher Infinite (set theory at master); Lean / Mathlib formalization of foundational results (cross-cites math §01) |
Lean status note. 20.01 is the one phil subsection where Lean has direct purchase — propositional and first-order logic are exactly what formal verification handles. Master-tier units in 20.01 should aim for lean_status: full where Mathlib's logic libraries cover the result.
20.02 Philosophy of mathematics
| Tier | Anchor |
|---|---|
| Beginner | Russell Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy; Hofstadter Gödel, Escher, Bach (popular but structurally serious) |
| Intermediate | Shapiro Thinking About Mathematics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics; Brown Philosophy of Mathematics: A Contemporary Introduction to the World of Proofs and Pictures |
| Master | Shapiro Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology; Maddy Realism in Mathematics + Naturalism in Mathematics; Benacerraf-Putnam Philosophy of Mathematics anthology (Benacerraf's "What Numbers Could Not Be" and "Mathematical Truth" are canonical); Field Science Without Numbers; Linnebo Philosophy of Mathematics |
20.03 Philosophy of physics
| Tier | Anchor |
|---|---|
| Beginner | Maudlin Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time; Albert Quantum Mechanics and Experience (early chapters) |
| Intermediate | Albert Quantum Mechanics and Experience; Sklar Philosophy of Physics; Maudlin Philosophy of Physics: Quantum Theory |
| Master | Wallace The Emergent Multiverse (Everettian QM); Bell Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics; Earman Bangs, Crunches, Whimpers, and Shrieks (singularity / GR phil); primary lit (Studies in Hist. & Phil. of Modern Physics) |
20.04 Philosophy of chemistry
The smallest analytic-phil sub-discipline because the field is relatively young.
| Tier | Anchor |
|---|---|
| Beginner | Bensaude-Vincent & Stengers A History of Chemistry (philosophical history) |
| Intermediate | Hendry, Needham, Woody (eds.) Philosophy of Chemistry (Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, vol. 6) — the canonical reference |
| Master | Scerri The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance; primary lit (Foundations of Chemistry) |
20.05 Philosophy of biology
| Tier | Anchor |
|---|---|
| Beginner | Sober Philosophy of Biology (intro); Godfrey-Smith Philosophy of Biology (Princeton intro) |
| Intermediate | Sober Philosophy of Biology (full); Godfrey-Smith Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection |
| Master | Sober Evidence and Evolution; Okasha Evolution and the Levels of Selection; Wilson & Sober Unto Others; primary lit (Biology & Philosophy, Studies in HPS-C) |
20.06 Philosophy of mind
| Tier | Anchor |
|---|---|
| Beginner | Searle Mind: A Brief Introduction; Chalmers The Conscious Mind (intro chapters) |
| Intermediate | Chalmers The Conscious Mind (full); Dennett Consciousness Explained; Block Imagery / Consciousness, Function, and Representation (collected papers) |
| Master | Chalmers (collected papers); primary lit (Journal of Consciousness Studies, Mind & Language); contemporary debates (Tegmark / Tononi IIT vs higher-order theories vs global-workspace) |
20.07 General philosophy of science
| Tier | Anchor |
|---|---|
| Beginner | Okasha Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction; Chalmers What Is This Thing Called Science? |
| Intermediate | Curd-Cover-Pincock Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues (anthology); Kuhn Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Hempel selected papers |
| Master | Salmon Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World; Cartwright How the Laws of Physics Lie + The Dappled World; van Fraassen The Scientific Image; Stanford Exceeding Our Grasp; primary lit (Philosophy of Science, Synthese, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science) |
§6 Mastery endpoints per tier
6.1 Essays
No mastery endpoint. The reader emerges with a stance — testable only over years, not over a chapter.
6.2 Tiered units (across 20.01–07)
| Tier | Endpoint |
|---|---|
| Beginner | Read and accurately summarize the argument in an intro-philosophy paragraph; identify the position being argued for; recognize obvious objections |
| Intermediate | Reconstruct a formal argument from a canonical paper (e.g., Putnam's "What Theories Are Not", Lewis's "How to Define Theoretical Terms", Bell's Speakable); identify hidden premises; produce a counterexample to a stated position; write a paragraph-length defense or critique |
| Master | Read a contemporary primary phil paper (post-2010), assess its argument, identify its place in the existing literature, and write a paragraph-length original response that engages with both the argument and at least one alternative position; do this consistently across the subsection (20.0N)'s scope |
These mirror the math/physics/chem/bio mastery endpoints in structure (testable, evidence-able) while honoring philosophy's specific cognitive moves.
6.3 Machine-verifiability
Per BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md §5: phil at I/M tier is very low machine-verifiable (lowest of the five domains). Argument reconstruction at intermediate tier can be partially LLM-checked ("does the reconstruction preserve premise-conclusion structure"); at master tier, only human review counts.
Exception: 20.01 Logic and formal methods at Master tier where Lean covers the formal results — that subset is machine-verifiable like math. This makes 20.01 the easiest analytic-phil subsection to ship at scale.
§7 Cross-domain link contract — phil-specific specifics
7.1 Inbound hooks (the dominant direction)
Phil receives hooks_out from all four other domains. The expected target distribution (rough, to be updated after Wave 2):
| Source domain | Likely target subsections |
|---|---|
| Math | 20.01 logic, 20.02 phil-of-math |
| Physics | 20.03 phil-of-physics (heaviest landing site, esp. from §12 QM and §13 GR); also 20.07 for explanation / theory questions |
| Chemistry | 20.04 phil-of-chem (sparse); 20.07 for reduction questions |
| Biology | 20.05 phil-of-biology (heavy, esp. from §19 eco/evo); 20.06 phil-of-mind (from §17.09 + §18.05) |
7.2 Outbound hooks (the rare direction)
Phil can emit hooks_out back into science units. Examples:
- A unit on
20.03.01 The measurement problem in QMmay hook back to physics12.01.02 Stern-Gerlach("see also: the experimental setup this debate centers on"). - A unit on
20.05.02 Units of selectionmay hook back to bio19.03.NNnatural selection units. - An essay may hook back to multiple units across multiple domains as "where this view shows up empirically."
Validator treats phil's outbound hooks identically — proposed/confirmed, why ≥ 30 chars, etc.
7.3 The "see also" footer convention (UI-level, not contract-level)
Per BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md §2.5: every science unit that hooks into a phil target should, when rendered, display a "Philosophical questions this raises" footer linking to the phil targets. This is a rendering convention — site-side — not a frontmatter contract; the data is already in hooks_out.
7.4 Pending-hook absorption for phil
Per BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md §3.6 step 1: this plan's Wave 1 backlog is informed by harvesting manifests/connections.json for kind: proposed edges with target in §20. At this writing, that backlog is empty (no physics/chem/bio units have shipped yet under the new contract). It will populate as those Wave 1 units ship. The phil plan revisits its seed-unit choices once that backlog is non-empty.
§8 First wave — essay retrofit + 2 tiered seed units
Three deliverables, executed in this order:
8.1 Essay ID retrofit (mandatory)
Required by BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md §10 step 4. Adds id: 20.essays.NN frontmatter to each existing essay:
| File | Assigned ID |
|---|---|
01-reflexivity.md |
20.essays.01 |
02-geometry-of-disclosure.md |
20.essays.02 |
03-perfected-figure.md |
20.essays.03 |
04-what-passes-between.md |
20.essays.04 |
05-practice.md |
20.essays.05 |
06-realization.md |
20.essays.06 |
Each essay also gets an applies_to: frontmatter field listing the section numbers it can be cross-referenced from (likely [20] for all 6 since they're integrative; deferred per-essay to retrofit-time).
8.2 Two tiered seed units
Chosen because they are the highest-leverage inbound-hook targets — the topics that the other four domains' Wave-1 units will most likely want to hook into:
| Seed | ID | Subsection | Why this one |
|---|---|---|---|
| The measurement problem in QM | 20.03.01 |
Phil-of-physics | Physics §12 Wave 1 ships Stern-Gerlach (12.01.02). Every QM interpretation question hooks here. Most-densely-anticipated phil target. Anchored in Albert + Maudlin + Wallace. |
| The unit of selection | 20.05.02 |
Phil-of-biology | Bio §19 Wave 1 ships Hardy-Weinberg (19.02.01). Every "what is selection acting on" question hooks here. Anchored in Sober + Okasha. |
Two units, not more, because: (a) Wave 1's purpose is to validate the contract on canonical analytic-phil topics; (b) reviewer recruitment for phil is itself a bottleneck (§9); (c) the backlog from other domains is still empty at draft time, so seeding more than two without those signals is premature.
8.3 Sequence
20.essays retrofit (all 6, batch) → 20.03.01 measurement problem → 20.05.02 unit of selection.
Rationale:
- Retrofit first because it's blocking other plans' validators and is mechanical (no content change).
- Measurement problem second because phil-of-physics has the densest hook surface and is the cleanest analytic-phil topic to start with.
- Unit of selection third because it tests
hooks_outto bio at the same time ashooks_infrom bio, exercising bidirectional cross-domain edges.
8.4 Success criteria (Wave 1 phil)
- All 6 essays carry
id: 20.essays.NNandapplies_to:frontmatter; validator resolves cross-refs into them. -
20.03.01and20.05.02exist incontent/20-philosophy/, structured as tiered units with B/I/M sections, frontmatterhooks_out, anchored references. -
20.03.01declareshooks_out → 12.01.02Stern-Gerlach (kind: proposedregardless of target ship state — promotion toconfirmedrequires a physics-side reviewer's semantic-correctness attestation per umbrella §3.2, which is not part of Wave 1). -
20.05.02declareshooks_out → 19.02.01Hardy-Weinberg (kind: proposed, same rule). - Validator resolves all phil cross-refs in the site build.
- At least one science unit from physics/bio Wave 1 references
20.03.01or20.05.02directly (closes the inbound-hook loop on those targets). - Retro in
docs/pilot-lessons.md— what worked, what didn't, what the analytic-phil rubric needs.
The wave fails if:
- The essay retrofit breaks the existing site's rendering of philosophy essays. (Validators must be additive, not breaking.)
- The bidirectional hook on
20.05.02 ↔ 19.02.01doesn't actually resolve inconnections.json.
(The Lean-anchor expectation applies to 20.01 Logic and formal methods only, not to 20.03 phil-of-physics — see §6.3 machine-verifiability note.)
8.5 Production strategy
| Item | Strategy | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Essay retrofit | Automation + spot-check | Mechanical frontmatter addition; one script + visual check; not authoring |
20.03.01 measurement problem |
Manual | First analytic-phil unit; needs human author judgment on philosophical-position rendering |
20.05.02 unit of selection |
Manual | Same; ships before agent-drafted phil is attempted |
Agent-drafted phil units are deferred to Wave 2 at earliest. Manual gives us the rubric calibration we need — and analytic phil has a higher prose-craft demand than mechanism-explanation does.
§9 Reviewer roster
The hardest reviewer-recruitment problem in the project. Phil reviewers:
- Cannot be the same people as the science reviewers (different training).
- Are not typically integrated into the cross-disciplinary review processes the science domains use.
- Cover sub-disciplines that are themselves siloed (phil-of-physics ≠ phil-of-biology in practitioner pool).
| Subsection | Tyler-solo? | Outside reviewer needed |
|---|---|---|
20.essays |
Yellow (synthesis writing is a Tyler-strength based on the existing 6 essays) | Optional external read for new essays |
20.01 logic |
Yellow with Lean grounding | Logician for Master-tier (where Mathlib doesn't cover) |
20.02 phil-of-math |
Yellow with math grounding | Phil-of-math specialist for Master |
20.03 phil-of-physics |
Yellow / Red | Phil-of-physics specialist (with physics-side credentialing) for I/M |
20.04 phil-of-chem |
Red | Phil-of-chem specialist (small field; may need to commission) |
20.05 phil-of-bio |
Yellow / Red | Phil-of-bio specialist for I/M |
20.06 phil-of-mind |
Red | Phil-of-mind specialist for I/M (this is one of the most contested subfields in philosophy) |
20.07 general phil-of-science |
Yellow / Red | Phil-of-science generalist for I/M |
Recruitment priority (in order):
- Phil-of-physics + phil-of-biology specialist OR generalist phil-of-science specialist with strong cross-domain reading — covers the densest hook landing sites (20.03 + 20.05). Single highest-leverage hire.
- Phil-of-math + logic specialist — covers 20.01 + 20.02 + the formal side of 20.07.
- Phil-of-mind specialist — covers 20.06; can't easily be substituted.
20.04 (phil-of-chem) is small enough that commissioning a one-off review for each Master-tier unit is acceptable in v1; no dedicated reviewer required.
Tyler-as-essay-reviewer. The synthesis-essay role is the one place where Tyler is plausibly the right reviewer — the existing 6 essays demonstrate the project's voice. New essays go through Tyler review by default. Tiered units do not, except in 20.essays.NN.
LLM-augmented review is least reliable here. LLMs can catch obvious argument errors and bad citations; they cannot adjudicate live philosophical disputes. Master-tier phil units should be held in draft until a human reviewer is named.
§10 Open questions (deferred)
| Question | Deferred to | Why now is wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Should ethics / political phil / aesthetics get a §20.08+ subsection in v2? | v2 scope discussion | v1 is explicitly math-sciences-focused; expanding to normative phil is a different product question |
Does 20.essays need internal sub-organization (e.g., a 20.essays.philosophical/, 20.essays.contemplative/) once it grows past ~10? |
After essay count exceeds 10 | Premature with 6 essays |
Should 20.06 phil-of-mind absorb a "cognitive science" interface as bio fills in §17.09 + §18.05? |
After Wave 2 bio | Premature; bio sets the agenda for what the phil side wants to absorb |
| Whether to introduce a "history of science" subsection as v1 grows | Probably v2; lean against | Not a sub-discipline of phil-of-science proper; would distort §20 scope |
How essays handle citation — same [ref: source] system as units, or freer narrative referencing? |
Per-essay; default to the same system | Forcing strict citation may not survive the essay's voice (the existing 6 use a different reference style) |
Does the synthesis-mode register need its own style guide separate from style/editorial-voice.md? |
After 3 new essays accumulate | Premature; revisit when the pattern is observable |
§11 Risks
| Risk | Mitigation |
|---|---|
| Reviewer recruitment for phil stalls completely; master-tier phil units accumulate in draft | Restrict phil to Beginner+Intermediate until ≥ 1 of each priority-reviewer-role is named. Synthesis essays can ship under Tyler review without external phil credentials. |
| The two registers (essays + analytic units) feel like different products on the same site | Site rendering treats them differently but visibly related — /philosophy route shows both, with the essay arc as featured content and the tiered units as a search-and-browse catalog. UI work for BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md site phase. |
| Analytic phil-of-physics or phil-of-bio units default to one position (e.g., Everettian QM, or gene-selectionism) and present it as canonical | Mastery rubric requires that each unit covers the position space, not advocates for one; reviewer enforces. This is a known failure mode in popular analytic-phil teaching. |
| Essay accumulation pace becomes unsustainable as more essays seem warranted | Soft cap 12, hard cap 20 (§4.4) enforces discipline. Each new essay requires explicit "couldn't be a unit because X" justification at review. |
| Cross-domain hook flow becomes uneven — physics dumps 30 hooks into 20.03 while chem barely touches 20.04 | Acceptable; this is real. 20.04 phil-of-chem will be smaller than 20.03 phil-of-physics because the underlying analytic-phil subfield is. No artificial balancing. |
| The 6 existing essays' style conflicts with the analytic-unit style and the project looks tonally inconsistent | Style guide for 20.01–07 follows style/editorial-voice.md; 20.essays.NN continues its existing voice. The two registers are visibly different — by design — and the site treats them as such. |
| Phil-of-mind (20.06) becomes a magnet for fringe content (panpsychism, simulation theory, etc.) at master tier | Master-tier sources are the gatekeeping — Chalmers, Block, Dennett are the standard; popular and fringe positions appear only insofar as they are responded to in the canonical literature. |
§12 Decision log entries (to be added to OVERVIEW.md §12 on the same date)
| Date | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-17 | Philosophy adopts hybrid mode: existing synthesis essays continue at 20.essays.NN; new tiered analytic-philosophy units at 20.01–07.NN |
Essays cannot subsume analytic argument-reconstruction (no testable endpoint); tiered units cannot subsume the integrative arc of essays. Two registers, both load-bearing. |
| 2026-05-17 | §20 subsection allocation locked: 20.essays + 20.01 logic + 20.02 phil-of-math + 20.03 phil-of-physics + 20.04 phil-of-chem + 20.05 phil-of-bio + 20.06 phil-of-mind + 20.07 general phil-of-science |
Mirrors the science domains plus logic; ethics / political / aesthetics out of v1; subsection-per-domain makes cross-domain hook contract clean |
| 2026-05-17 | Essay retrofit: 6 existing essays get IDs 20.essays.01 … 20.essays.06 |
Required by umbrella §10 step 4; mechanical change; unblocks cross-refs from other domains |
| 2026-05-17 | Initial essay budget: soft cap 12, hard cap 20 by end of v1 | Essays accumulate without validator discipline; explicit caps prevent register drift |
| 2026-05-17 | 20.01 is the one phil subsection that targets lean_status: full at master tier where Mathlib covers |
Propositional + first-order logic + parts of computability are exactly what Mathlib covers; this is the bridge between phil and the math/Lean pipeline |
| 2026-05-17 | Wave 1 phil: essay retrofit + 2 tiered seed units (20.03.01 measurement problem, 20.05.02 unit of selection) |
Highest-leverage hook landing sites for physics and bio Wave 1; calibrates analytic-phil rubric on canonical topics; reviewer recruitment gates more |
| 2026-05-17 | Tyler is the default reviewer for 20.essays.NN; tiered units require outside reviewers per §9 priority list |
Synthesis writing is a demonstrated Tyler strength (the 6 existing essays); analytic phil is not — be honest about this |
| 2026-05-17 | Master-tier phil units held in draft if no named human reviewer is available; LLM-augmented review explicitly not sufficient for master | Phil mastery endpoints (assess primary lit, write original response) are the least machine-verifiable in the whole project |
§13 Next immediate actions
Gated on BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md §10 patches (UNIT_SPEC + validator + OVERVIEW patches) AND chem/bio Wave 1 retros so the phil-side seed slate can be adjusted if the inbound-hook taxonomy from those waves differs from this plan's prediction:
- Essay retrofit pass — write
scripts/retrofit_essay_ids.py(mechanical: parse the 6 essay files, prependid:andapplies_to:to frontmatter, idempotent). Run; spot-check rendering of/philosophy/01-reflexivityetc. for regressions; commit. - Reviewer recruitment — start outreach for the three priority reviewer roles (§9). This is the longest-pole item for phil, so start immediately.
- Sourcing pass —
reference/_meta/SOURCES.mdextensions for phil. Phil sourcing is harder than science sourcing because much canonical phil is in copyrighted anthologies; identify which works have open / fair-use accessible versions. - Coverage manifest —
manifests/production/phil-coverage.jsonmapping the §20 subsection anchor literature to (eventually) Codex unit IDs. - Harvest pending-hook backlog — once Physics + Chemistry + Biology Wave 1 units have shipped, query
manifests/connections.jsonforkind: proposededges targeting §20; absorb each into the phil-side backlog perBIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md§3.6. - Produce
20.03.01measurement problem manually — first analytic-phil unit; establishes the analytic-phil rubric. - Retro on
20.03.01— what's missing in the analytic-phil pedagogy spec; update the rubric. - Produce
20.05.02unit of selection manually. - Cross-domain audit on Wave 1 phil: did the bidirectional hooks (
20.03.01 ↔ 12.01.02and20.05.02 ↔ 19.02.01) resolve? Are there obvious missing hooks from the other domains? - Update the existing
philosophy.tsxroute and the_layout.tsxphilosophy nav-link to expose both registers — essays as the featured arc, tiered units as a browse catalog. (Site work — coordinate with whoever is doing site updates afterBIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md§10 step 4.)
This plan is the canonical reference for the philosophy axis and concludes the per-domain plan sequence. When uncertain about phil mode, subsection allocation, or essay-vs-unit decisions, check here. When updating, propagate to OVERVIEW.md §12 and BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md §6 the same day.
With this plan drafted, the five-domain expansion has a complete planning surface: one umbrella + four per-domain plans. The next phase is implementation — UNIT_SPEC and validator patches, OVERVIEW decision-log appends, Physics Wave 1 production, then chem ∥ bio production informed by physics retro, then phil informed by everything else. See BIBLE_EXPANSION_PLAN.md §6 for the operational sequence.