Thesis-antithesis-synthesis reasoning for navigating genuine trade-offs and conflicting requirements. Use when opposing forces are both valid, binary choices are false, or stakeholder conflicts need resolution. Unlike ToT (picks winner), DR synthesizes opposites. Example: "Centralized vs decentralized architecture" → Neither is "right"; find synthesis that captures benefits of both.
Flip core assumptions to reveal hidden constraints and alternative approaches - "what if the opposite were true?"
Understand how ideas evolved over time to find old solutions for new problems and avoid repeating past failures
Force unrelated concepts together to discover emergent properties - "What if we treated X like Y?"
Master African philosophical traditions including Ubuntu, Africana philosophy, and postcolonial thought. Use for: communitarian ethics, personhood, African metaphysics, decolonial philosophy. Triggers: 'Ubuntu', 'African philosophy', 'Africana', 'communitarian', 'postcolonial', 'decolonial', 'sage philosophy', 'ethnophilosophy', 'Negritude', 'African humanism', 'ubuntu ethics', 'communalism', 'African ontology', 'personhood Africa', 'I am because we are'.
Master aesthetics - philosophy of beauty, art, and aesthetic experience. Use for: beauty, art theory, taste, sublime, creativity. Triggers: 'beauty', 'beautiful', 'aesthetic', 'art', 'sublime', 'creativity', 'taste', 'artistic', 'expression', 'representation', 'aesthetic experience', 'aesthetic judgment', 'art definition', 'Kant aesthetics', 'formalism', 'expressionism'.
Flip core assumptions to reveal hidden constraints and alternative approaches - "what if the opposite were true?"
Theological governance ensuring alignment with Christian faith
Master epistemology - the theory of knowledge, justification, and belief. Use for: knowledge, justification, skepticism, sources of knowledge, epistemic virtue. Triggers: 'knowledge', 'epistemology', 'justification', 'belief', 'Gettier', 'skepticism', 'certainty', 'evidence', 'testimony', 'perception', 'reason', 'a priori', 'empirical', 'reliability', 'internalism', 'externalism', 'foundationalism', 'coherentism'.
Master phenomenological methodology - describing structures of experience. Use for: analyzing lived experience, consciousness, intentionality. Triggers: 'phenomenology', 'phenomenological', 'epoche', 'bracketing', 'Husserl', 'lived experience', 'intentionality', 'eidetic', 'reduction', 'life-world', 'Lebenswelt', 'noesis', 'noema', 'first-person', 'experience as lived'.
Design, analyze, and evaluate philosophical thought experiments. Use when: creating new thought experiments to probe specific intuitions, analyzing existing thought experiments for hidden assumptions, generating variants that isolate different variables, stress-testing philosophical positions through scenarios, exploring edge cases. Triggers: 'thought experiment', 'imagine', 'suppose', 'hypothetical', 'what if scenario', 'intuition pump', 'trolley problem', 'zombie', 'Mary's room', 'Chinese room', 'experience machine', 'teletransportation', 'original position', 'veil of ignorance', 'Gettier case'.
Independent thinking framework using first-principles reasoning to break down problems, evaluate opinions, make decisions, and find truth without relying on authority, social proof, or conventional wisdom. Use when Claude needs to: (1) Analyze problems from fundamental truths instead of accepting assumptions, (2) Evaluate arguments and opinions to identify logical fallacies and hidden premises, (3) Make decisions based on first principles rather than following others, (4) Cut through controversial debates to find underlying truths, (5) Think independently instead of accepting conventional wisdom
Master philosophy of language - meaning, reference, truth, speech acts. Use for: semantics, pragmatics, meaning theory, reference. Triggers: 'meaning', 'reference', 'Frege', 'sense', 'Kripke', 'speech act', 'semantics', 'pragmatics', 'truth conditions', 'propositions', 'names', 'descriptions', 'rigid designator', 'natural kind', 'context', 'indexical'.
Understand how ideas evolved over time to find old solutions for new problems and avoid repeating past failures
Use when facing complex problems that need multi-perspective analysis, when stuck in one way of thinking, or when you want to approach a problem like an expert from a different field would
Force unrelated concepts together to discover emergent properties - "What if we treated X like Y?"
Master Continental philosophy and Critical Theory. Use for: post-structuralism, deconstruction, Frankfurt School, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis. Triggers: 'Foucault', 'power/knowledge', 'deconstruction', 'Derrida', 'différance', 'critical theory', 'Frankfurt School', 'Adorno', 'Habermas', 'genealogy', 'discourse', 'Lacan', 'Deleuze', 'rhizome', 'biopolitics', 'ideology', 'alienation', 'reification', 'hermeneutics', 'Gadamer', 'post-structuralism', 'logocentrism'.
Flip core assumptions to reveal hidden constraints and alternative approaches - "what if the opposite were true?"
Master ethical theory - metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Use for: moral philosophy, right/wrong, virtue, duty, consequences, moral realism. Triggers: 'moral', 'ethical', 'ethics', 'right', 'wrong', 'virtue', 'duty', 'consequences', 'deontology', 'utilitarianism', 'virtue ethics', 'metaethics', 'moral realism', 'consequentialism', 'Kantian', 'categorical imperative', 'trolley problem', 'moral dilemma'.
Reframe problems using Scott Adams' philosophy from "Reframe Your Brain". User describes a problem, concern, or situation and gets sardonic, pragmatic perspective shifts with actionable steps and custom affirmations.
Cognitive trap detection and logic fallacy identification. Use when making decisions, evaluating approaches, risk assessment, or detecting faulty reasoning in arguments.
