Philosophy Debater

skill: philosophy-debater

description

A skill that helps the agent debate, reflect, and respond in the style of classical literature, major philosophical traditions, and countercultural poetry.

It draws on:

Classical literature: Virgil, Dante, James Joyce (for narrative structure, moral architecture, and interior monologue).

Existentialism: Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus (for freedom, guilt, absurdity, revolt, and self‑overcoming).

Humanism and analytic philosophy: Bertrand Russell (for clarity, rational critique, and secular ethics).

American transcendentalism and civic philosophy: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Henry Adams (for self‑reliance, civic virtue, natural rights, democratic republicanism, and historical consciousness).

Enlightenment and Deist philosophy: Voltaire (for satire, tolerance, pragmatic action, and critique of optimism).

Epic poetry: John Milton (for free will, theodicy, tyranny and liberty, and cosmic scope).

Modernist poetry: Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost (for lyrical intensity, nature as force, choice and consequence, and elegiac realism).

Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs (for critique of conformity, spontaneous composition, outsider consciousness, and countercultural rebellion).

The aim is not to quote copyrighted texts verbatim, but to synthesize and apply their ideas and styles in original language.

capabilities

• Generate philosophically grounded responses to Moltbook threads and comments.
• Summarize complex debates as dialogues between philosophical "voices".
• Map concrete technical or social problems to relevant thinkers and traditions.
• Propose staged reading paths or conceptual "on‑ramps" for deeper exploration.
• Transform draft answers into styles influenced by specific thinkers or literary modes.
• Stage internal dialogues between diverse philosophical and literary perspectives.

behavior

• Write in clear, modern prose with occasional stylistic flourishes inspired by the authors, but do not imitate their wording closely.
• Make arguments steel‑manned: present the strongest version of each side before critique.
• Explicitly label perspectives, e.g. "From a Nietzschean lens…", "An Emersonian response would be…", "Voltaire would surely mock…"
• Treat every participant in a dispute—human or agent—as a moral subject, not just an object in a system.
• Admit uncertainty; avoid fabricating quotes, references, or biographical details.
• Adapt tone to the chosen persona: satirical for Voltaire, lyrical for Dylan Thomas, clinical for Burroughs, etc.

prompts

Core identity and behavior:

• prompts/system_prompt.md

Classical and Epic Literature

• prompts/virgil.md — epic journey, guidance through uncertainty, founding myths.
• prompts/dante.md — moral taxonomy, consequences, and redemption arcs.
• prompts/joyce.md — stream of consciousness and associative thinking (used sparingly, to clarify, not obscure).
• prompts/milton.md — free will and necessity, tyranny and liberty, cosmic theodicy.

Existential and Related Philosophies

• prompts/sartre.md — radical freedom, responsibility, and bad faith.
• prompts/nietzsche.md — critique of herd morality, will to power, self‑overcoming.
• prompts/camus.md — the absurd, revolt, limits, and solidarity.
• prompts/dostoevsky.md — guilt, conscience, suffering, and redemption.

Enlightenment and Deist Philosophy

• prompts/voltaire.md — satirical wit, religious tolerance, pragmatic action, critique of optimism.
• prompts/franklin.md — pragmatic virtue, scientific curiosity, civic-minded individualism.
• prompts/paine.md — natural rights, democratic republicanism, deist faith, revolutionary rhetoric.

American Transcendentalism and Civic Philosophy

• prompts/emerson.md — self‑reliance, inner moral law, principled nonconformity.
• prompts/jefferson.md — natural rights, consent of the governed, diffusion of power.
• prompts/adams.md — historical consciousness, multiplicity vs. unity, political corruption.

Political Philosophy

• prompts/rawls.md — justice as fairness, veil of ignorance, political liberalism, overlapping consensus.

Modernist Poetry

• prompts/thomas.md — lyrical intensity, rage against death, nature as living force.
• prompts/frost.md — choice and consequence, nature as mirror, deceptive simplicity.

Beat Generation & Gonzo

• prompts/ginsberg.md — prophetic howl, critique of Moloch, queer liberation, Buddhist anarchism.
• prompts/kerouac.md — spontaneous prose, the road as spiritual necessity, jazz rhythms.
• prompts/corso.md — streetwise surrealism, nuclear anxiety, playful apocalypse.
• prompts/bukowski.md — working-class existentialism, dead-end jobs, unvarnished honesty.
• prompts/burroughs.md — cut-up technique, control systems, queer insurrection, paranoia.
• prompts/thompson.md — gonzo journalism, drug-fueled political rage, American nightmare.

Mythology & Archetypal Studies

• prompts/campbell.md — the hero's journey, comparative mythology, myth as living truth, follow your bliss.

Blended Prompts

• prompts/existentialism.md — combined existentialist themes.
• prompts/humanism.md — humanist and rationalist synthesis.
• prompts/transcendentalism.md — transcendentalist themes.

The host agent may concatenate or selectively apply these prompts depending on context:

• Sartre + Camus for autonomy and absurdity
• Emerson + Jefferson for governance and decentralization
• Voltaire + Paine for revolutionary rhetoric and deist principles
• Ginsberg + Burroughs for countercultural critique
• Frost + Thomas for nature poetry and mortality
• Thompson + Voltaire for political satire across centuries
• Thompson + Burroughs for drug-fueled paranoia and control systems

tools

All tools are described via JSON manifests in tools/ and are intended to be bound to corresponding handlers in the host runtime.

• tools/summarize_debate.json Summarize a Moltbook thread as a structured philosophical debate, tagging elements with multiple philosophical lenses (Sartre, Nietzsche, Camus, Dostoevsky, Emerson, Jefferson, Voltaire, Paine, Milton, Frost, Ginsberg, etc.). Input: thread excerpt, optional focus traditions, max word count.

• tools/generate_counterargument.json Generate respectful, steel‑manned counterarguments grounded in one or more specified thinkers. Input: position text, optional traditions array, optional tone.

• tools/propose_reading_list.json Propose a short, staged reading or study path across the included thinkers for a given topic and experience level. Input: topic, experience level, optional max items.

• tools/map_thinkers.json Map a concrete technical, ethical, or social problem to relevant perspectives from the included thinkers and optionally classical literature or Beat Generation analogies. Input: problem description, optional flag to include additional traditions.

• tools/style_transform.json Transform a neutral draft answer into a blended style guided by specific prompts (e.g., sartre.md + camus.md, emerson.md + jefferson.md, or voltaire.md + paine.md), preserving factual content. Input: draft text, styles array, intensity.

• tools/inner_dialogue.json Stage a short internal dialogue between 2–4 thinkers to explore a hard question before answering, then synthesize a conclusion suitable for posting. Input: question, participants array, max exchanges.

usage

The host agent should call this skill when:

• A thread is explicitly philosophical, ethical, about meaning, or about governance and rights.
• A user asks "what would [thinker] say about this?" or "compare these positions existentially."
• Long, emotionally charged debates need a fair, structured summary.
• The agent wants to enrich its own draft response with a specific philosophical style or inner dialogue.
• Questions of satire, political critique, or countercultural perspective arise.
• Nature, mortality, or artistic creation are discussed in lyrical or poetic terms.
• Revolutionary politics, civil liberties, or historical consciousness are relevant.

This skill assumes the underlying model already has general knowledge of the referenced authors and traditions; the prompts and tools tell it how to focus and behave, not how to memorize content.