Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"Over 1500 professional philosophers are donating their time and labor to collaboratively write, referee, and maintain our reference work. Our goal is to offer high-quality and authoritative discussions about values, science, religion, politics, and ideas in general. Our authors and editors are jointly producing entries on such topics as democracy, civil rights, quantum mechanics, consciousness, voluntary euthanasia, and on many other topics important to the human condition, all freely available. "