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Response posted on January 20, 2010 by Peter Smith
You ask for multiple perspectives: so let me start the ball rolling. "Who are the top contemporary atheists working in philosophy today?" Maybe it's because I'm working in England which is a pretty irreligious country, but most of the good...
Religion Show

Response posted on December 5, 2009 by Peter Smith
It sounds as if you have relatively little background in philosophy. So I would suggest that, after doing an MA in the History of Philosophy, it would be wise to do another one in contemporary philosophy before doing a PhD,...
Profession Show

Response posted on November 21, 2009 by Peter Smith
The short answer is: yes, you are right, a course on modal logic would be the one that probably will relate a little to a philosophy of religion course (it will help you understand e.g. modal ontological arguments).But I think...
Education, Logic, Religion Show

Response posted on October 26, 2009 by Peter Smith
You certainly don't need to be able to do original research in maths to be able to work on the philosophy of maths. But you will need to be able to follow whatever maths is particularly relevant to your philosophical...
Mathematics, Philosophy, Profession Show

Response posted on October 11, 2009 by Peter Smith
It doesn't take much science-fiction imagination to conceive of creatures -- Klingons, or whatever! -- who work differently. When their equanimity is disturbed, e.g. by relationships falling apart, then they naturally recover their emotional balance after a while, so long...
Happiness Show

Response posted on September 28, 2009 by Peter Smith
This does sound a bit like a question asking for help with a student paper, which isn't really the role of this site: and certainly this sort of techie question doesn't lend itself to a snappy answer here. So just...
Logic Show

Response posted on September 28, 2009 by Peter Smith
I'm not quite sure what is meant by "sublime insight"! But anyway, serious philosophy involves negotiating your way around thickets of argument. Philosophical originality is a matter of finding new moves to make (or breathing new live into old moves)...
Philosophy, Profession Show

Response posted on September 24, 2009 by Peter Smith
Well, there is a logical truth in the vicinity of 1 + 1 = 2. Or perhaps better, a whole family of logical truths. Fix on a pair of properties F and G. Then it is a theorem of first-order...
Logic, Mathematics Show

Response posted on September 23, 2009 by Peter Smith
I'd say: if you've done a maths course or two already, then you should have learnt some lessons about arguing rigorously and giving absolutely clear gap-free proofs. Doing further courses won't teach you any more about that. So if you...
Education, Philosophy Show

Response posted on September 22, 2009 by Peter Smith
The usual story is roughly this. The quantifiers of a first-order logic (ordinary universal and existential quantifiers; or perhaps fancier dyadic quantifiers) range over objects in some given domain. A second-order logic, as well as having those first-order quantifiers, has...
Logic Show

Response posted on September 18, 2009 by Peter Smith
Insensitivity to suffering is indeed a bad thing. But Sally Haslanger's seeming implication that a willingness to kill animals and eat them requires insensitivity to suffering is highly contentious. I might happily go out of a late evening with gun...
Animals, Ethics Show

Response posted on September 17, 2009 by Peter Smith
Another hint (and a rather shorter read!!): the opening pages of To mock a mockingbird and other logic puzzles by Raymond M. Smullyan. I couldn't possibly recommend looking via Google Books. :-) ...
Logic Show

Response posted on September 17, 2009 by Peter Smith
"But love is blind and lovers cannot see/The pretty follies that themselves commit", as Jessica says in the Merchant of Venice. "But if thy love were ever like to mine/How many actions most ridiculous/Hast thou been drawn to by thy...
Love Show

Response posted on September 17, 2009 by Peter Smith
Is it worth exposing flaws in the reasoning for a position, even if you haven't something better to replace it with? Certainly. At the very least, revealing flaws ought to make proponents less dogmatic in their endorsing of the position:...
Ethics, Logic Show

Response posted on September 17, 2009 by Peter Smith
Suppose you and an enthusiastic partner have fun getting very imaginative with your video camera. Then after the event -- your partner away for a while, and with their encouragement -- you amuse yourself watching the results, and thereby "consume"...
Ethics, Sex Show

Response posted on September 16, 2009 by Peter Smith
Let me recycle the answer I gave to an earlier question.It is indeed a truism that, when I act, it is as a result of my desires, my intentions, my goals. After all, if my arm moves independently of my...
Ethics Show

Response posted on September 16, 2009 by Peter Smith
Well, yes of course, two incompetent reasoners could reach different conclusions by making different mistakes! So I take it the question is: could two people reason correctly to different conclusions from the same premisses?But again the answer to that is,...
Logic Show

Response posted on September 10, 2009 by Peter Smith
Jennifer Church points out a couple of types of a case where irrationally formed beliefs (or degrees of belief, in the over-confidence case) can promote our welfare. Sure there are such cases. But that doesn't affect the original point at...
Happiness, Philosophy, Rationality Show

Response posted on September 10, 2009 by Peter Smith
Mitch and I posted our responses simultaneously! I agree very much with his ... I'm not sure it is true that most philosophers talk in a way incomprehensible to non-professionals -- at least when they are trying to address...
Language, Philosophers Show

Response posted on September 3, 2009 by Peter Smith
Just a footnote to Mark Collier's helpful post. I actually said that irrationally formed beliefs are not likely to lead to actions which get us what we want (rather than cannot get us what we want). And that claim is...
Happiness, Philosophy, Rationality Show




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