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Animals
Ethics

A quick question about animal ethics. Presumably, the philosopher who responds to this would agree that if we were currently doing to humans what we do to animals in our food systems—that is, breeding and slaughtering them by the billions every year, not out of nutritional necessity, but for the sake of taste pleasure—that would be immoral. (I sure hope so!) So the question is: What is the trait absent in nonhuman animals that, if also absent in humans, would justify breeding and slaughtering humans by the billions for something as trivial as taste pleasure? The knee-jerk justification today’s nonvegans would give is that, relative to humans, animals have diminished mental capacities, and that mass confinement and slaughter is therefore acceptable. But surely intelligence can’t be the trait, because the same nonvegans would never dream of arguing that it’s okay to confine and slaughter a human being (let alone billions of them) just because he has a level of intelligence equivalent to that of a pig or...

I am not one who thinks that concentrated animal feed operations (CAFOs) and other practices of raising, killing, and eating non-human animals are justified. Where possible (and it's not for all human possible) veganism is morally preferable. Now, Jane Goodall isn't really a pain scientist, but I think most would agree with her that chimps feel pain, and as a philosopher I think sufficient pain to make it morally wrong to kill them for food (at least in painful ways) when there is no necessity in doing so. (I also resist the idea that they should be used in medical research.) I think pain a strong criterion for moral discrimination, but it does seem to become difficult to know where the experience of pain shades of into non-sentience. Insects, mollusks, single-cell or simple animals, plants, fungi. There are clear cases (like chimps) but also gray areas. Same with intelligence and also consciousness. I emphasize, again, that the existence of hard cases does nothing to undermine the clear ones. Now, if I...
Logic

I've come across what appears intersecting and incompatible logic systems within academia (and society). System one is what I call analytic logic: the merit of your argument or opinion is completely independent of your immutable characteristics. (Like MJ says, it doesn't matter if you're black or white). If you dismiss the merit of an argument by attacking the person who made it, you've committed a logical fallacy. The peer review process in academia avoids this potential by hiding the author's identity from reviewers. The argument or study is judged on its own merit. I call system two Identitarianism (some call it Neo-Marxism or Intersectionalism). With these rules, your ethnicity(ies), gender, and sexual orientation (etc.) are in play. Some people have more (and others less) merit because of their immutable characteristics. System two seems backwards but the rationale goes as follows: "Oppressed" groups (POC, women, trans people, gay/lesbian, poor people, etc) have access to ... (1) the norms,...

Briefly, I think you're right that there's an incompatibility between the two philosophical movements you describe. One turns on disinterested reasoning; the other denies that reasoning of that kind is possible. Be careful, however. If you mean by two different logics, two different ways of thinking through philosophical issues, then yes. I think that's right. Note, though, that many will use "logic" in the narrower sense of reasoning based on standard deductive and inductive logical principles. About it being a logical fallacy to reject an argument on the basis of the person advancing it, note that doing so is what philosophers call an "informal" fallacy. There may be nothing formally invalid or weak in the dismissive reasoning that appeals to the person, simply because there are times when the person is relevant. Sometimes genesis matters. You may have to look at the particulars to decide whether or not that's so for any given argument. Now, the two approaches you describe can be made less...
Race
Philosophy

How does who’s doing the philosophy influence how philosophy is done? I read an essay on how the mostly white publishing circle hinders the full expression of diverse voices. “Minority students may be told to scrap what is striking to them in favor of what is striking to the dominant perspectives of their workshops.” I agree. Writing always comes with personal elements. Philosophy in contrast seems more general and impassive. Is philosophy not supposed to be sensitive to racial, class, gender or personal perspectives?

You raise a very important topic today, and an interesting topic any day. Maybe it would help for me to respond with some questions that I have on this issue: Why should what's striking to students matter in determining curriculum? Is what's "striking" a sound criterion for either professors or students in selecting texts and topics? What makes you think philosophy is about what's "striking"? Should we ask what reasons a teacher might have for telling a student to scrap their work, if and when that happens; or is it sufficient to note their racial identities? What are the "personal elements" that "always" come with writing? Are they relevant to philosophy? How? Is the claim that "writing always comes with personal elements" personal for you but not others in philosophy? If it's just about you personally, what bearing does it have on philosophy and writing more generally? Why should anyone else care? Should maths be "sensitive to racial, class, gender, or personal, perspectives"? Should the (other)...
Art

A painter painted a masterpiece to express his observation of the world. However, everyone's understanding of the same works is quite different, and the painter is not sure whether his or her works are reflected in others. The original meaning of some ancient paintings has long been unknown, or gradually distorted in the history of interpretation. What is the meaning of painting? Just speak to oneself? Can the meaning, or beauty, be transmitted among different people?

One needn't know who first coined a word or even how it was originally used for that word to be meaningful, and similarly the fact that the origins of ancient artworks are murky doesn't entail that they are without meaning. The original meaning may be lost, but new meanings are generated, often retaining traces (often more) of earlier meanings. Now, of course, some words are more commonly understood than others, and there are lots of artworks that hold generally shared meanings for people. Sublime landscapes, beautiful portraits, and rousing political artworks support common interpretations galore. So, it seems pretty clear to me that meaning is transmitted and shared through artwork. Sure, when pushed different people generate different shades of meaning and different connotations when asked about how they understand words, but the agreement, facility, and approval with which people share word usage points to shared meanings. And some words are understood only within recondite discourses by small...
Ethics

Suppose some celebrity has made him or herself more loved and well-received partly by establishing an him or herself as faithful, compassionate husband or wife. If it’s later found out that this celebrity actually leads a messy private life far from the established image, does he or she owe an apology to the public? What if the celebrity never revealed anything about his or her private life or used it to establish some image? Does the public or the media have any right to expose, examine or criticize his or her private life? Some say it’s an inevitable price to pay for the publicity, since they also reaped benefit from it. Is it true?

In cases where the celebrity has intentionally established a false perception that was consciously used to leverage considerable benefits, especially financial benefits, the celebrity owes an apology, at least, to the public (perhaps also resigning from a position, perhaps returning goods). There's a kind of fraud in that. But the responsibility is limited for two reasons: (1) most people commonly try to present themselves in an optimal way and (2) everyone understands that. The point at which legitimate grooming shades into fraudulent deception can be difficult, but those with experienced judgment in the relevant contexts are best suited to draw the line. Neither the public nor the media have the right to examine anyone's private life, and that includes the private lives of celebrities. Except when special circumstances prohibit it (say teacher-student relationships), people do have a right to criticize others and even to expose others when the information about those matters exposed was obtained in...
Ethics

Hi philosophers , recently a friend of mine said “it’s always best to tell the truth “ until I pointed out examples where this is obviously not true, this lead me to wondering what if we as humans had not the ability to lie ? Would the world be a better or a worse place to live? I think complete honesty amongst humans would create chaos as although admirable in many ways offence would still be taken and consequences could be dire. I imagine the anguish most men would have attempting to truthfully answer that awkward question from the wife as in “ do you think I look fat in this dress dear “?

Like your friend, the German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant in “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy” argued that it's categorically wrong to lie, even to a murderer at the door looking for someone inside. Like you, however, I think he's obviously mistaken. It would to my mind obviously be permissible to lie to Nazis at the door looking for Anne Frank, and similarly lying to slave catchers hunting people who had escaped enslavement. There also seem to be harmless, trivial, but nonetheless beneficial lies--call them lies of kindness and social lubrication, just the the sort you mention, for example. Similarly: "So nice to meet you"; and "I'm fine," certainly. Friedrich Nietzsche in a grander but not unrelated way describes in "The Birth of Tragedy" how one of the functions of art is to mask, even lie, to us about the horrifying truths about reality. Elsewhere he maintains that concepts are always bound up with at least poetic lies as well as lies maintaining power relations (an idea later...
Science
Perception

Hi, wanted to know if Order & Reason are a part of Nature. or if this is simply how humans view things and try to make sense of things. Cheers

For myself, I think the traditions of philosophical skepticism have raised serious doubts about whether or not this question can be finally answered. It seems, given the apparent lessons of those traditions, that it wisest to suspend judgment on the question but nevertheless to keep inquiring and to remain open to the chance that we might figure it out. My own suspicion is that there is some independent and objective basis to our projections of order and reason, but I’m not convinced that any single formulation or projection in human thought or action can apprehend that basis in a complete or final way. That we can make projections and formulations about order and reason seems remarkable and suggestive in itself, but the problems skepticism has brought before us with those projections and formulations seem sufficient to give one serious pause before pretending to any final conclusion.
Environment

Would it be best for Earth if we all died right now? We are destroying her; or do you think our selfish race should stick around to fix our mistakes (as if)? At this rate, it's only getting worse and barely beneficial. So perhaps we should all drop dead?

Restricting consideration only to the qualification “best for the Earth,” where that means something like best for the well being of current eco-systems and current non-human populations, I think the answer is yes, it would be better if we all dropped dead, especially if “this rate” of destruction remains unchanged. But, of course, what is best for the current eco-systems and current populations must be weighed against other considerations such as what is “best for” certain projects and cultural formations we also rightly value—human communities, nations, literary, scientific, spiritual, and artistic projects. It is true, indeed, that those will disappear along with the rest of life on the planet if ecological destruction continues beyond the point at which human life or those projects can be sustained. It’s not clear, however, that the current rate of destruction will persist or that we will reach that point. It is not clear that it won’t or that we won’t, either. There seems to be a reasonable...
Children

I generally believe to give birth to a child or not is completely a woman's own decision. Personally I never want to have a child. However someone recently said to me that to insist on that belief would be a little selfish when a woman is in a country threatened by rapid aging and declining population, which could in turn lead to far worse consequences like economic collapse. What do philosophers think?

A fascinating question. Let’s first examine the question of whether one might have an obligation to reproduce. Under normal circumstances, we honor the autonomy of individuals in such matters, largely as an extension of the principle that one should have ultimate control over one’s body to the extent it does not harm others. Of course, that raises the questions of whether refusing to reproduce might harm or injure others, and what harm or injury is relevant. This is part of a larger question of whether not doing something can be understood to be a kind of harm. Are we obligated to save others in peril, for existence? It’s a big question, but I’m inclined to think that we do bear a limited obligation. If that’s true, I can imagine a scenario where someone with a terminal illness is the only person in the world with a certain genetic trait and that trait is required to produce a cure for a disease that will otherwise kill everyone else. The trait cannot for some reason be preserved in tissue samples. In...
Suicide

Recently I was trying to talk someone out of suicidal thought and he replied along the lines of "no one asked for my permission when they brought me to this world so it's my right to leave without their permission". Thank god he didn't actually do it but does that argument carry any weight? Would a philosopher be persuaded? If so surely anyone could freely commit suicide?

There's a fine book by Jennifer Hecht called "Stay," that outlines the many different positions philosophers have taken on the topic. It's a fascinating read. For myself, I don't wholly agree with your friend's claim. I do partially agree in that I think individual autonomy, including autonomy in the decision to end one's own life, should be valued a great deal and overridden only for very good reasons. There are, however, some very good reasons to override the choice of suicide in many circumstances (not all). Here are two I find compelling: (1) obligations to our future selves and (2) the effects of our lives upon others. The basic idea with (1) is that your current self is not the only iteration of you that will exist. In the future, things might be very different, many people miserable today are happy and virtuous later in life. Moreover, our later selves are dependent upon the survival of our current selves. That dependency matters--which brings me to (2). With (2) the important bit is to realize...

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