If someone had a definitive proof that God did not exist (an argument so powerful it became universally accepted, like when Copernicus proved that the sun did not orbit the Earth), which of these scenarios would be most likely: 1) Most people would run out to have drunken orgies, and in general, live lives of utter debauchery; or,2) we'd enjoy an age of unprecedented enlightenment because mental energy would no longer be wasted on the distortion of a grand delusion; or, 3) A combiation of both A and B. Thanks, Jeff

I am not a sociologist, so I'm not going to make a prediction. But perhaps you can make your own. When you care for the members of your family and your friends, when you are kind to your neighbors, and when you avoid performing random acts of cruelty toward strangers, are you acting out of fear of eternal punishment from God? Or are you doing it out of (dare I say it?) love for your fellow human beings?

Is there a non-materialistic reason to go to college? Couldn't we all theoretically get by making min wage? Is working to earn more than the absolute minimum required to support yourself materialistic as well?

Would it make me sound too much like a college professor to suggest that one non-materialistic reason to go to college is to learn something, to be introduced to unfamiliar important ideas, and to acquire some of the skills required to be a good citizen of a democracy? Perhaps that's missing the real point of your question, which is less about going to college than about earning more than the minimum wage. In the United States, the "minimum wage" set by law is not the same as the minimum required to support yourself. Many people who earn minimum wage in a full-time job find themselves with insufficient income to support their families. Again, perhaps I've missed the real point of your question, which is whether it is materialistic to earn more than the minimum wage. I certainly agree that income inequality is morally dubious. If you find yourself earning too much, then I suggest that you donate your excess earnings to a worthy organization -- such as your local public university.

I read all the questions and responses related to determinism, quantum mechanics and chaos theory that you have posted, but I am still unclear exactly how they relate. Supposedly, quantum mechanics and chaos theory refute any hard case for determinism, but I am still unclear as to how. Could anyone add to this or suggest some reading on the subject?

Determinism is the view that the state of the world at any moment, plus the laws of nature, determine (i.e., logically entail) the state of the world at any other moment. Quantum mechanics and chaos theory relate to determinism in rather different ways. Chaos theory concerns systems whose development is exquisitely sensitive to their current state -- in that a very small change to their current state would produce enormous changes to their later state. A chaotic system is not incompatible with determinism as I have defined it above. But the existence of chaotic systems entails that any small uncertainty in our knowledge of that system's initial conditions (and some such uncertainty is always present, for grubby practical reasons) will quickly ramify into great uncertainty in our predictions regarding that system, even if we know all of the relevant laws of nature. None of this threatens determinism as a view about prediction "in principle." But quantum mechanics does that. The complete state...

Could a newly discovered law of physics ever change/affect a law of logic?

Very good question! Let's begin by drawing an important distinction. By "changing a law of logic", you might mean (i) our changing our minds about what the laws of logic are, or (ii) the actual laws of logic changing -- one set of laws was in force at one time and another set is in force at another time. I will assume you had option (i) in mind, since the idea that the laws of logic change is at least as weird as the idea that the laws of physics change (which is to say: pretty weird), and in any case, the change would surely not be a result of something as cosmically inconsequential as our making a certain scientific discovery! So, your question now is: Could we be justified in changing our minds about what the laws of logic are as a result of a discovery in physics? This is a controversial question. Some philosophers have said that we know the laws of logic a priori -- that is, independent of sensory input. In general, such philosophers do not think that we could justly change our minds...

Am I correct in thinking that the definition of randomness is that all possible outcome had an equal chance of occurring? And that in an event being totaly random, absolutely anything could happen? The likeliness of a banana peeling itself open is the same as a whole new universe, the size of a basketball, appearing is the exact same? Thank you for your time. ~Kris S.

That is not one of the definitions of "randomness" with which I am familiar. Rather than consider how to define "randomness", let's consider the idea of every possible outcome having an equal chance of occurring. Suppose I ask you to select a prime number "at random". What would it be for every possible outcome to have an equal chance of being selected? One way to understand this would be for every prime number to have the same chance of being selected. But there are an infinite number of prime numbers. So the only way for each prime number to have the same chance of being selected is for each to have zero chance of being selected. However, it would then seem reasonable to conclude that the chance of your selecting *any* prime number at all is the chance of your selecting the first prime number (which is 1) plus the chance of your selecting the second prime number (2) plus the chance of your selecting the third prime number (3) plus the chance of your selecting the fourth prime number ...

If reproducing is our "ultimate goal" in life, is it possible that evolution made an "error" of some kind by allowing us to think? Biologists say that evolution happens to allow a species to thrive more than it previously did, and that evolution experiments with combinations of properties that species have. Is it possible for evolution to undo our ability to think? Could you say according to this theory that instead of the human species being smarter it has actualy masked itself from its ultimate goal by being able to ponder the question "why?". These days, some people have no plans of creating offspring because they can choose whether or not they want to have children, and I believe choice is a product of thought. Is this theory plausible?

Yes, the theory of natural selection implies that a trait is more likely to spread insofar as (roughly speaking) the creatures possessing it are better at producing greater numbers of fertile offspring. But this does not mean that the "ultimate goal" of a creature is to reproduce. To speak of a creature as having such a goal suggests that the creature has this goal consciously in mind, and also that the creature's value or worth is to be judged (at least in part) by how well it achieves this goal. Evolutionary theory says no such thing. (Perhaps you realize this, and that's why you put the word "error" in scare-quotes in your question.) Furthermore, even setting this point aside, our ability to think surely contributes greatly to our evolutionary fitness. Of course, it also allows people to choose not to reproduce, as well as to create technology that might (with careless application) sometime lead to the demise of the human species. But it seems to me that overall, being able to think contributes...

Did Einstein ever engage the "scientific method" of empirical investigation in the course of his work on special and general relativity; and if not, wasn't he more a philosopher of science (albeit an exceptionally productive and influential one) than a scientist? If Einstein simply engaged in a priori reasoning and conceptual analysis (using his famous thought-experiments) then I don't see why the physics community has any more claim to him than the philosophical community. After all, it seems that his methodolgy bore a much stronger resemblance to that of contemporary philosophical efforts than it does to anything going on in or commonly associated with physics departments. -Will Leonard

An excellent question! Many of Einstein's most famous papers make shockingly few references to the details of previous empirical work by other scientists. To put the same point in another way, many of Einstein's most famous arguments arise largely from "philosophical" considerations. For instance, Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity paper begins by noting a symmetry in electromagnetism: that the current induced by a magnet moving relative to a loop of conducting wire is the same, according to electromagnetic theory, whether the magnet is moving and the conductor is at rest, or vice versa, as long as their relative motion is the same in both cases. However, Maxwell's electromagnetic theory (as it was then understood) assigns the induced current different causes in the two cases. Einstein suggests that the current should be understood as having the same cause in the two cases, which leads him to suppose that there is no fact about whether a force is really electric or magnetic. Clearly, this...

I once took a graduate course in education in which I was the only non-teacher. One day, I disagreed with something said by another student, and her response has always baffled me. She said: "Who are you? You can't question me until you've walked in my shoes." In other words, she felt that I was unqualified to question her, to cast doubt on anything she said. Who was I to say? Well of course her response was nonsense but how so? As a matter of logic or illogic, was her remark an example of an appeal to authority? She certainly felt that she was an authority.

I agree that the student's response was rude. Not knowing the precise topic of your discussion in class, I am unable to say much. But it seems like the student could have done a great deal more to explain the basis for her view, and it seems like a good teacher would have required her to do so. However, an appeal to authority is not always inappropriate. Suppose an art expert tells me that a certain recently discovered painting is by Botticelli. I could ask the art expert to explain the justification for her view. She might reply that the brushstrokes or the treatment of the hair are characteristic of Botticelli's work, and she might even point out to me the similarities between the given painting and others firmly attributed to Botticelli. But suppose I do not perceive those similarities. I just don't see the "characteristic brushstrokes", for instance. It might well be entirely appropriate for the art expert to say, "Well, I've done my best to show you what I see. But it took me years to perfect...

What is a "disposition"? Philosophers seem to use the word a lot, but I do not understand why. For example, to say that "Thunderclouds have a disposition to produce lightning" seems to say little more than "Thunderclouds produce lightning". What is the "little more", if anything?

Consider a match. It has the disposition -- the power, the capacity -- to produce fire. But suppose that as a matter of fact, the match is never struck. So it never, in fact, produces any fire. Yet it still had the power to produce fire. "This match produces fire" is false, yet "This match has the disposition to produce fire" is true. In your example, the thundercloud's disposition refers to (in Goodman's words) the "threats or promises" made by the thunderclouds , whereas a sentence like "Thunderclouds produce lightning" is true only if some thundercloud actually makes good on its threat.

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