I have a meta-dispute with my nephew about whether a dispute over a loan is a financial issue or a moral one. I would like to hear from a professional philosopher whether or not I am correct in framing that meta-dispute as a moral issue. The fundamental dispute is this: my nephew has had to file for personal bankruptcy twice, and in 2009 had got himself into deep debt again. No institution was willing to loan him money. He now needed $10,000 to avoid bankruptcy. He approached his mother and me, asking to borrow that amount from my mothers (his grandmother's) savings. My mother approved lending the money provided he agreed to pay it back in a regular manner. I was given the task of deciding what was a regular manner. He agreed to the deal that I would write checks to his creditors provided he signed a promise to begin paying the money back at an agreed-upon rate in January 2010. The checks were written, the promise written out and signed. It was not notarized. He never paid anything on the loan. He...

This is a dicey question, especially in light of the fraught family situation. All would be clearer if the original schedule to pay had been notarized and had, therefore been effectively made into a contract, in which case this would be a relatively straightforward case of contract law--but such is not the case. In light of the fact that the agreement to repay the money was a promise to repay--a promise which was broken--in failing to repay the money, your son did do something to undermine his relation to you. I can, therefore, understand the considerable symbolic significance of your request that your son sign a new commitment to repay the money that you loaned him, for in so doing, you seem to think--and I am inclined to agree--that your son will thereby signal his renewed commitment to repay the money to you, thereby at least implicitly recognizing that he had reneged on his initial commitment and harmed your relationship, which can be as it were set to rights and somewhat restored by his...

In the effect to come to knowledge about reality that is the truth about "how things are or came to be," What role if any should religious authorities ( such as one's minister or priest) or religious writings (such as the Old Testament or the Koran) play in helping to determine the truth?

In order to determine what role, if any, religion generally should play in knowledge about "how things are or came to be," it is essential first to know just what 'things' are at issue. For example, it seems to me that if the 'things' in question are truths about morality, then religion generally may well have a role to play; by contrast, it seems to me that if the 'things' in question are truths about the nature of the physical world, say, then it's not clear to me that religion has any role whatsoever to play in helping us to gain knowledge of such truths. (I write here not from any particular standpoint on the issue: indeed, even the great seventeenth-century French philosopher and theologian Nicolas Malebranche, who famously believed in the truth of occasionalism, the view that God is the only real cause in the universe, and, hence that all changes in the universe were effected by God's causal power, did not think that appeals to God were relevant in the context of giving scientific explanations. ...

I have a question regarding folk philosophy and academic philosophy. How far are the folks away from the academics in terms of agreement in certain issues? I read an interview of Philippa Foot and she said something along the lines of "moral relativism is common in first year students." When I read the philpapers survey, a whole bunch of you are moral realists. How far are us folk off? How far away are we from you academics in all types of issues? If you can direct me to some reading that any folk can easily access, I would be very thankful. Perhaps anecdotes would be nice, but I have a feeling you folks don't hold anecdotes much weight!

One often finds philosophers appealing to the intuitions of the 'folk', or, as an earlier strand of Anglo-American philosophy put it, the views of 'the man on the Clapham omnibus'. Such appeals play a variety of roles in philosophizing--they can be used as the basis for a position that is more clearly to be articulated, or a position against which to argue--but it's not always altogether clear to me what basis there is for such appeals. Why, I am tempted to wonder, should the 'intuitions' of the folk about philosophical issues be any more relevant to philosophers than folk intuitions about the nature of the physical world should be of interest to physics? Such methodological issues were prominent in the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, when great philosophical emphasis was placed on what is said when as a guide to clarifying philosophical issues. (The greatest practitioner of ordinary language philosophy, or what this practitioner himself called 'linguistic phenomenology', was, to my mind, J. L...

Is there a philosophical reason to postulate the existence of entities without parts? It seems like everything in our experience is complex and has various pieces and parts or can be reduced to a more fundamental entity given scientific exploration; what reason is there for thinking that there is something that is non-reducible?

Here's an argument that the early modern philosophy Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz gives for postulating the existence of an entity without parts, versions of which he gave from the 'middle' of his philosophical career--roughly, from about the time that he wrote the "Discourse on Metaphysics"--until the end, which, for present purposes, we can take to be the Monadology . Leibniz starts from the fact that material things can all be subdivided--he actually says that material things not only can be divided, but that they are actually infinitely divided. Since a material thing such as a table can be, as it were, decomposed into infinite material parts, Leibniz argues--in a line of reasoning that is especially emphasized in his correspondence with the philosopher Antoine Arnauld based on issues in the "Discourse on Metaphysics," but elsewhere in his writings as well--that a material thing like a table is no more metaphysically real than a heap of stones, a flock of sheep, or a rainbow: the basis for...

Does the belief that everything is matter lead to the belief that the most important things in life are material goods? In other words does the philosophy of materialism lead to the other kind of materialism where money and goods are the most valued things?

I don't think that there is any reason that a materialist metaphysics should lead one to become materialistic. Historically, at least, one of the points of a materialist metaphysics was to bring agents to see that their highest good did not depend on God or an afterlife but could only be achieved in this world, by their own efforts: while there are differences about the nature of this highest good--materialists such as Epicurus, Hobbes, and d'Holbach,, for example, have different conceptions of ethics and also of the highest good--none of them thought that the accumulation of material possessions was the highest good, and although, historically, materialists have tended to espouse some version of hedonism (the best-known materialist ethics, advanced by Epicurus, is a version of hedonism), there is no reason to think that a materialist metaphysics is not compatible with a wide range of (non-theological) conceptions of the highest good, and, indeed, there is no reason to think that a materialist...

Do categories exist? For instance: Animal. "Animal" is the name of a category, a set of things within certain parameters. Now, the animals themselves exist, but does "Animal" exist? After all, isn't "animal" just an name, an idea we have "created." That which composes a category exists, but does the category itself exist?

This is a version of the question of whether universals exist, about which there has been considerable philosophical discussion over the past 2500 years or so. Some philosophers--call them 'nominalists'--believe that the only things that exist are particulars: in the case of animals, then, only particular sloths, rabbits, dogs, etc. exist; some philosophers--call them 'realists'--believe that not only particulars, but kinds , or universals--in the case of animals, the kind 'sloth' or 'dog' or even 'animal' itself, distinct from particular instantiations of that kind--exist. (Some realists even believe that kinds or universals are the only real things, and that particulars aren't real, or at least not real in the same respect that universals are real.) It seems to me that where one stands with respect to the universalist/nominalist divide may in part reflect one's account of cognition, or how one comes to know things: if one believes that the senses are the only source of knowledge, then one may...

This might be a silly question, but can you argue against opinions? Someone once wrote to me "u can't argue with opinion". Is that true? I would think arguing against a person's opinion happens regularly-- philosophers certainly do it. And I thought that was the plain answer, but I thought about it more and well, question it. It is possible that this someone is already accepting the fact, or assuming that "opinion" is neither true nor false. For example, "It is my opinion that X is beauty, and Y is beauty for you," knowing that there is a difference of opinion, of which both can claim truth, you therefore can't argue with my opinion. This might be a case of relativism, "what's true for me, may not be true for you, etc". Anyways, I just want some clarity with the claim that "u can't argue with opinion."

The question isn't silly at all--I think it turns on two distinct senses of 'opinion'. In one sense, an opinion--like a belief--is a mental state, a fact about the person who holds it, that doesn't admit of justification, although one could of course explain why the person has come to hold the particular opinion, how they have come to be in that particular mental state; there is, however, another sense of 'opinion', according to which opinions, like beliefs, are held for reasons and therefore admit of justification. Insofar as one treats an opinion, or a belief, as a mere fact about a person, it doesn't admit of argument, anymore than the fact of someone's height admits of argument; insofar, however, as one treats an opinion, or a belief, as a claim held for reasons--instead of merely as a state of a person, or of a person's mind--then it does admit of argument. In the first sense of 'opinion', I think it's quite right that one can't argue with opinions; in the second sense, however, I think not only...

Stephen Hawking recently stated that we do not need God to explain where everything comes from. Theoretical physics can provide the answer. My question to Hawking is: How does he explain the laws that were functioning with the Big Bang? Where do these laws come from? Physical laws are predictable, orderly events on which we can rely. Science is about testing knowledge against stated criteria or laws. So why is reality knowable (having laws to uncover, to use to our benefit)?

Not having read Hawking's book, I can't present _his_ answer; I'll try to respond to the question from the standpoint of someone who--as Hawking seems to do--thinks that theoretical physics is the ultimate explanatory authority. The question of where did the laws in virtue of which phenomena are to be explained come from amounts to the question of what explains why the particular laws of physics that apply to our world do apply to it. It seems to me that someone with Hawking's views would probably might that this simply is a question that we cannot answer at the moment: we lack the information necessary to give such an explanation, although, in principle, one could give such an explanation, and one might even--I can't do this, but someone else might--sketch the form that such an explanation would take. (I don't think that someone who shared Hawking's conviction could state conclusively that this is a question that cannot be answered: to do so would be to bet against science.) ...

I have recently become very interested in philosophy and have recently decided to work through Plato's Republic. However, I am already a little confused with Book I. Ideally; I should like to understand Book I before I move on. What confuses me is how Socrates presents his arguments, or rather how he undermines the arguments of others. It almost seems that all of what Socrates says is trickery. I think a good example of what I'm saying is the "Analogy of the Arts". Socrates uses the analogy to convince Polemarchus that "justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies". So far, this analogy seems to make sense and I would agree with Socrates. However, Socrates goes on to use the analogy to make it appear that Justice is of no use in times of peace. Really? At this point I believe that the analogy has been taken too far and has been taken in such literal understanding that it has been stretched beyond context. Another problem I am having is how specific Socrates is getting in...

Although one way to work one's way into philosophy is to begin with philosophical problems, such as those considered in the books mentioned by Allen, another way--which I myself find more congenial, which, for what it's worth, is the way I myself came into philosophy--is to study its history. (Philosophy, Stanley Cavell has written, can be seen as a set of problems , but it can also be seen as a set of texts .) Plato's Republic is a text that sets out a host of problems taken up in subsequent texts. (Hence it was said that Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato.) So I think that working through the Republic is a respectable, albeit most ambitious, way to work one's way into philosophy. The problem that you raise about Book 1 is very interesting: Socrates himself was accused--at least, according to Plato, by his enemies--of being a dialectician, a rhetorician--and Book 1 of the Republic seems to support this charge. In this respect, it's akin to certain of Plato's ...

If elegance or simplicity is an indicator of truth in math or science, is this principle inductive? For instance: when a theorist claims simplicity in support of his theory, is he saying in effect "Well, in the past I've found that simpler theories tend to be correct; so simplicity should be taken to favor my theory in this case." Or is there supposed to be something else, something intrinsic to simplicity, perhaps, which makes it significant?

t does not seem to me that appeals to this principle are based on induction--although there may well be cases in which the appeal is so based, and, consequently, I think that case studies of the extent to which this principle is applied, and when it is applied, on what basis, would be very interesting and most illuminating. It seems to me to that appeals to this sort of principle rest on one of a variety of methodological--or one might even say, metaphysical, presuppositions, of which I give a couple of examples: (i) a principle of epistemic parsimony or conservatism, that one should not multiply theoretical entities unnecessarily (sometimes called 'Ockham's razor') and that, consequently, one should prefer simpler to more complicated explanations when all else is equal; (ii) perhaps in conjunction with (i)--although they need not be conjoined--an assumption that the phenomenon in question ought to be simple, because the phenomenon is an instantiation, say, of a divine plan (cf. Einstein, "God does...

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