Recent Responses
I have a question about atheism and semantics, although I'm not sure I can phrase it properly, as it also includes the concept of "belief" separate from "doctrine." Here goes: atheists claim that they do not believe in "God" while they do believe in ethics, morality, a concept of right and wrong. It seems to me that anyone who says they believe in right and wrong also implicitly believes that there is something more important than one's own personal ego gratification (in other words, everyone "should" curtail their own gratification to the extent that such gratification harms other people). To me, that seems semantically equivalent to a belief in God, except that the concept of "God" also includes an association in most people's minds with a particular doctrine. It sounds to me that atheists are merely rejecting all the doctrinal beliefs that accompany organized religion, while at the very root or core of the situation, do accept that they need to defer their own gratification to something greater or more important than themselves. How can a person say on one hand that they believe that something is more important than the self and also say at the same time that nothing exists that is more important than the self? [my assumption being that "something more important than the self" = "god" and the rest of the debate is only about terminology and doctrine). Thanks for any clarifying insights you can provide.
Stephen Maitzen
July 17, 2014
(changed July 17, 2014)
Permalink
You asked, "How can a person say on one hand that they believe that something is more important than the self and also say at the same time that nothing exists that is more important than the self?" I agree that a person who said such a thing would be expressing a self-contradictory belief, a b... Read more
The ancient Greek philosophical schools taught comprehensive philosophies of life. For them, the whole point of doing philosophy was to determine how to live well. Why do contemporary philosophers not publish philosophies of life? Has the point of doing philosophy changed? If so, why?
Andrew Pessin
July 10, 2014
(changed July 10, 2014)
Permalink
or for another kind of response, you might still ask why many/most philosophers don't publish philosophies of life. You'd have to do an empirical survey there, but i'm guessing that for many, a philosophy of life is too big and hard to construct. Much easier to focus on some relatively narrow pro... Read more
The ancient Greek philosophical schools taught comprehensive philosophies of life. For them, the whole point of doing philosophy was to determine how to live well. Why do contemporary philosophers not publish philosophies of life? Has the point of doing philosophy changed? If so, why?
Andrew Pessin
July 10, 2014
(changed July 10, 2014)
Permalink
or for another kind of response, you might still ask why many/most philosophers don't publish philosophies of life. You'd have to do an empirical survey there, but i'm guessing that for many, a philosophy of life is too big and hard to construct. Much easier to focus on some relatively narrow pro... Read more
Hi Philosophers, I have a burning question that is troubling me relating the religion versus science debate. I hope I articulate it well enough. Here goes. Mathematically, physicists are close to proving that a multiverse exists. Assuming they do prove this, and that as part of this proof it is deemed that infinity universes exist with both every conceivable and inconceivable possibility and outcome occurring throughout, then is it not fair to say that God certainly exists in at least one of these infinite possibility universes? Adversely, it is also fair to assume that God certainly does not exist in at least one of these universes? Then consider that if God certainly exists in at least one universe, and he is the all-seeing, all-knowing God that religion states he is, then how can he certainly not exist in at least one of the infinite universes? To say that God definitely exists is to, by definition of God, say that he exists everywhere and created everything, yet this notion within the multiverse theory eliminates the possibility of infinite outcomes as there can be no single constant to infinite possibilities. By definition of infinite outcomes, there must be at least one multiverse outcome where God doesn't exist. Will the theory of the multiverse, if proven, both unequivocally prove and unequivocally disprove the existence of God at the same time?
Andrew Pessin
July 10, 2014
(changed July 10, 2014)
Permalink
Great question (and great response by Allen). Let me just add a tiny bit, by encouraging you to check out both Norman Malcolm's and Alvin Plantinga's work on the ontological argument. (The latter is a lot more technical and difficult, so start with the former.) From them you get something like th... Read more
Hello philosophers , recently in a debate with Christians , I made a point that if one claims a relationship with a God or being that can't be seen , heard or touched that they are suffering from a delusion; is this an unfair statement and if so why ?
Allen Stairs
July 3, 2014
(changed July 3, 2014)
Permalink
Just to add a bit to what my fellow panelists have said (all of which seems right to me.) Even if God can't be seen or heard or touched in ordinary sensory ways, many believers would claim that they have experiences of God. There's a vast literature on this topic, but one interesting recent contribu... Read more
Hello philosophers , recently in a debate with Christians , I made a point that if one claims a relationship with a God or being that can't be seen , heard or touched that they are suffering from a delusion; is this an unfair statement and if so why ?
Allen Stairs
July 3, 2014
(changed July 3, 2014)
Permalink
Just to add a bit to what my fellow panelists have said (all of which seems right to me.) Even if God can't be seen or heard or touched in ordinary sensory ways, many believers would claim that they have experiences of God. There's a vast literature on this topic, but one interesting recent contribu... Read more
Do people have intrinsic value? For several years now I've worked with people with disabilities of all sorts and degrees of severity. It has made me question a lot of things and think about why people matter. There are so many external elements, positive and negative, of these peoples lives I've given consideration: the things that impact our community and others in it but is there something else underneath all these things that gives value to people? I believe they do although I cannot express why. Just by asking these questions I feel uneasy like I'm being disrespectful by discussing peoples existence like a math equation. So my question regards that weightiness I experience and where it comes from. (Could you recommend further reading?)
Stephen Maitzen
June 26, 2014
(changed June 26, 2014)
Permalink
Where the weightiness you experience comes from is a psychological, psychobiological, or anthropological question and therefore not a question that philosophers, as such, are competent to answer. Having said that, I'll speculate anyway! It wouldn't surprise me to learn that natural selection ha... Read more
This is a two part question. I have for some time been fascinated by the idea of holism, the idea that systems must be understood as wholes rather than collections of parts. Some have interpreted this to mean a subsuming of the parts into their relations; I believe this is not the case, rather that the individual parts must be placed within the context of the whole in order to understand them fully. Could clear up the definition between these views, and elaborate? The second question is, could it be evidence for holism that things seem to be defined as wholes? E.g., when something is broken, it is because it no longer functions as a whole, or human bodies being defined as wholes (albeit a human being is arguably more than their body so as to avoid any kind of discrimination). I hesitate because it seems that I have heard of a logical fallacy of this kind, but I don't remember what it was.
Allen Stairs
June 26, 2014
(changed June 26, 2014)
Permalink
Holism is a pretty puzzling concept.I'm not sure the bit about "defined as wholes" necessarily gets it. Suppose I have a chair and I break one of the legs. Then I can't use it as a chair anymore, but if there's a holism here, it seems to be a thin variety. Unless we insist that spatial relations a... Read more
Hello philosophers , recently in a debate with Christians , I made a point that if one claims a relationship with a God or being that can't be seen , heard or touched that they are suffering from a delusion; is this an unfair statement and if so why ?
Allen Stairs
July 3, 2014
(changed July 3, 2014)
Permalink
Just to add a bit to what my fellow panelists have said (all of which seems right to me.) Even if God can't be seen or heard or touched in ordinary sensory ways, many believers would claim that they have experiences of God. There's a vast literature on this topic, but one interesting recent contribu... Read more
I was puzzled not to find any mention of "emptiness" (as expounded upon by Nagarjuna and Chadrakirti, not the feeling one blogger has when his relationships end.) Is that not an issue that our learned philosophical crowd seriously contemplates these days?
Jonathan Westphal
June 26, 2014
(changed June 26, 2014)
Permalink
I have to say I think about nothing all the time, both in the sense of not thinking about anything, and in the sense of contemplating the concept nothing. P.L. Heath has a very fine piece on "Nothing" in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
On the other hand I suspect that śūnyatā is not really em... Read more