Recent Responses
Why is such a high value placed in reading the "Classics"? It's one thing to honor the past and honor the fact that, but for those who came before, we wouldn't be where we are today, and another thing entirely to pretend that those "classic" thinkers and thoughts of the past are worthy of the scrutiny of self-respecting truth-seekers today. If I'm being honest, the Pre-Socratic writings are simply idiotic by today's standards, claiming matter is all "water", or "fire", or some other random element. Leibniz, Spinoza, and those guys aren't any better. None of them had even the most rudimentary concept of physics. JS Mill and Kant read like some High Schooler, discoursing at length about Happiness and motivation without even a whiff of suspicion about the basic facts of psychology, treating those terms as if they were transparently obvious, monolithic concepts. Even an idea like the more recently vaunted Veil of Ignorance seems ludicrously vulnerable to someone of even mediocre intelligence, like me. It takes me about 2 minutes to realize that just because I might design a world a certain way behind the veil doesn't mean it would be just. I might choose to have 90% of people happy and 10% utterly miserable simply because of the odds - that doesn't mean my design is just. I have the feeling there is a conflation happening within the university - conflating education with celebration of the history of a subject. Reading Leibniz or JS Mill isn't likely to ready you to produce contemporary philosophy; it isn't even going to ready you to produce interesting enough ideas to hold your own at a dinner party. To me it's obvious that such "Classics" contain purely historical interest. Am I alone on this?
Stephen Maitzen
May 10, 2014
(changed May 10, 2014)
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I can't resist piping up to defend Rawls's Veil of Ignorance. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls anticipates and rebuts the questioner's objection. The deliberators behind the Veil of Ignorance are choosing the most general principles of justice that will govern their society, and hence they have no b... Read more
In paradoxes such as the Epimenides 'liar' example, is it not sufficient to say that all such sentences are inherently contradictory and therefore without meaning? Like Chomsky's 'the green river sleeps furiously', it's a sentence, to be sure, but that's all it is. Thanks in advance :)
Stephen Maitzen
June 5, 2014
(changed June 5, 2014)
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Thank you for the argument for that claim, but your reasons for it do not particularly interest me.
Wow. How very philosophical. We philosophers aren't interested in each other's reasons, after all. Now, am I supposed to be interested in the reasons you're giving for your claims?
I've given a num... Read more
In paradoxes such as the Epimenides 'liar' example, is it not sufficient to say that all such sentences are inherently contradictory and therefore without meaning? Like Chomsky's 'the green river sleeps furiously', it's a sentence, to be sure, but that's all it is. Thanks in advance :)
Stephen Maitzen
June 5, 2014
(changed June 5, 2014)
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Thank you for the argument for that claim, but your reasons for it do not particularly interest me.
Wow. How very philosophical. We philosophers aren't interested in each other's reasons, after all. Now, am I supposed to be interested in the reasons you're giving for your claims?
I've given a num... Read more
Here's a probability question I've been wondering. Suppose there's a company that has a million customers. It is known that 55% of these customers are male and 45% of customers are female. Task is to guess the sex of the next 100 (of the existing) customers who are going to visit the company. For every right guess point is awarded. What's the best strategy to get most correct answers? If we consider the customers one by one, it is good plan to always guess the most probable answer and therefore guess that all 100 of the customers are male. However if we take the hundred people as a group, isn't this task analoguous to situation where one litre of seawater in a container has same salinity as seawater in general? Therefore we could guess that there are 55 males and 45 females among the group of 100 customers. Certainly, if instead of 100 people we would take the whole million customers as a group then 55%/45% split would be the true and correct answer. My question is this: what changes the way of thinking between individuals and groups? Which is the correct way to think about this problem?
Allen Stairs
May 8, 2014
(changed May 8, 2014)
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What you say about the individual problems is right: if I get a point for each right answer, then each time someone comes to the site, the best strategy is to guess that it's a man. (At least this is right if knowing the sex of an individual customer doesn't help predict whether s/he will visit the si... Read more
I am often unable to decide upon an opinion, as I know that my knowledge of the subject is incomplete. For example, I am unsure of whether the (as it currently seems to me) few insights that psychology can add to our knowledge of the human mind and human behavior that cannot be found out using reason and individual observations is worth spending my and others’ time and resources on. Another example is my unwillingness to pick a side in the debate about free will, as I know that there are arguments I am not aware of. This inability to decide upon an opinion among many chooses, as I know there might be valid counter-arguments to my view that I do not know of, heavily impacts my life. The psychology example illustrates these consequences well: as I cannot decide on whether psychology is worth studying or not, I feel insecure about taking the big step to starting studying psychology, as it might be the wrong thing to do. My doubting of the very foundations of many opinions, and as in the example of free will, obstructs me from moving on to further conclusions, as I am always stuck at the first step. My question is therefore: how can I decide between several opinions that each has compelling arguments when I choose which opinion I should advocate and/or support, such as when voting for or against an economic reform or similarly? Thank you for your help
Lisa Cassidy
May 2, 2014
(changed May 2, 2014)
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Dear Friend - I say your willingness to say 'I don't know' in the face of complex problems is to be applauded. The "patron saint" of all philosophers, Socrates, is most famous for admitting his ignorance and using it as a starting point for investigation.More recently contemporary philosopher Harry F... Read more
Are all beautiful paintings good paintings?
Allen Stairs
May 1, 2014
(changed May 1, 2014)
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It's an interesting question.
An obvious preliminary: whether or not all beautiful paintings are good, not all good paintings are beautiful. "Beauty" is sometimes quite beside the point in judging that a painting is good. But your question was about the converse implication.
Here's one sort of proble... Read more
What grounds does a non-expert have for taking a position on an issue that the experts don't agree on? More specifically, how can I be justified aligning myself with a particular ethical theory, explicitly or implicitly (e.g. when I make a reasoned ethical decision), when there isn't a consensus among philosophers, and when I have spent comparatively so little time thinking about it?
Oliver Leaman
April 27, 2014
(changed April 27, 2014)
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If we only talked about things we are expert on, very little would be discussed. In any case, there is no reason to think that experts know more about many topics, especially those in ethics, than anyone else. The sort of knowledge involved here is not like the factual and technical knowledge o... Read more
When you start a controversial, difficult debate with someone, for example about world poverty, war, crime, abuse, etc. should you regard the personal limitations of the other person involved in the conversation or just keep going in order to increase more social awareness about the problem you are discussing even if this might cause the other person to be partially in shock because of the overwhelming topic? Should raising social awareness and trying to provoke critical thinking in people be also subject to ethical standards even at the cost of limiting possible positive results (if the means of conversation and other type of critical propaganda are more moderate, not managing to achieve such bigger social awareness and positive response due to the basic human need for conformism)?
Oliver Leaman
April 27, 2014
(changed April 27, 2014)
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One always has to be aware of the nature of the audience when one speaks about anything, especially an important topic. You would not want to antagonize someone or put them off a particular type of thought by addressing them inappropriately. Your phrase "personal limitations" is not helpful her... Read more
Is it possible that all branches of philosophy will one day be obsolete and replaced by activities yielding precise answers, similar to the way that the scientific method replaced natural philosophy? May Leibniz's vision of the calculating machine and the end of all disputes yet be realised? If so, I think this might be the ultimate goal of philosophy: to destroy itself, by superseding speculation with experimentation and calculation.
Stephen Maitzen
April 25, 2014
(changed April 25, 2014)
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You seem to suggest that all questions, or maybe all questions worth trying to answer, might be answerable (at least in principle) by experimentation and calculation alone. But I can't see how they could be. Let Q1 be any question. Now consider the normative question, Q2, "Is Q1 worth trying... Read more
Is it possible for anything to matter? My teacher always tells me if I do bad in a drama scene, I shouldn't worry about it because no one will remember or care in a few weeks. Doesn't that apply to everything? If I cure cancer, surely that will affect almost everyone on the planet, but will anyone even appreciate it a million years after the fact? A billion? Humans can't last forever, and eventually our species will die - meaning no one will be alive to remember cancer even existed. Even Earth will die eventually. Even the Galaxy!! So how can anything I do be important in the grand scheme of things?
Gordon Marino
April 25, 2014
(changed April 25, 2014)
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Good question? I have wrestled with this one a lot. Of course, it depends what we mean by "matters" -- if it is an issue of being remembered then there is a good chance that when the earth slips into the sun or whatever, all will be forgotten and in the end nothing will have mattered.
When we... Read more