Recent Responses
What analytic philosophers have examined or critiqued gender and gender difference?
Miriam Solomon
April 11, 2014
(changed April 11, 2014)
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Many analytic philosophers have written about sex and gender. An early collection that might be a good place to start is "A Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity" edited by Louise Antony and Charlotte Witt (1993). A more recent collection, a product of the Society for... Read more
How important is the study of logic in philosophy, independent of any one particular philosopher or school of philosophy? Is 'logic' considered a 'neutral' subject about which 'everyone' agrees? or are there some contentious issues about what 'kind' of 'logic' applies in different kinds of situations?
Stephen Maitzen
April 10, 2014
(changed April 10, 2014)
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I'd answer your three questions as follows. (1) Very important. (2) No: There are lively disagreements in logic concerning particular issues, and there may be few if any issues in logic on which everyone agrees. (3) Some philosophers say that different situations call for different kinds of l... Read more
On what grounds are the three classic laws of thought rendered 'true'? Is there a more fundamental law which enables us to see the law of identity, the law of excluded middle and the law of non-contradiction as true? If not, how can we claim that they are anything more than guidelines for thought?
Stephen Maitzen
April 10, 2014
(changed April 10, 2014)
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The last two of your three questions suggest this: We can't properly regard some law P as true (rather than merely as a guideline for thought) unless there's some more fundamental law Q that enables us to see that P is true. But presumably Q must also be something we properly regard as true,... Read more
Many philosophers say that philosophy is neither an art nor a science yet philosophy departments are usually in Arts Faculties at universities. How do you feel about this and do you think philosophy should be its own faculty? Are there any contemporary neo-logical positivists who think it should be classified as a science?
William Rapaport
April 10, 2014
(changed April 10, 2014)
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Many philosophers would love to have their own "faculty" or "school" or "college" within a university administrative structure, if only because then the "chair" of their department would become a "dean" who has more power over the purse strings than a mere "chair" :-)More seriously, the loca... Read more
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
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)
Permalink
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
What are your main objections about the way philosophy is taught to undergraduates today and is it any different than the way it was taught during your time as an undergrad? Just how much say do professors in philosophy have over what they want to cover? I only took two philosophy courses in school, but I found that the topic material was overly broad and covered too many philosophers; even the professors seemed overwhelmed with the readings. I think it would be more worthwhile if perhaps the students decided at the beginning of courses specifically on no more than three philosophers/topics to cover intensely since specialization results in a greater degree of understanding instead of general unconcentrated knowledge.
Jonathan Westphal
April 3, 2014
(changed April 3, 2014)
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There are I think no objections to the way philosophy is taught to undergraduates today in US and UK universities. Courses are on the whole very well taught, there is a an emphasis on clarity and often on originality, and students learn a great deal of respect for decent argument, as well as... Read more
During The Troubles the IRA would sometimes make a telephone warning beforehand prior to exploding a bomb. Even if the authorities are unable to evacuate every person in time resulting in a single digit death toll, does this make them less guilty or immoral than al-Qaeda according to virtue ethics?
Charles Taliaferro
March 29, 2014
(changed March 29, 2014)
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Great question. As a small point at the outset, I think that both the IRA bombing and the bombing by al-Qaeda are equally wrong, and wrong in targeting the military as well as civilians. Neither cause amounts (in my view) to justified use of violence, and the bombing seems senseless not... Read more
In the Monty Python football sketch, does the line, "Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics" make any sense at all or is it gibberish that would only make sense to Hegel himself? Put more simply, does it mean that reality (which ought to be universal?) is something that can be known without prior the more important dimension of emotive ethical experience?
Andrew Pessin
March 28, 2014
(changed March 28, 2014)
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who KNOWS what would make sense to Hegel ... :-) Personally I appreciate your suggested interpretation of that sentence, though I can't quite see how to get from the Python to your (very reasonable) exegesis ... So I'm going to go with "it is indeed gibberish," but add that (with due credit to... Read more
If animals have feelings then isn't that enough reason not to kill them for food? Some would say that self awareness is required. Why would that be relevant? Could the idea that a creature without self awareness lacks a unified state of being over time be a reason? They just sort of exist one moment to the next. Death for them would no different than the passage of time. But then how can mere concepts of self awareness have such an ontological significance? Much of their experience probably or may not be especially pleasurable and many wouldn't exist in the first place if they weren't bred to be eaten. I wonder if the inability of most people to form a moral opinion opposed to animal eating shows something dreadful about the human condition. Here I am sitting and eating meat while asking these questions in the abstract while I've never had the willpower to go vegetarian for any extended period just in case my fears about meat eating are right.
Andrew Pessin
March 28, 2014
(changed March 28, 2014)
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Terrific question, and I completely share your intuitions (not to mention your weak-willedness....). If pain or suffering are somehow intrinsically 'bad', then it must be right that killing animals is bad (assuming that involves inflicting pain, of course). Or more precisely, causing that pain... Read more