Recent Responses
I'm currently struggling to convince many people that murdering a child can be justified in some very extreme situations. There's this character in a novel who attempts to murder an innocent child because, if he hadn't, his entire family would have gotten executed with certainty (his 3 children, his lover and himself). Was the character justified in attempting to murder this child? I believe that he was. After all, to do otherwise would have resulted in the deaths of 5 other people. Aren't 5 lives generally worth more than one?
David Brink
August 8, 2013
(changed August 8, 2013)
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I’m not quite sure why you should find yourself struggling to convince many other people that killing a child to save others is or can be permissible. That is, I’m not sure what the context is in which you are thinking about this issue.But be that as it may, you are worried about a traditional i... Read more
In the rare event that all the professional philosophers in the world agreed on the answer to a philosophical problem, would that mean it is solved? If not, what good is philosophy anyway?
Allen Stairs
August 8, 2013
(changed August 8, 2013)
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In the event—rare or otherwise—that all physicists in the world agreed on the answer to a physics problem, that wouldn't mean that the problem was solved. It wouldn't mean that because it's at least possible that all the physicists could be mistaken or could be missing some crucial piece of info... Read more
I hope this isn't too general, but here's a question I've been wondering about: What is it that one has or does that, if one has or does it, one's life was not a waste?
Stephen Maitzen
August 8, 2013
(changed August 8, 2013)
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Something seems wrong about the question. At any rate, it's too general a question for me to venture a non-trivial answer to it. It seems to me like asking "What is it that one does such that, if one does it, one has succeeded?" I don't see how to give a non-trivial, general answer to that qu... Read more
Although societal pressures do play a role, does atheism manifest itself mostly due to an inborn lack of religious "sense" rather than hearing the logical arguments against God or a life force? Research has shown that autistic people are very unlikely to be religious. I don't know what phrase philosophers of mind use to describe this, but when we talk about people with a strong sense of humor, people with a weak sense of humor, or people with no sense of humor at all, are we talking about a non-physical and antimaterialist noumenon that can be enhanced with training?
Stephen Maitzen
August 8, 2013
(changed August 8, 2013)
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I'll chime in just to say that the first question you asked is an empirical question and therefore not the kind of question that philosophers as such are any better-equipped than non-philosophers to answer. I'd be interested in seeing the empirical data myself. I would say, however, that your... Read more
Will computers ever be able to solve philosophy problems and should they? If they could, would they give better answers than humans?
Allen Stairs
August 8, 2013
(changed August 8, 2013)
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I think the best answers to your questions are, in order, we don't know, why not, and we don't know.A bit less tersely: you're asking about the capabilities that computers might one day come to have. In particular, you're asking whether they'll ever be able to pass a philosophy version of the Tu... Read more
More of an observation than a question, about "compatibilism" in the free will "versus" determinism debate. In the short run, there is a strong correlation between life expectancy tables and the number of people who die in a calendar year. Somehow, even though on the level of the individual, many of these events may be due to "luck" (wow, that train just missed me; or wow, what a freak combination of factors to lead to such a bizarre accident); on the level of the population, the total number of deaths in a year can be "predicted" fairly well even if no individual death can be predicted. In the long run, life expectancy tables do change over time: collectively, each individual person uses what they learn about diet, exercise, cigarette smoking, etc. and makes adjustments in their day-to-day lives; and the aggregate results over time do reflect these changes. It seems to me that there is a good question buried here in this analogy but I can't quite figure out how to unearth it. Any thoughts from a panelist or two? Thanks!
Jonathan Westphal
August 8, 2013
(changed August 8, 2013)
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You make an important observation for compatibilism. What your analysis does is to show that we can have predictability and law (in a regularity sense) with no implications for individual freedom. My decision to cross the railway track might lead to my death, and it might produce a number t... Read more
I'm currently struggling to convince many people that murdering a child can be justified in some very extreme situations. There's this character in a novel who attempts to murder an innocent child because, if he hadn't, his entire family would have gotten executed with certainty (his 3 children, his lover and himself). Was the character justified in attempting to murder this child? I believe that he was. After all, to do otherwise would have resulted in the deaths of 5 other people. Aren't 5 lives generally worth more than one?
David Brink
August 8, 2013
(changed August 8, 2013)
Permalink
I’m not quite sure why you should find yourself struggling to convince many other people that killing a child to save others is or can be permissible. That is, I’m not sure what the context is in which you are thinking about this issue.But be that as it may, you are worried about a traditional i... Read more
As a professional philosopher; which philosophical idea brings you the greatest joy whenever you think about it?
Ian Kidd
August 5, 2013
(changed August 5, 2013)
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This is a really nice question, and one with a long pedgree: the British philosopher Mary Midgley once said that, if you really want to understand a philosopher, you need to ask what they are afraid of, what they loathe, what they love - of what goes deep with that philosopher, of what 'bone they ar... Read more
My question seems to be a simple one but I haven't been able to find a balanced answer to it so easily. As far as I can ascertain, there are two broad schools of philosophy, the Analytic school and the Continental school. Whilst Analytic philosophy focuses upon logic and reason and favours empirical or evidential arguments that focus to examine very clearly defined concepts, Continental philosophy tends to focus on a more abstract theorising that I am lead to believe, rejects the empirical and the rational as the means to discovering knowledge, and even treats knowledge, truth, and ideas in a much more relative manner. Therefore my question is as follows: "Does Continental philosophy really eschew logic and reason, if so then on what basis are credible arguments made? If this is not the case, then what is the general difference between the two schools and why should it be taken seriously in opposition to Analytic philosophy which at face value seems to be much more accessible and 'down to earth' in the common sense of the word. Also, are the two schools largely incompatible with each other?"
Ian Kidd
August 5, 2013
(changed August 5, 2013)
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Hi! the question you raise points to a very large set of historical and philosophical issues, and one that, so far, has sustained an equally large mass of scholarship! I'd offer three thoughts on this.1. The characteristics often proposed for one of these two camps often apply equally as well to the... Read more
What makes a good philosopher?
Nicholas D. Smith
August 2, 2013
(changed August 2, 2013)
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So let's start with the most obvious part: "philosophy" comes from the Greek "philo" (love) + "sophia" (wisdom). Whether what we do now is all rightly conceived as wisdom might be a matter of debate, but it seems highly likely that no one will be a good philosopher unles he or she really l... Read more