Recent Responses
What defines a individual? What makes someone who they are?
Charles Taliaferro
August 2, 2013
(changed August 2, 2013)
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What a difficult question! I believe (but could be wrong) that you are asking a question in terms of meaning, social significance, psychology, perhaps raising an ethical matter... There are two broad, distinct views to consider: one views individual persons as part of greater wholes --ei... Read more
Do cameras and microphones always "capture truth?" Suppose a surveillance camera in a store captures undoctored video of a person stealing. Does this video satisfy all of the correspondence, coherence and epistemic theories of truth that the person did indeed steal? Since the other theories of truth are primarily sentence based, how can a video be turned into "truth by words?"
Oliver Leaman
August 1, 2013
(changed August 1, 2013)
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This is not an issue of theories of truth but of what is involved in stealing. It is not just an action. If I absent-mindedly put my hand in your bag and withdraw your wallet I may not be stealing it, there needs to be a mens rea, an evil intention. I may think your bag is my bag, I may be thin... Read more
Is it hypocritical for prostitution to be legal but pimping to be illegal?
Andrew Pessin
August 1, 2013
(changed August 1, 2013)
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Hm, I think you mean "inconsistent" rather than "hypocritical" here ... but anyway -- but one quick "no" answer might be generated by this line of thought: if by "non-pimping prostitution" you have in mind the idea of an adult individual freely choosing to sell himself/herself for sex, then bas... Read more
Does democracy necessarily assume that the voters are rational and educated? I was always of the opinion that democracy was the best system because there is no way in non-democratic systems to ensure that the state is acting in the best interests of the people. Is this a compelling argument or is there a better counterargument? Do the arguments that "voters are irrational" or "voters are unduly influenced by the media" really defeat democracy? Is it better to have a well-intentioned non-democratic state look after the interests of the people?
Andrew Pessin
August 1, 2013
(changed August 1, 2013)
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Wonderful question, deserving of complicated book-length responses .... As (I think) Churchill said, democracy is a terrible form of government, but even so it's less terrible than every other possible form ... A few disorganized thoughts. I suppose some might hold that "ideal" forms of democra... Read more
If I'm an atheist, does it make sense to criticize the Catholic church for practices such as the exclusion of female priests? Suppose that a Catholic authority replies to such criticism by saying that there is strong Biblical evidence to show that priests must be male. Since I am an atheist, I may be unpersuaded by this argument, and still insist that the church would be more just if it gave women equal status with men. But then, if I reject this Biblical argument it seems that I may as well reject Catholicism itself. In other words, I think there is something strange in the suggestion that Catholics should improve their religious practice by incorporating certain progressive reforms. The justification of these reforms often seems arise of a view that would invalidate, not just the allegedly objectionable practices at issue, but religion altogether. Practices such as the exclusion of female priests may strike me as irrational, but then why should I care if I think that Catholicism quite generally is irrational to begin with? Put differently, it seems that if we accept that it is reasonable for others to practice Catholicism, we then have no grounds to object to particular aspects of their practice. We can't simply pick and choose for them.
Stephen Maitzen
August 1, 2013
(changed August 1, 2013)
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One needn't accept Catholicism in order to argue, legitimately, that the reasons given for a specific Catholic practice, such as the male-only priesthood, aren't persuasive even granting the rest of Catholic theology. For example, if Catholic theology gives a biblical justification for the ma... Read more
If I'm an atheist, does it make sense to criticize the Catholic church for practices such as the exclusion of female priests? Suppose that a Catholic authority replies to such criticism by saying that there is strong Biblical evidence to show that priests must be male. Since I am an atheist, I may be unpersuaded by this argument, and still insist that the church would be more just if it gave women equal status with men. But then, if I reject this Biblical argument it seems that I may as well reject Catholicism itself. In other words, I think there is something strange in the suggestion that Catholics should improve their religious practice by incorporating certain progressive reforms. The justification of these reforms often seems arise of a view that would invalidate, not just the allegedly objectionable practices at issue, but religion altogether. Practices such as the exclusion of female priests may strike me as irrational, but then why should I care if I think that Catholicism quite generally is irrational to begin with? Put differently, it seems that if we accept that it is reasonable for others to practice Catholicism, we then have no grounds to object to particular aspects of their practice. We can't simply pick and choose for them.
Stephen Maitzen
August 1, 2013
(changed August 1, 2013)
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One needn't accept Catholicism in order to argue, legitimately, that the reasons given for a specific Catholic practice, such as the male-only priesthood, aren't persuasive even granting the rest of Catholic theology. For example, if Catholic theology gives a biblical justification for the ma... Read more
Hello, my question(s) is: could emotions, concepts and physical things that are opposite to each other, exist without each other? For example, if there were no such thing as hot, then could cold exist? What about joy and sorrow? Could we identify one without the other? Do they require our awareness of them, for them to exist? Obviously this isn't the case with some things, like gravity.
Stephen Maitzen
August 1, 2013
(changed August 1, 2013)
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You've asked three different questions about three apparently different kinds of items: emotions, concepts, and physical things. So there may be as many as nine different answers, depending on which question is being asked about which kind of item (and some of those nine answers may be of the... Read more
Are dimensions exceeding 3 actually comceivable or are they purely intellectual constructs? Is this even debated in philosophy?
Allen Stairs
August 1, 2013
(changed August 1, 2013)
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If I understand your question correctly, it's whether there really could be more than three dimensions in physical space. The best answer, I should think, is yes. One reason is that there are serious physical theories that assume the existence of more than three spatial dimensions: string theory... Read more
Does justice necessarily have to be equality?
Charles Taliaferro
July 30, 2013
(changed July 30, 2013)
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Interesting! In certain respects, when treating persons in terms of criminal justice, most of us believe that persons should not be given unfair, special treatment because of wealth, gender, ethnicity, family, and so on.... And in many areas, we assume that, in a just society, identical o... Read more
I would like to have some non-theistic response from you about the value of life. (I don't know if people asking about the "meaning of life" are asking what I want to ask, but I'll try to be specific.) One thing is the value of other people's lives. I am not concerned about this: I'm pretty sure that homicide is a terrible crime even in the cases I will mention next. A different thing is the value of one's own life (the value of life for the person living it). Of course, many people have good, rewarding, happy lives. Such lives are very valuable. But many other people have no such lives. I would like you to consider two cases. The first case is that of very ill and depressed people, continuously and permanently suffering with their illnesses, or that of incarcerated people, tortured from time to time, without any hope of getting out of their suffering: I mean people who will commit suicide if they have the courage and the chance to. I think that those lives have no value and that, for instance, if we could not change one of those lives but could help that person to commit suicide, we should do so. The second case is that of people whose lives are just bad, unhappy, without being terrible as those that I referred to before. I believe that many millions of people have such lives. People who have to work too much for a barely decent living, who are part of unhappy families or live alone, people who have no hope for a better future (and have no reason to have such hope), and aren't resourceful enough to change their lives or even other people's lives for better. I suppose there is a non insignificant percentage of people who qualify themselves as "unhappy", and I believe a good part of them has definite reason to think so. What is the value of life for those people?
Charles Taliaferro
July 30, 2013
(changed July 30, 2013)
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From an entirely secular point of view, plus some simple ethical assumptions that seem quite convincing (suffering illness, incarceration...are bad), plus a strong principle of respecting persons' choices (imagine the persons suffering would take their own lives if they could or they are act... Read more