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I've just graduated with a B.A. in the humanities and hope to attend graduate school for philosophy in the near future. I didn't major in philosophy-even though I have taken many courses in the subject I know that it will be a challenge to get into a good Ph.D program. Would it best suit me to undergo a master's in philosophy first-assuming that I'm accepted to such a program- before undergoing a ph.d? I'm also interested in the subject of religion and am wondering whether a master's in religious studies- e.g. an MTS from Harvard- would hurt my chances at getting into a good philosophy Ph.D program? What do you think of undergoing a master's in religious studies in lieu of a master's in philosophy? Aside from religion my primary philosophical interests are in ethics, social philosophy (esp Marx),philosophy of science, Kant, the history of philosophy and feminist philosophy. Thank you for your time...

Saul Traiger August 23, 2012 (changed August 23, 2012) Permalink I would also suggest investigating the M.A. programs in philosophy that have a good track record of helping people get into top PhD programs. However, I'd also add that majoring in philosophy is not a requirement for admission to most PhD programs, and many strong graduate students in philosop... Read more

Language

Suppose Jane, while growing up, somehow learned the wrong meaning for the word "migraine," and came to believe that any particularly strong headache, regardless of whether it occurred on one or both sides of the head, was a migraine - i.e. that "migraine" and "headache" were mostly synonymous terms. Suppose Jane then has what we would call a headache, a severely painful sensation in her head distributed across both sides of her head, and tells us "I have a migraine." According to her understanding of the term "migraine," her statement is true, but according to her community's differing understanding of the term, her statement is false (because we call them migraines only if they affect one side of the head only). Is there a hierarchy between the contexts in which we can understand her claim? Is her claim ultimately either true or false, or is its truth-value ambiguous?

Eddy Nahmias August 20, 2012 (changed August 20, 2012) Permalink What a great title for a new book on the internalism/externalism debate in semantics: "Are Migraines Just in the Head?" Also, for a more externalist-friendly response, see this recent question: http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/4771 Log in to post comments... Read more

Language

Suppose Jane, while growing up, somehow learned the wrong meaning for the word "migraine," and came to believe that any particularly strong headache, regardless of whether it occurred on one or both sides of the head, was a migraine - i.e. that "migraine" and "headache" were mostly synonymous terms. Suppose Jane then has what we would call a headache, a severely painful sensation in her head distributed across both sides of her head, and tells us "I have a migraine." According to her understanding of the term "migraine," her statement is true, but according to her community's differing understanding of the term, her statement is false (because we call them migraines only if they affect one side of the head only). Is there a hierarchy between the contexts in which we can understand her claim? Is her claim ultimately either true or false, or is its truth-value ambiguous?

History Philosophy

Are there any histories of philosophy that focus on the ideas of the philosophers in their effort to philosophically ground ideas about the universe that reveal it as profound, mysterious, or divine? I sometimes I think that histories of philosophy gloss over the more obscure religious and metaphysical thinking of philosophers and they don't really elucidate the gravity and spiritual ambitions behind those philosophers ideas and instead focus on their technical significance. (Spinoza was doing far more than just healing a contradiction in Descartes's concept of finite being for example) Those few things I've read that do talk about the spiritual ideas of great philosophers of the past however just state those great ideas without any reference to the intellectual basis the philosophers had for making those claims. I want a real philosophical introduction to the history of "profound" thinking about the universe that actually attempts to elucidate the grounds of their thinking.

Charles Taliaferro August 19, 2012 (changed August 19, 2012) Permalink Great question. Some philosophers seem to have deliberately sought to secularize the story of philosophy. I think this is probably true in the case of John Dewey (even though he did praise a naturalistic piety or "religious sensibility"). A classic, intro history to philosophy, Will D... Read more

Philosophers

What are your views on Slavoj Zizek's work? Too many fallacies of equivocation? Or is he successful in what he claims to accomplish; that is, rehabilitate Hegel. I have talked to many who greatly disliked him and pointed out Slavoj's supposed 'play of words' that is aimed to confuse rather than clarify. According to them, Zizek ends up sounding profound precisely because of this equivocating word play. It'd be interesting to see what philosophers think of the matter.

Sean Greenberg August 17, 2012 (changed August 17, 2012) Permalink I myself find Zizek to be very interesting, although I am not familiar enough with his work as a whole to assess it. One problem I find Zizek's work to pose is that he is operating outside the standard categories used by most analytic philosophers, especially because his work is so thorough... Read more

Existence Perception

In describing Kant's idea of the "thing-in-itself" Thomas Pogge (in response to a recent question on this site) recently wrote that "According to this explanation, space and time are then features only of objects as they appear to us." I'm having a difficult time deciphering this statement. To me when you speak of a feature of an object you are referring to that object in-itself almost by definition. It seems like space and time could be either a feature of the world or a feature of our mind/cognition or psychic tendencies which we project onto the world but not both. To say that space/time is a feature of the world as it appears seems to involve a confusion of how language is used to speak about being. Appearances can reveal or distort being but I don't see how they can contribute to being. We don't speak of colors as features of the (outer) world as they appear to us do we? We try to figure whether colors originate in the mind or in the world and though we allow that there is some degree of interaction between the world and our faculties it is still in some ultimate sense one or the other.

Sean Greenberg August 17, 2012 (changed August 17, 2012) Permalink You are quite rightly puzzled by the distinction that Pogge, following Kant, draws between appearances and things-in-themselves: it's caused trouble for Kant's readers since the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. The distinction is, however, at the heart of Kan... Read more

Logic

Are first principles or the axioms of logic (such as identity, non-contradiction) provable? If not, then isn't just an intuitive assumption that they are true? Is it possible for example, to prove that a 4-sided triangle or a married bachelor cannot exist? Or must we stop at the point where we say "No, it is a contradiction" and end there with only the assumption that contradictions are the "end point" of our needing to support their non-existence or impossibility?

William Rapaport August 17, 2012 (changed August 17, 2012) Permalink To prove a proposition is to derive it syntactically (that is, by "symbol manipulation" that is independent of the proposition's meaning). A "good" (or syntactically valid) derivation is one that begins with "first principles" (axioms) and derives other propositions from them (and from ot... Read more

Children

What is a good reason to have kids? Is desiring to have somebody to love a good reason to have kids? Is desiring to be a parent a good reason to have kids? Is desiring to have someone who unconditionally loves you a good reason to have kids? What on earth could justifiably compel someone to instigate such an ontologically significant event fraught with perhaps, if not infinite, vast moral significance, as creating another human existence?

Eddy Nahmias August 16, 2012 (changed August 16, 2012) Permalink Good questions, ones that are receiving more philosophical treatment recently. As a parent of three I better have some good answers, eh? First off, I haven't read either the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) entry on Parenthood and Procreation or the book Why Have Children? by Chri... Read more

Profession

I've just graduated with a B.A. in the humanities and hope to attend graduate school for philosophy in the near future. I didn't major in philosophy-even though I have taken many courses in the subject I know that it will be a challenge to get into a good Ph.D program. Would it best suit me to undergo a master's in philosophy first-assuming that I'm accepted to such a program- before undergoing a ph.d? I'm also interested in the subject of religion and am wondering whether a master's in religious studies- e.g. an MTS from Harvard- would hurt my chances at getting into a good philosophy Ph.D program? What do you think of undergoing a master's in religious studies in lieu of a master's in philosophy? Aside from religion my primary philosophical interests are in ethics, social philosophy (esp Marx),philosophy of science, Kant, the history of philosophy and feminist philosophy. Thank you for your time...

Religion

If, as some apologists say, God never changes; surely, then, God lived an infinity before creating the world. One wonders why he changed in order to create people. If for companionship, why are so many people flawed by whatever criteris one uses? This is a very enjoyable blog. JH

Andrew Pessin August 16, 2012 (changed August 16, 2012) Permalink Great question -- one that deep thinkers have been worrying about ever since they came up with the idea of God! As the great 4th century Catholic thinker Augustine said, when asked what God was doing all that time before creating the universe he was tempted to answer: preparing Hell for those... Read more

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