Recent Responses
We see that as society changes, yesterday´s vices become today´s virtues, and vice versa. E.g. intolerance of homosexuality was formerly considered a sign of decency, today it´s the opposite. Is there a branch of philosophy that deals with these changes in the moral code? Is there one that predicts what changes are most likely to occur in the coming decades?
Allen Stairs
June 6, 2012
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The second question is easiest: there isn't any such branch of philosophy for a very simple reason: philosophy isn't in the business of predicting what will happen. Perhaps some branch of some social science might address such a question, but if so, it would be a very different sort of thing than ph... Read more
Psychosis is often characterized as 'loss of contact with reality.' Three questions. (1) What is this 'reality' of which they speak? (2) Does anybody (even psychatrists) really know enough about this 'reality' to be able competently to deliver a diagnosis under that characterization? (3) What is this 'contact' of which they speak
Gabriel Segal
June 6, 2012
(changed June 6, 2012)
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It is a good question. It is possible that a sane personmight believe that the government is controlling him by means of radio signalssent to his dental filling when in fact that is far from the truth, and that apsychotic person might believe such a thing and the belief be true. Someapparently sane... Read more
Suppose Bob is wearing a pink shirt and John tells him, in an aggressive tone, to lose the shirt. Bob replies "You can't just tell people me to do like that," and John replies "But in saying so, you're trying to tell ME what to do!" Similar logic seems to apply with regards to all sorts of things - tolerance is another common example ("You need to tolerate my intolerance, Bob!"). A similar case might be John screaming at Bob, and Bob screaming back (presumably just to be heard) that John should stop screaming at him. My question is twofold: first, on a more formal level, this kind of problem seems common, yet I'm not sure what to call it, nor am I sure what exactly the problem is. Can you give me a brief formal analysis of these situations, and perhaps tell me whether this is a frequently-discussed topic? Second, how can Bob effectively respond in such situations? Should he even try, or is he in the wrong?
Allen Stairs
June 4, 2012
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If Bob had said "You should never tell anyone what to do" then there would be logical trouble in the neighborhood. But that doesn't seem to be the best way to understand what he's is saying. More plausibly his point is that John is trying to impose his own tastes, and that (in the normal course of t... Read more
I recently asked a question about cops and robbers, and as Mr. Pessin pointed out, it's difficult to answer such a question when the subjects are children, who are often considered unable to grasp complex ethical problems. Having thought about it a bit, I'd like to ask about a related phenomenon, but with adults. There are more than a few adults who engage in Live-Action Role-Playing (LARPing), which frequently involves dozens, even hundreds of participants coming together in an area (often a rented campground) and engaging in unscripted role-playing. In fantasy LARPing, they take on the role of an imagined person (such as a wizard or a knight), speak in-character, "kill" each other with styrofoam swords, save each other from giant puppet "dragons," and so on. In doing so, they, too, simulate acts of violence against one another. I wonder whether these acts of pretend violence can be subjected to ethical evaluation, or whether the pretend nature of the activity frees the adult LARPers from needing to think about their actions in ethical terms. What is the nature of the activities they are pretending to do, and how are they ethically relevant, if at all?
Charles Taliaferro
June 2, 2012
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You are on to a puzzle or problem that has vexed some philosophers at least going back to Plato. In some of the Platonic dialogues it is proposed that art (like theatre) is an imitation of life, and that if something is evil in life (like a mother killing her children) there is something evil... Read more
Are there any bona fide philosophers who have concluded that philosophy is mostly specious rationalized intellectual imagination and raw speculation dressed in the guise of logical argument? When I studied philosophy in school that is how it struck me. For example, I recently read the claim that mathematics is a difficult subject because it deals with infinity but our minds are finite. This strikes me as a perfect example of specious gibberish. I've been looking but have not found a philosopher who is critical of the entire enterprise. Are there any? It seems clear to me that we are creatures of such belief and metaphor that we are easily duped by clever definitions and distinctions and arguments that have no basis in reality. Has this not struck anyone else? If it has, I'd love to read what they say. I mean no disrespect but I am concerned with what is real and what is just elaborate smoke and mirrors, however earnestly created. Thank you. Respectfully, George F.
Charles Taliaferro
June 2, 2012
(changed June 2, 2012)
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Before replying directly to your question, I suggest that what you are expressing is itself a philosophy. It seems to me that you are probably a sceptic (which is a philosophy, in fact there are several schools or types of skeptics) about the ability of persons to engage in the traditional to... Read more
What is the name of the logical fallacy that describes an argument in which facts are selectively chosen to support a predetermined conclusion? Is it "begging the question"? If not, what is it? (And, no, this isn't an exam question or paper topic; I'm a professional writer trying to remember something he was taught 30 years ago in a writing class.)
Charles Taliaferro
June 2, 2012
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When someone does use a highly selective set of examples to support their conclusion (Wittgenstein referred to this as a matter of relying on too narrow a diet of examples) a person might be begging the question --which, technically, is assuming the very thesis you are seeking to support or pr... Read more
As far as I am aware, according to virtue ethics, we are supposed to cultivate a virtuous character. Suppose a person with a non-virtuous character engaged in an activity that expressed, but did not cultivate, his problematic character. Would it nevertheless be preferable for him to suppress this expression of his character, even if that suppression didn't contribute to improving his character? Or is virtue ethics only concerned with behavior that leads to a change in one's character?
Nicholas D. Smith
June 1, 2012
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Virtue ethics is not just interested in the characterological states of the agent, but also on those acted upon. So bad behavior does not just express bad character, it also has effects on those who are acted upon, and in the worst cases, it has the effect of damaging the characters of those w... Read more
Socrates (or perhaps Plato) seems to have been opposed to writing. As I understand it, the objection was twofold - first, that writing "offloads" mental effort (memory, communication, reasoning, etc.) into physical media rather than leaving it in the mind, and second, that writing is unable to react to the reader and thus aid the latter in the pursuit of truth. Both of those suggestions seem to hold true for writing, yet it seems that for the past several hundred years, we have consistently thought of writing as the intellectually superior form of communication. What has changed? What makes these earlier objections loose their power?
Nicholas D. Smith
June 1, 2012
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Most philosophers are still very much interested in, and try to engage regularly in, live discussions with others. You won't find many of us claiming, for example, that teaching philosophy can effectively be done remotely, for example. The direct exchange of ideas and the interplay of active... Read more
Recently someone asked: I wonder about the notion of a masochist as somebody who enjoys suffering. Is it possible, logically, to enjoy suffering? Doesn't suffering necessarily preclude enjoyment and vice-versa? Would it be more accurate to say that a masochist enjoys something that non-masochists consider suffering? And a philosopher responded: I think that one definition of suffering is 'pain'. And someone could gain pleasure from pain, physical, or indeed psychological. So to say that a masochist enjoys suffering sees fine to me. Well.....I don't see much clarification here. Am I the only one? I think it might be just as hard for the question asker to imagine the relationship between suffering and pleasure and pain and pleasure. Maybe suffering is a larger category than pain that logically precludes pleasure so it's not hard to see a paradox there but with the narrower connotation of pain as a physical kind of suffering you can imagine that their can be an accompanying pleasure somehow. But the response that the philosopher makes does not say in what way except he says that they can gain physical pleasure but then that seems to make the very point that the question asker is making. Isn't the masochist really just enjoying a different kind of pleasure than people normally imagine but it isn't really pain?
Nicholas D. Smith
June 1, 2012
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I think what may be tripping you up here is the vaguess of terms like "pleasure" and "enjoyment," which you seem to treat not only as equivalent, but also as univocal in their reference.
There are lots and lots of different kinds of pleasures: sexual, gustatory, aesthetic, and so on. There are... Read more
With regard to opening doors many women assert that men who do so are being "gentleman" and those who don't are ungentlemanly. Likewise some feminists assert that men are sexist if they open a door for them. I've tried to research this issue very thoroughly so I know what I am talking about but among the many many websites I've read about this none have ever said that it was wrong to assume why a person is or isn't opening a door for you, until ironically while I was writing this I came across this one video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coi1Sc5ss_s where a self-described feminist does in fact acknowledge that "[I] do recognize most people do it just to be polite." In fact all of the websites other than that Youtube video I read come down under two opposed factions- those who say that men who open doors for women are sexist and those that say that men who don't open doors for women are impolite- with no nuanced opinion standing in between. On the one hand I don't like to be thought of as ungentlemanly and on the other hand I find the whole open the door for a woman thing to be such an extravagant and gender specific gesture that I can't really visualize myself ever doing it. While it is one thing to have an opinion about whether the social practice of opening doors for women is wrong isn't it kind of presumptuous to ascribe a sexist motivation to a man who opens a door for a woman? Or to assume that he is rude? Isn't it actually reverse sexism to think that way because it doesn't take into account male perspective? I'm sorry if I don't understand these websites my experience in life is that people make simplistic assumptions based on minimal evidence.
Nicholas D. Smith
June 1, 2012
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I fear you may take my answer to be flippant, but I assure you that it is not. My own practice is to open any door for anyone who might need the door opened. I open doors for people who are going to ride in my car; I open the door to my own office when I am about to go in and have a chat with... Read more