Recent Responses
This semester I started attending a seminar on (I'm translating from German hear) "The Meaning of Art". The professor began with a long-winded speech about how most people, hearing the title, would no doubt assume the topic is the role of art in our lives. He then went on to say that the question of art's role in society/our lives is incoherent if we don't first develop an understanding of the nature of art itself (particularly to what extent it is communicative), and that we will therefore focus more on the question of the nature of art rather than its role. This seems, to me, to be backwards. Art doesn't exist in presocial a void. How are we supposed to understand the nature of art without looking at the role it plays in society? I would think that especially the question of whether art is communicative can only be answered by looking at whether it is used to communicate, i.e. its role in society. Am I misunderstanding the claim, or is the professors approach genuinely backwards?
Oliver Leaman
April 14, 2012
(changed April 14, 2012)
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Let me make a remark in support of your long-winded professor, and I am afraid that sort of pedagogy does rather go with the discipline.
I think your professor is right, and perhaps he felt he needed to make the point at some length, as often happens in such cases. Art does have a role in socie... Read more
This question has been keeping me up for the past few nights, I can't seem to put it to rest. Maybe someone here can help. Do the ends justify the means? The example I've been using is would you rather kill a serial killer directly, or through your inaction let that killer kill twenty other people? My philosophy is that there is no "indirect cause of death", and that if you have the ability to prevent that killer from killing those twenty people, and you do nothing, you're as guilty as the killer himself (just to make this scenario fool-proof, let's say you know he is about to kill those people and the only way to prevent him from doing so is to kill him). Am I wrong? why or why not? Any help anyone can offer in this department is helpful!
Oliver Leaman
April 14, 2012
(changed April 14, 2012)
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Well, I do not know if my comments will set your mind at rest and allow you to get some sleep, although I am told that reading my material is very helpful to those with insomnia.
I think you are wrong, there is a difference between letting something happen and doing it. In the real world we nev... Read more
I'm currently preparing for my A-level philosophy exam and am stuck on how a logical behaviourist would respond to the problem of qualia? The problem being that the 'what-is-likeness' of experience fails to be accounted for as there is no behaviour which reflects this sensation. So how would the behaviourist respond? or would they even deem qualia as a problem for their thesis? Thanks.
Charles Taliaferro
April 14, 2012
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This is a tough matter. The classic paper on this you might cite is Thomas Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat" PHilosophical Review 1974, reprinted in Mortal Questions, Cambridge 1979, 165-180. Nagel argued that a behavioral (and anatomical, third-person) analysis of bats would not dis... Read more
If a person performs good deeds according to a logic that is reprehensible, yet consistently leads to good deeds, is the person doing good, or is the good incidental? For instance, suppose an adult takes care of their elderly parents because they fear the public shame involved in letting their parents languish in a home, despite not actually caring about their parents at all. Is the person still doing the right thing, despite the less than admirable logic they use to get there?
Charles Taliaferro
April 14, 2012
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Great question. According to most virtue theorists (in the tradition of Aristotle) and Kantians, the action is (at a minimum) tarnished, reflecting a serious impairment. It might be added, too, that in the tradition of some religious ethics, the act would not be praise-worthy if the moti... Read more
Sorry for the length of this question, but could anyone suggest reading material for me that might help me learn about the type of 'freedom' I'm wondering about in the following example: If a friend asks me to pick any color, I am free to choose whichever color I would like. It seems as free as a choice can possibly be. And yet, the process of choosing the color seems to take place without conscious involvement on my part. Well, I'm clearly involved but the name/image of a color simply emerges into my consciousness. I don't actually choose which color will come to mind, since any deliberation between colors on my part is only possible after the colors have simply popped into my head. So, if orange comes to mind, I might tell my friend "I pick orange". But then I might decide that, since orange is my favorite color, I was probably biased towards picking it, so I decide to choose a different color to express my 'freedom to choose'. But again, whichever color comes to mind as a replacement for orange just pops into my consciousness. I have no sense that I've actually chosen it, at least not in this more limited sense of "chosen". Clearly, in a broad sense, I have chosen it (my brain is a part of me), but in cases like this I feel like I'm removed from that decision despite the fact that it's quite strange to even talk about removing 'me' from anything my brain is doing. I realize that the idea of choosing what I will become conscious of is nonsensical, since I'd have to be conscious of it first before choosing to be conscious of it. It leads to a regress. But this does seem to give weight to the notion that even conscious deliberation is not ultimately free. Of course, "free" is not a well defined term, but if you say that the mysterious cognitive processes I'm describing are still part of me and therefore I am free, then you must also say that you are freely responding to what I'm saying despite those words and ideas simply emerging into your consciousness without your consciousness playing a role. So you're free, but you don't have the impossibly infinite consciousnesses necessary to be ultimately free, right? Or maybe, who cares? ;) Thanks again!
Stephen Maitzen
April 12, 2012
(changed April 12, 2012)
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I'd flag the word "ultimately" in your sentence "But this does seem to give weight to the notion that even conscious deliberation is not ultimately free." The search for "ultimate freedom," like the search for "ultimate purpose," is doomed to fail, but only because the search itself is incoh... Read more
Do the developments in quantum mechanics (i.e. the best we can do on a very micro level is give probability distributions), really have anything to say about free will? It might mean that determinism isn't true (although there could be a weaker "probabilistic determinism" that gives the likelihood of different possible events), but introducing chance into the equation isn't helpful to free will either.
Gabriel Segal
May 9, 2012
(changed May 9, 2012)
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Also agreed.
Here is an argument that determinism doesn’t undermine, butenhances, free will.
(1) Our actions are caused by our propositional attitudes,such as desire, hope, acceptance and belief.
(2) The more deterministic the relationship between out attitudesand our actions, the more freedom of wil... Read more
Is hating men an acceptable response to male oppression? Is the degree of male oppression such that the hatred of men is justifiable?
Miriam Solomon
April 12, 2012
(changed April 12, 2012)
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Hating patriarchy would be a more precise response than hating men. Some men are feminists, and some women align themselves with patriarchy.
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Do the developments in quantum mechanics (i.e. the best we can do on a very micro level is give probability distributions), really have anything to say about free will? It might mean that determinism isn't true (although there could be a weaker "probabilistic determinism" that gives the likelihood of different possible events), but introducing chance into the equation isn't helpful to free will either.
Gabriel Segal
May 9, 2012
(changed May 9, 2012)
Permalink
Also agreed.
Here is an argument that determinism doesn’t undermine, butenhances, free will.
(1) Our actions are caused by our propositional attitudes,such as desire, hope, acceptance and belief.
(2) The more deterministic the relationship between out attitudesand our actions, the more freedom of wil... Read more
Is all suffering morally relevant, even if brought upon oneself? If a person takes part in an activity where they might expect to suffer and that they could choose to abandon at any time, but persist because they think that the suffering will stop and the activity will become engaging, does their suffering still matter?
Stephen Maitzen
April 9, 2012
(changed April 9, 2012)
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One common view is that suffering is always morally relevant, in the sense that there's always a moral presumption against knowingly allowing suffering that you could (easily enough) prevent, especially when you're uniquely positioned to prevent it. But often this presumption is overcome, as w... Read more
Where can I read about objections to the validity of a question such as "the purpose of life" where the question baselessly presupposes that life HAS a purpose. And more broadly, even if it claimed that EVERYTHING has a purpose, how can such a claim be justified? It seems that many metaphysical questions suffer from this lack of validity due to unfounded presuppositions or assertions. Where can I read about this as applied to philosophical questions in general? Thank you.
Stephen Maitzen
April 6, 2012
(changed April 6, 2012)
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I recommend the essays in Part Three ("Questioning the Question") of E.D. Klemke's collection The Meaning of Life (Second Edition). If I may also mention my own short article on one aspect of this topic, you can find it at this link.
The literature on whether philosophical questions in general... Read more