Recent Responses
Hume stated that there is a gap between "is" and "ought." What about hypothetical imperatives? For example, it seems that, given a certain state of the material world, if I want to arrive on time for a certain meeting, then I ought to leave the house before, say, 8 AM. Did Hume's statement make room for such constructions, or does he not believe that the premises of hypothetical imperatives justify their normative conclusions?
Douglas Burnham
March 2, 2012
(changed March 2, 2012)
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The usual place people look in Hume forthe 'ought'/ 'is' problem is the end of the first section of ATreatise of Human Nature. Essentially, Hume wants to demonstratethat moral conclusions are founded only upon emotional reactions.This means, among other things, that a moral conclusion concernin... Read more
On 2/2, I asked: What I remember from my philosophy courses is the spirited debate, lively dialogue. For me this site is too question-and-answer, like the Stanford Online Encyclopedia that is often pointed to in the responses. Is there a place on the web where I can find a more dialogue-based form of philosophy? In reply, I received 2 replies bemoaning the quality of thinking found in philosophy chat rooms. I don't believe my question implied that I wanted to chat with morons in a "philosophy chat room", but let me clarify: I graduated with a BA in philosophy from what was then ranked as the #1 liberal arts college in the US, so I'd say I can tell the difference between people who can't reason their way out of paper bags, and philosophers. But the responders seem to imply that, at their level of philosophical accomplishment, there isn't much more to be said after one respondent has answered. In my view, this implies that the quality of the questions is poor, not provoking spirited dialogue from the panelists. Instead, I think many answers are more like what one panelist once called "pastoral counseling", urging his fellow panelists to avoid creating this kind of image of philosophy. So I'd like to reiterate my question and add an unnecessary caveat: Is there a place where I can find intelligent philosophical dialogue?
Stephen Maitzen
February 29, 2012
(changed February 29, 2012)
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Just for the record, neither Prof. Smith nor I bemoaned the quality of thinking in philosophy chat rooms, having made it clear that neither of us had ever visited any. But we both have serious doubts about the quality of philosophical conversation to be found there, if any exist. My d... Read more
Couldn't all marketing that implements psychological techniques to influence behavior without the subject realizing it be considered unethical? It seems to me that advertisers have an unfair advantage over consumers who have not had the opportunity to study the psychology used in marketing campaigns.
Andrew Pessin
February 29, 2012
(changed February 29, 2012)
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That's a great point, but of course partly it depends on what it means to "have the opportunity": in the general sense everyone is free to study whatever they want in this country .... (of course in practical terms not everyone is free to do very much, perhaps, but at least in principle;... Read more
How can we justify using juries in our court systems when there are significant problems of discrimination and stigmatization against certain groups? Don't such common biases in society undermine the role of the jury as a supposedly neutral judge of evidence?
Andrew Pessin
February 29, 2012
(changed February 29, 2012)
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I'm reminded of (I think) Churchill's observation that democracy is a terrible form of government, but it's the least bad of all the alternatives .... You are surely right in your observation, but what alternative would be better? *Every* individual may well be subject to the same biases... Read more
Greetings philosophers! I’ve always wondered if free will is a problem for atheism. In particular, if there was no designer (God), isn’t it unlikely that something as strange as free will would arise?
Eddy Nahmias
February 29, 2012
(changed February 29, 2012)
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As always with questions about free will, the answer to this one depends on how one understands free will. If one defines free will as a God-given power, then yes, atheists who accept that definition would conclude that there is no free will. But that's not a very good definition of fre... Read more
As a student of law with a vivid interest in logic (in a broad sense), I find myself intrigued by the possibility of combining these two subjects. From what I so far have found, the implementation of the latter field of thought to legal discipline is mostly only done with regard to informal logic, with fairly simple overviews of the rules of inference etc.; the scope is mostly one aimed to serve the practical law-man in, say, procedural contexts. The ones that serve the academic community, seem not to be quite technical. Yet, the legal system seems highly infested with what logic is concerned. The relation between propositions of facts and norms, the norms being constructed with the help of sentential connectives, say, material conditionals or bi-conditionals to name just a few. Yet other phenomena could be named: judgments and other propositional attitudes, the normative "it is the case that", whose descriptive accuracy depends on what legal institution one is in(e.g. penal-law demands higher probability for stating that something ´is a fact´ than in contract law), hypothesizing etc.. It all seems to permit the introduction of logic and other philosophical analytaical tools for general clarifications of ´what is happening´. I have come over some works done in the sociology of law that have taken this up analyzing ´judgements´ in a legal context with the help of Gotthard Günthers poly-contextural logic etc. Is there any literature you could recommend? Is there any way in which you see this leading to any fruitful results? If so, in what way? I am well aware that the phenomena described in the legal system are not law-specific so to speak, but are in many ways connected with the general structure and use of language.
William Rapaport
February 29, 2012
(changed February 29, 2012)
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I would hope that my askphilosophers.org colleagues might be able to answer your question better than I can with respect to the law and logic in philosophy, but I can try to give you some pointers to the literature on the law and logic in artificial intelligence.
The first pointer is... Read more
Struggling with Wittgenstein. "The World is all that is the case". Does this mean both positive facts ("Paris is the capitol of France") AND negative facts ("Lyon is not the capitol of France") I can say "It IS the case that Lyon is not the capitol of France". Or does Wittgenstein mean only the pos. facts, i.e what has been actualized? Thanks.
Stephen Maitzen
March 7, 2012
(changed March 7, 2012)
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I don't know what Wittgenstein was up to, i.e., whether he'd include among the facts of the world the "negative" fact that Lyon isn't the capital of France. As the questioner says, it plainly "is the case" that Lyon isn't the capital of France, so the first line of the Tractatus suggests that... Read more
On 2/2, I asked: What I remember from my philosophy courses is the spirited debate, lively dialogue. For me this site is too question-and-answer, like the Stanford Online Encyclopedia that is often pointed to in the responses. Is there a place on the web where I can find a more dialogue-based form of philosophy? In reply, I received 2 replies bemoaning the quality of thinking found in philosophy chat rooms. I don't believe my question implied that I wanted to chat with morons in a "philosophy chat room", but let me clarify: I graduated with a BA in philosophy from what was then ranked as the #1 liberal arts college in the US, so I'd say I can tell the difference between people who can't reason their way out of paper bags, and philosophers. But the responders seem to imply that, at their level of philosophical accomplishment, there isn't much more to be said after one respondent has answered. In my view, this implies that the quality of the questions is poor, not provoking spirited dialogue from the panelists. Instead, I think many answers are more like what one panelist once called "pastoral counseling", urging his fellow panelists to avoid creating this kind of image of philosophy. So I'd like to reiterate my question and add an unnecessary caveat: Is there a place where I can find intelligent philosophical dialogue?
Stephen Maitzen
February 29, 2012
(changed February 29, 2012)
Permalink
Just for the record, neither Prof. Smith nor I bemoaned the quality of thinking in philosophy chat rooms, having made it clear that neither of us had ever visited any. But we both have serious doubts about the quality of philosophical conversation to be found there, if any exist. My d... Read more
Is it logically possible for there to "be nothing" since for anything to "be" it must exist?
Alexander George
February 29, 2012
(changed February 29, 2012)
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For a similar issue, see Question 49.
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Are certain artistic mediums more adept at expressing human experience than others?
Douglas Burnham
February 25, 2012
(changed February 25, 2012)
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In theplayful spirit of Professor Nahmias, let me defend architecture! What could be more fundamental human experiences than sheltering; being safe and warm; having a place that is yours or your family's; having a place that is private (these are all descriptions of the home); or altern... Read more