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Hello, and thanks for this amazing site. I am a 17 year old guy in a relationship. My girlfriend (although the word comes with a certain stigma of immaturity, which I don't like) and I have been together for well over a year. We have had a very successful relationship, even though we've had our bumps and bruises. However, our relationship is now in turmoil. My girlfriend is trying to end the relationship - although we both still love each other very much, enjoy each other's company, and feel the same as day one. The reason is her commitment issues. They come from a very troubled past, but I will not betray her privacy and give further details. This has been an issue which she has avoided for a long time. Never could we have a productive discussion on the issue. In truth, she needs therapy. She admits this, she knows this. She discontinued therapy (for PTSD and other things) a couple years ago. The reason why she refuses to go to therapy, why she is driven to break apart our relationship rather then go to therapy, is because of her love for her family. She believes that her going to therapy would hurt her family. Her family went through a very difficult time when she previously went to therapy, and she believes this will happen again (however, her experience in actually brought them together and strengthened their bonds). Would her going to therapy hurt her family (i.e. they love her very much, and hurt too if she is hurting)? Could you please expand on the topic of family bonds (i.e., how they want to help her, even if it is an inconvenience to them, how her happiness makes them happy). I love her very much, and our relationship has the potential to last a very long time if she can just overcome her issues.
Andrew Pessin
July 15, 2011
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Thanks for this thoughtful question, and I'm sorry for what you're all going through!
However I'm not convinced this is, in the end, a 'philosophical' matter -- it sounds more like one that's for the professional psychologists and therapists .... and I wonder if it might be useful even for YOU t... Read more
Why is it so difficult to accurately discuss consciousness? People have been fumbling around with strange thought experiments and neologisms like "qualia" for a while now, yet there still doesn't seem to be any clear language to use while discussing the "hard problem of consciousness". The closest I can get is to frame the question using a computer analogy. A computer can compute, and then it can provide output to show a human user what it's computing. Our minds seem to be providing "output" that we might call consciousness or experience; why isn't it just computing in the dark? Yet even this analogy seems clumsy and inaccurate. So what makes consciousness so uniquely impossible to discuss in a clear fashion? I've never come across any other topic where language itself failed to grasp the subject of discussion.
Andrew Pessin
July 15, 2011
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That's why it's called the "hard problem".... :-)
And perhaps that's why some philosophers take an 'eliminationist' or materialist approach to the subject (eg Dan Dennett, Paul Churchland): the 'problem' itself is so ill-defined because there really is no such phenomena to be analyzed ... Words l... Read more
What arguments do contemporary philosophers use in their work? I have been told that a lot of what philosophers argue, don't actually do totally rigorous and deductive arguments. But do more of a fudge in founding their arguments. Do they use mostly inductive arguments? Inference to the best explanation? And if their arguments aren't really rigorous and deductive, why do they teach philosophy students so much formal logic?
Allen Stairs
July 15, 2011
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Usually, when philosophers write, they try to persuade. They do it in various ways, some of which fit patterns that we've given names to. But for the most part, philosophers don't ask themselves questions about which form of argument they should use, and they don't worry much about how to classify... Read more
Is there any good reason to be patriotic or nationalistic? Why shouldn't we just view our nations as focused socio-legal frameworks within which we can work to try to improve the condition of humanity as a whole?
Oliver Leaman
July 14, 2011
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It is up to us how we see our countries. There is no reason why a basic sense of allegiance and even love for a specific country should not be combinedc with a desire to improve the world as a whole, quite the reverse perhaps. How we perceive our relationship with our country is up to us. Some pe... Read more
Do immigrants to a new culture have an obligation to assimilate? (To adopt the prevailing language, etc.) Many people seem to think that it is not only in the interest of immigrants to do so, but that they must do so.
Oliver Leaman
July 14, 2011
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I don't think so, but on the other hand it seems perfectly acceptable to me for a country to insist that they do. After all, it is within the rights of a country, like any other organization, to say what rules it wants following by those seeking admission. A degree of assimilation would help make... Read more
I have read an argument that states that if time is infinite, then we need not worry about death because one day our DNA will return exactly as it was in this life. That is; 1 million ar a trillion years in the future, someone might come into existance with all my DNA (or to go even further into the future,further than we can perhaps imagine, this person may even go through the exact same life experiences I've been through) and this would be a reincarnation of me. Is this even a logical argument? what would make this future person me? I could clone myself now but that doesn't mean that I would experience the internal conciousness of my clone. Similarly, if someone mapped my brain, memories and genome and was somehow able to simulate me on a computer, would this be me?
Richard Heck
July 14, 2011
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I'm with you. I don't see any reason to suppose that some future person who happened to share your DNA would be you, no matter how similar the course of their life might be to yours. And that's even before we get to the question whether time in infinite (quite possibly not) and whether, if it is,... Read more
I'd like to follow up something that was discussed in question 4096 (http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/4096). In Richard Heck's response to a question about the term "vulgar" he gives an example of an English slang term "gyp" meaning to cheat, which was derived from gypsy. As he mentions, this is considered offensive to gypsies. And, as he also mentions, many non-gypsies are not familiar with this issue and mean no disrespect to gypsies when they use the term. Heck goes on to say "One would not be blameworthy for that usage, but, once informed of its consequences, one should stop using the term." So my question is where is the line here? What if someone "informs" me that XYZ group is offended by some action I take. What if I'm not sure they're correct? What if actually some XYZs are offended and others are not? Does it matter how many people are in the XYZ group, and whether I believe they will actually witness my action? A considerate person wouldn't want to needlessly offend anyone, but at some point one gets tired of walking on eggshells because someone somewhere may be offended. What's a good way of determining how I should bend my habits to avoid giving offense to others?
Richard Heck
July 14, 2011
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All of these are good questions, but we should distinguish two issues. The first issue is as to the moral facts. I claim that if you come to know that use of some term is offensive to the members of some group, then you ought not to use that term. It's an entirely different question, of course, wh... Read more
Does the existence of intersex people invalidate the binary conception of gender?
Miriam Solomon
July 14, 2011
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You ask a complicated question very simply! Here's some advice about how to pursue this topic, with a few oversimplifications of my own. Sex (physical sex) is often distinguished from gender (gender identification in people, often culturally influenced) as well as from sexuality (sexual orient... Read more
Should you do what you want? Consider the following argument. Either you do what you want or you don't do what you want. If you do what you want, you feel good. If you don't do what you want, you feel bad. You should feel good (this is the goal doctor's try to attain for you, for example). Therefore, you should do what you want. Is this right? If not, what is wrong with the above reasoning?
Allen Stairs
July 14, 2011
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Let's have a look 1) Either you do what you want or you don't. No argument there. It's a tautology. 2) If you do what you want, you feel good. If you don't do what you want, you feel bad.Putting these together, we get that you feel good if and only if you do what you want. Is that true?... Read more
Is it possible to truly, completely understand and know that a certain act is unethical or immoral, and yet still do it (absent any external pressures, or internal pathologies like psychopathy)? Or is it so that full knowledge of immorality exclude one from acting immorally, and that a person who behaves immorally actually doesn't understand the immorality of their actions?
Charles Taliaferro
July 11, 2011
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You have identified the classic problem of AKRASIA (Greek for incontinence) and arguments that go back to Socrates' close connection between knowledge and ethics. Socrates and his student Plato, and Plato's student Aristotle, each found it puzzling how someone can do an act that he or she k... Read more