Recent Responses
Is it a matter of convention that 24 September 2017, 17 September 2017, 10 September 2017, 3 September 2017, 1 February 1970, etc. are or were Sundays? Of course, we could have given and can give them a different name. They actually have different names in different languages. We could even have no common name for them. There could be no English language. There could be no Gregorian calendar (at least it could be that no one invented it). And, of course, what people do with Sundays varies greatly from one place or time to another. But it seems to me that it is no convention that these days were, are or will be Sundays. In any case, these thays would always be Sundays.
I presume that anything you
Stephen Maitzen
September 21, 2017
(changed September 21, 2017)
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I presume that anything you would count as a Sunday must recur every seven days and must be the same day of the week. If not, then I don't know what you mean by "Sunday" in your question. But the decision to treat one week as consisting of seven days is enti... Read more
I was once asked in an interview 'What would you change in the world if you had the power to do so?' I replied that 'if there was no life after death, I would destroy the human race including myself and my family, thus preventing the suffering every human would have undergone if they were alive'. Aside from life after death, at first glance you might think of me as a satanic human being, but I am exactly the contrary, I am a medical student. It would cause temporary suffering but it would also banish endless suffering as well as happy things. My question is that is it ethical and moral to do so?
This question strikes me as a
Allen Stairs
September 21, 2017
(changed September 21, 2017)
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This strikes me as a particularly easy question. The answer is no.
Among other things, you seem to be making two assumptions. The first is that the suffering prevented by destroying everyone outweighs all the the happiness and satisfaction that would also be... Read more
The attempt of religious believers to understand what atheism is has led many people to have misconceptions about what it entails. I recently went on Facebook and was confronted with an argument/arguments which belies atheism, and science in general. The belief expressed in the Facebook post was that the logical conclusion to an atheistic evolutionary worldview is that we would all be stabbing and raping each other, and simply doing everything we can just to survive. (Additional details about the post are at the end of my question in case of confusion) The conclusion this person is implying is that because we do not live in such a world of violence, we must be relying on the morality of god. This claim seems clearly rediculous to me, yet to many believers it appears cogent. My question is about how to represent this argument in a formal deductive style. Here I will present two propositions i think are involved in the confusion. The first proposition A is my rendition, and the second proposition B is a configuration that I am tacitly assuming an interlocutor might use. Proposition A: 1- If we are acting in accordance with, and rely on, the morals given to us by god, we would not be stabbing each other. 2- We aren't stabbing each other, therefore we are acting in accordance with, and rely on, the morals given to us by god. Proposition B: 1- If we aren't running around stabbing each other, we are reliant on the morality of god. 2- we aren't running around stabbing each other, therefore we are reliant on the morality of god. Proposition A is clearly circular and what is called affirming the consequent. But when it is reconfigured into proposition B, the problem goes away. I feel like this argument is unprovable, and furthermore, it seems similar to saying that if you have a headache, you have a brain tumour. My question is, how does one refute this argument, particularly proposition B. Where did I go wrong?
The philosophical terrain is
Charles Taliaferro
September 21, 2017
(changed September 21, 2017)
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The philosophical terrain is a bit tricky here. I suspect most of us (whether religious believers or not) know (or maintain) that murder and rape are wrong because they violate other people, as well as (presumably involving a host of vices) like malice,... Read more
Any reason someone could give for why they love me renders me replaceable. For instance, if they love me for my appearance, intelligence, kindness, well, there's always someone more attractive, smarter, kinder. So, all things being equal, they ought to trade up to a better model if presented with the choice; or if God is the most perfect example of all desirable traits, then they ought to love God and no one else. I'd like to ask the panel: in contrast to loving someone because of some quality that they might or might not be the best exemplar of, does it at all make sense to love someone in their particularity, ie simply because they occupy a certain position in the time-space continuum? Or does that make a nonsense of the concept of love? Or is it silly, in the first place, to look for reasons for love?
I don't know about loving
Michael Cholbi
September 15, 2017
(changed September 15, 2017)
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I don't know about loving someone thanks to their position in the time-space continuum, but yes, we can and do love people for their particularity, as you put it. It's important to distinguish what sparks love for someone and what sustains it. It's certain... Read more
Suppose some man is absolutely shy in romantic matters. Still, he loves to talk to beautiful women about all kinds of non-romantic, non-sexual subjects, and people like to talk to him. The main reason why he likes to talk to beautiful women is that it secretly arouses him sexually. Moreover, when talking to women he gets to see them at a close distance, to hear their voices clearly and to smell them. Perhaps on some occasions women will even touch him in a friendly manner. When he is alone at home, this man will remember those conversations and masturbate while thinking about those women and their physical closeness. My question is whether this is wrong (assuming that masturbation is not generally wrong). I think it is not wrong, but I have some doubts. My first problem is that this man is using those women without their full consent. They don’t know his real reason for talking with them nor what he will do “with” their conversation. I think Kant said something like we should not use other people as means for our interests without their consent. Secondly, I think it is not impossible that this practice will, over the years, have some bad effect on this man. Perhaps it will make him come to see women, in general, as “objects”, and perhaps someday he will do something nasty because of that. This may be improbable, but it seems possible. All in all, do you think it is wrong for him to “use” women in this way?
You've asked an interesting
Allen Stairs
September 15, 2017
(changed September 15, 2017)
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You've asked an interesting question. I'm not going to say much directly about whether this person is doing wrong. I'm going to say some things more in line with a remark of John Austin's in a very different context: "If only we could forget for a while ab... Read more
Good Day! I would just like to ask. Is truth relative? Personally, I don't think it is because the question begs you to believe there are instances where it is false which means it is not constantly applicable which makes me question it. However, I find a flaw that I can't quite answer. Let's say something that is true on a specific culture, is false on another, if this is the case, then how could truth be absolute? Or is truth actually relative? Thank you!
I find it hard to make sense
Stephen Maitzen
September 8, 2017
(changed September 8, 2017)
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I can't make sense of the idea that truth could be relative. Suppose that I find some dish spicy, while you find it mild. We might be inclined to say that
(R) "This dish is spicy" is true relative to me and false relative to you,
but I think that way of spea... Read more
Logic plays an important role in reasoning because it helps us out to evaluate the soundness of an argument. But logic doesn't help us out in the search of truth. Does philosophy have a method/s to find truth ? Is something like truth possible in philosophy ? I just would like to know because, as a guy who studies such a subject, I tried to answer these questions without success. I lack the necessary resource to answer such a question (a definition of truth). By the way, I'm sorry for the bad English; it's not my native language.
I respectfully disagree with
Stephen Maitzen
September 8, 2017
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I respectfully disagree with your claim that logic doesn't help in the search for truth. On the contrary, we need logic in order to find out what any proposition P implies -- what other propositions must be true if P is true -- which, in turn, is essential f... Read more
Some psychologists believe, based on empirical research, that people tend first to make a decision intuitively and then afterwards find a way to provide logical justification for why it was a good decision. I think they use the term "heuristic" as a way to describe an analog process in which we use experience, memory, and pattern recognition as tools with which to make that initial intuitive decision. If this description of the process of how we decide is based on how our minds actually do work, what are the implications for philosophy, which seems to imply that our decision-making process is rational? Isn't the "rational" part of our brain a fairly late evolutionary development, in which it was grafted on top of our nervous system?
If the evidence favors the
Allen Stairs
September 7, 2017
(changed September 7, 2017)
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If the evidence favors the view that we don't always make decisions by reasoning, then philosophy needn't disagree. If the truth of the matter were that all of our decisions—including decisions about which views are more plausible—amounted to post-hoc "rationaliza... Read more
In mathematics, it is commonly accepted that it is impossible to divide any number by zero. But I don't see why this necessarily has to be the case. For example, it used to be thought of impossible to take the square root of a negative number, until imaginary numbers were invented. If one could create another set of numbers to account for the square root of negatives, then what is stopping anyone from creating another set of numbers to account for division by zero.
It's actually easy to invent
Richard Heck
September 5, 2017
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It's actually easy to invent a system of numbers in which division by zero is possible. Just take the usual non-negative rational numbers, say, and add one new number, "infinity". Then we can let anything divided by zero be infinity. Infinity plus or times... Read more
What's the difference between saying that the burden of proof is on one's opponent, and simply saying that they are likely wrong? The idiom of "burden of proof" is used in a way that suggests that it's somehow different from ordinary, straightforward evaluations of evidence and arguments, but I can't think of what that difference could be.
You often do hear people in
Richard Heck
September 5, 2017
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You often do hear people in philosophy say that the 'burden of proof' is on their opponent. And you sometimes hear people argue about who has the 'burden of proof'. I think that what this usually is about is which position is antecedently more plausible, or which... Read more