Recent Responses
Is a person actually ethically obligated from stopping a friend from drinking and driving?
Oliver Leaman
June 10, 2011
(changed June 10, 2011)
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Yes, and not only a friend. We could rephrase it to ask whether one ought to stop a drunken person handling a firearm, or machinery in general, and so on. Clearly where there is all likelihood of harm either to oneself and/or to others, one must intervene, however socially inept that makes one fe... Read more
Sometimes people will try to discredit the validity of a scientific experiment by saying that the results don't apply to the real world. Is that a valid argument?
Miriam Solomon
June 10, 2011
(changed June 10, 2011)
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It is a good argument only when there is reason to think that the experimental situation may be different in some relevant ways from the natural situation.
So, for example, tests of nuclear bombs in desert areas or underground yield results that DO apply to the real world.
Tests of drugs in vitr... Read more
Do false statements imply contradictions? Consider the truth table for logical implication. P...........Q.............P->Q T...........T.............. T T...........F...............F F...........T...............T F...........F...............T Notice that for a false statement P, the last two rows of the truth table, both Q and ~Q follow. No matter what Q is, it's truth follows from false statement P, as the third row shows. We can therefore take Q to be "P is true." From here it follows that a false statement P implies it's own truth, as the third row shows. Do false statements really imply their own truth? Do they really imply contradictions? Are false statements also true?
William Rapaport
June 10, 2011
(changed June 10, 2011)
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One branch of logic that deals with an alternative to material implication, and that has applications in artificial intelligence, is called "relevance logic". For more information on it, take a look at:
Anderson, Alan Ross, &Belnap, Nuel D., Jr.(1975),Entailment: The Logic of Relevance... Read more
When a women dresses "slutty" and is raped people are usually divided between two camps. The blame can either be placed solely on the perpetrators or some would argue that the women is also to blame for getting into the situation. While admittedly I fall into the second camp, I don't quite understand why a victim can't be at least partially to blame for his/her situation. Can't people be blamed for creating a situation in which a crime is more likely or will happen? If I supply terrorists with nuclear weapons, and millions die. Yet I didn't kill anyone and the terrorists who did had a choice to disarm the weapon. Yet most people would agree that I would be sharing the blame. If I encourage racism by wearing a "hate blacks" T shirt and speaking in white supremacist rallies do I share any of the blame for the mistreatment of minorities? (Equally am I to blame if I am attacked by black gangs?) Ultimately if a women dresses "slutty" and is raped, can't she be blamed for encouraging the situation? I'm interested in the panel's views.
Lisa Cassidy
June 9, 2011
(changed June 9, 2011)
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I just wanted to weigh in again to reassert that the belief that a woman's style of dress contributes to her rape is, in my view, totally absurd. Is rape unknown in Africa or the Middle East, where more modest norms of dress prevail? Of course not.
We know from interviews with convicted rapists... Read more
The Golden Rule, at least in its usual formulation, would seem to be problematic in cases of justice. If a judge were to "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", then they would probably never sentence anybody. A teacher couldn't fail a student who tried very hard because, presumably, that teacher (at least as a student) would have preferred a barely passing grade if they had tried very hard. The only way around this seems to be for people to enthusiastically and voluntarily be willing to punish themselves, which seems a bit of a stretch, to say the least; at most, people recognize that some system of rules requires they be punished and, perhaps, that system has a point, but nobody really *wants* to be punished. So how do proponents of the Golden Rule deal with such cases? Must they search elsewhere for their justification, or do they change the scope or meaning of the Golden Rule?
Lisa Cassidy
June 9, 2011
(changed June 9, 2011)
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Dear Fan of the Golden Rule,
We are a pair, as I am also enthusiastic about the GR. But instead of the version you cite, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," I prefer this version: "What is hateful to you, do not do to others." This second version is found in Rabbi Hillel. It is a... Read more
I recently had a colonoscopy under an anesthetic that caused complete amnesia. An observer could see I was in extreme pain during the procedure yet I have no recollection. How does a philosopher think about the pain I experienced but do not recall?
William Rapaport
June 10, 2011
(changed June 10, 2011)
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Daniel Dennett discussed a fictional drug that he called an "amnestic" that allows you to feel pain, but paralyzes you so that you don't exhibit pain behavior, and leaves you with amnesia. Pleasant, no? For the details and his philosophical analysis, read:
Dennett, Daniel C. (1978), "Why Yo... Read more
Would the idea of 3 dimensional space be possible without vision?
Allen Stairs
June 9, 2011
(changed June 9, 2011)
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The answer seems pretty clearly to be yes. Touch and hearing both convey information about dimension. Think, for example, about the fact that a sound can be above you, or in front, or two the side. Or think of how you could tell that object A is taller than object B, but object B is wider than obje... Read more
Is it racist to believe that African Americans are less intelligent than Caucasians on the whole since scientific studies show that African Americans have lower IQs? Does not being racist presuppose the hypothesis that cultural biases predispose African Americans to have lower IQs? I mean do you have to believe that IQ differences are due to cultural differences to not be racist? Supposing that differences in IQ were due to biological differences would it be racist to suppose that African American tend to be less intelligent or would that assessment be unwarranted without an understanding of the relationship between intelligence and IQ? I mean you can be intelligent in ways that aren't measurable by IQ can't you? But if IQ differences are in fact biological what is the difference between being racist and scientific? Isn't the idea that some groups are statistically more likely to produce people who are less intelligent than another group one way which racism is defined? Or is that an incorrect definition of racism?
Richard Heck
June 8, 2011
(changed June 8, 2011)
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There are a lot of complicated issues here! But let me just address one.
Let's suppose it true that black Americans do, as a whole, have lower scores on IQ tests than do white Americans. To suggest that there might be a biological explanation for this fact is to suppose that African Americans are,... Read more
How do novels, plays, or works of music exist? Consider the Iliad. The original copy of the Iliad was lost long, long ago, yet the Iliad continues to exist through its copies. If all original-language versions of the Iliad were to disappear, leaving only translations, one would assume the Iliad would continue to exist. What if all copies of the Iliad in any language and in any material form were destroyed, and we were left with nothing but the memory of the Iliad? Would it then cease to exist, until someone (presumably with photographic memory) decided to write it down again? What if all memory and knowledge of the Iliad were erased, but copies still existed, lying around in old boxes where nobody remembered them? Would it still exist if this were the case? How can we conceptualize the existence of things, like an ancient epic poem, which exist in physical form yet are not dependent on these forms?
Charles Taliaferro
June 8, 2011
(changed June 8, 2011)
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These are great questions! Some works of art seem quite anchored in the material world. Arguably, a marble statue like the David is in Florence. But poems, plays, novels, musical compositions, and so on do seem more elusive. Some philosophers who might be called Platonists tend to think th... Read more
Hi; Rene Descartes concluded "cogito, ergo sum", but this only raises a deeper question in my mind as to why do I exist? Is this a legitimate Philosophical question, and if so how does one go about answering it? cheers Pasquale
Charles Taliaferro
June 8, 2011
(changed June 8, 2011)
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Yes, this is very much an important philosophical matter. Inquiry into why one exists usually involves a combination of metaphysics (inquiry into what exists) and value theory. There are two major schools of thought about why you or the cosmos exists, and multiple alternatives in between. O... Read more