Recent Responses
Why don't philosophers philosophize about love more? Is it not a good philosophical topic?
Peter Smith
June 16, 2011
(changed June 16, 2011)
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Perhaps it is worth pausing to ask: What is it to "philosophize"? What sort of questions or puzzles or worries call for "philosophizing" as a response?You might say: philosophy is a motley business, embracing Plato's Symposium and Kierkegaard's Works of Love as well as Aristotle's Physics and Frege... Read more
Is every statement true? Consider the following argument: If a statement is true, then it is a member of the set of true statements. If a statement is false, then it implies a contradiction. Since anything follows from a contradiction, it follows that the statement is true. Thus the statement is a member of the set of true statements. Since a statement is true or false, all statements therefore belong in the set of true statements. All statements are true, with the set of false statements being a subset of the set of true statements. A statement thus is either true and true only, or both true and false. Does this mean that all statements are true?
Peter Smith
June 8, 2011
(changed June 8, 2011)
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It is false that Cambridge is a bigger city than Oxford. But that doesn't meant that the statement that Cambridge is a bigger city than Oxford entails a contradiction. It plainly doesn't. We can all imagine a world where history went just a bit differently and Cambridge ended up the bigger city; ther... Read more
When we prove a statement, we show it is true. Since contradictions (statements such as "P and not-P.") are never true, we can't ever prove a contradiction. But that's precisely what we do in a proof by contradiction - we show a contradiction to be true, before declaring it absurd. This must mean we are doing something wrong. It must mean that we can't even assume a false statement to begin with. This makes sense because when we assume a statement, we pretend that it's true, but we can't pretend that a false statement is true. It's a logical impossibility. That would be like saying "1 + 1 = 4" is true. Does this mean the "proof by contradiction" method is flawed? In other words, to prove proposition P, we assume not-P and show this leads to a contradiction. But if P is true to begin with (as we want to prove it), and therefore not-P false, how can we even assume not-P is true? It's false. We can't assume it as true. It's logically impossible. For example, it's logically impossible for the square root of 2 to be rational. How then can we even assume it's rational? That's impossible to begin with. It's just not right. To me it seems as if this shows that the proof by contradiction method, while it may seem nice, useful, and helpful, is actually an invalid form of argument. Am I right? If not, how is my own reasoning incorrect?
Alexander George
June 7, 2011
(changed June 7, 2011)
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When we prove something "by contradiction", we are not proving a contradiction true. We are showing that some assumption, call it X, logically implies a contradiction, that is, logically implies a statement that is logically false. The correct lesson to draw is not that the contradiction is a... Read more
The book "Philosophy through Video Games" contains an interesting discussion about the nature of personal identity, in relation to the claims video game players make about "themselves" and what "they" did while "in" a game. I wanted to ask the philosophers here what you make of a player's claim that, for example, "I shot two robbers yesterday in a video game." The player, as a human being, clearly did not shoot any other human beings or animals yesterday (one should hope), yet at the same time, saying the sentence is false seems like a gross oversimplification. Is a person's video game avatar an extension of their identity, and thus what happens to the avatar also (in a sense) happens to them? Or does the sentence use niche meanings of words rather than their normal meanings?
Thomas Pogge
June 7, 2011
(changed June 7, 2011)
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Before we make things complicated, let's try whether a simple approach might work. We can say that the "I" refers unproblematically to the agent as a human being and that the somewhat special meanings are those of "shoot" and "robber". These words have special meanings within the game just as "threa... Read more
What is the meaning of loyalty? If I work in an organization and am committed to its purpose but feel that the organization is not meeting its purpose or is perhaps subverting it, to what do I owe my loyalty? To those currently in the organization or to what I understand to be the purpose of the organization?
Thomas Pogge
June 7, 2011
(changed June 7, 2011)
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I don't think the dilemma you sketch is really about the meaning of loyalty. You might be loyal to the organization's purpose (as you understand it) or you might be loyal to your current fellow members. The question really is which more deserves your loyalty. There is no general answer, but here are... Read more
I am a student working on getting a degree in Philosophy, and my goal is to get my Master's in Philosophy and a PhD as well. There's only one problem I think. I am 40 years old! I have worked at a job I hated for 13 years, and finally decided to persue my dream. My question is, I have I waited to late in life to persue my dream of teaching Philosophy? I love everything I learn and read, and consistantly get A's in all my Philosophy classes, but am I going to be to old to do what I have dreamed of? Thanks for your opinion!
Thomas Pogge
June 6, 2011
(changed June 6, 2011)
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Much depends on the country you're in. You have better prospects in the US, I think, than elsewhere because the US has no mandatory retirement age, holds people responsible for their own retirement savings, and has rules against age discrimination. (In many other countries, when a university hires s... Read more
Why are most nations opposed to prison labor? From a justice perspective, it seems that would far better repay the damage caused by whatever crimes they committed than sitting around in a prison all day. From a rehabilitation perspective, it would seem that having prisoners (who are often from poor backgrounds) learn or practice a trade of some kind, or engage in unskilled labor, might help facilitate reintegration after release. Yet I've met lots of people who equate prison labor with slavery.
Thomas Pogge
June 6, 2011
(changed June 6, 2011)
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I'm not sure most nations really are opposed to prison labor -- it's pretty common in most of the countries I know something about. The reason against is close to what you suggest: if the labor is mandatory, then it does seem close to slavery; and if the labor is enticed e.g. through an attractive w... Read more
I'm a rising senior economics major, and I'm trying to make a decision about my career. I want to do as much good as possible, but I'm not sure how to estimate how much good I would produce in different careers. I've researched the evidence-based approaches that some philanthropic foundations use (e.g., the "impact planning" of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), but their formulas, etc. don't seem generalizable to calculating an individual's marginal impact. For example, maybe it makes sense to donate a lot to global health but not pursue a career in it because there are already so many working in development. Right now I'm assuming that anything really important will eventually be achieved, so any contribution I make will consist of just coming up with an idea/implementing a project sooner than it would have otherwise. So how about this formula: (N * T / L) * Q Where N is the number of people in the population I'm targeting, T is how much sooner I come up with an idea/implement (e.g., a year sooner than someone else), L is the average lifespan of a person in the population (making T / L the extra fraction of a targeted person's life in which they benefit from the contribution and N * T / L the adjusted number of lives I'm affecting), and Q is the percentage increase in the goodness of the person's life, making N * T / L * Q the number of quality-adjusted lives I'm helping. So if a U.S. education program is implemented a year earlier because of me, there are 50m students, and this increases the quality of a student's life by 1%, is my impact: (50m * 1 / 80) * 1% = 6,250? All this seems confused, but I can't think of a better formula! Please help!!!
Thomas Pogge
June 6, 2011
(changed June 6, 2011)
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There are some technical issues with your formula. You need to decide whether you want to understand L as a constant (80 years), thus assigning equal value to each year of human life, or whether you want to understand L as a variable that varies from person to person, thus assigning greater value to... Read more
Animal welfare regulations require that pain killers be administered to experimental animals subjected to painful experimental procedures even if the animal is subsequently killed. From the point of the animal, is there any utility in this requirement? Assume that there is no utility if the animal is killed immediately after the pain since it will no longer have a memory of the pain when it is dead. Then, it would seem the regulations are misguided (if their intent is only to protect the animal) and it would be ethical to not administer a pain killer. With this assumption, is there some interval in which it would become unethical? If it is concluded that it is impossible to define an interval since for every interval the animal would no longer have a memory of the pain at the end of the interval when it is dead. If this is the case, then would it always be ethically acceptable not to administer pain killers, since all animals will die eventually.
Thomas Pogge
June 6, 2011
(changed June 6, 2011)
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You seem to be assuming that the only bad thing about pain is that it will be remembered. But is this right? I think not. One way to argue against the assumption is by analogy: if the assumption were correct, then presumably the only bad thing about memories of pain would be that they will be rememb... 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