Recent Responses
I recently was in an " Ask an Atheist" panel at a predominantly Lutheran college, and after asserting that the burden of proof lies on the theist, someone claimed that a deeply spiritual person has knowledge that is only available to them. In other words, regarding what is morally correct or anything else god could want us to do, a theist is justified doing things akin to Abraham attempting to sacrifice Isaac because they have a certain kind of knowledge that justifies doing so despite all evidence that suggests it is wrong. Is this logically or epistemologically sensical, especially regarding morality? What about people like Hildegard of Bingen who claimed to receive visions from God and know this is the case beyond all doubt?
Allen Stairs
May 28, 2011
(changed May 28, 2011)
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Burden of proof arguments can be tricky. Atheists often say that believers have the burden of proof, but at the least that depends on what's being asked. Is the claim that the believer is irrational or intellectually blameworthy if s/he doesn't meet this burden? As we'll see below, that's a lot less... Read more
I understand that generalizing from one example can be fraught with problems; at the same time, here is an experience that might bring some clarity to the question, "when we think, do we have to think in words, or can we think without using words?" Years ago, our family went to a state park. we were walking along a paved path near the edge of the cliff, and the place at which we were walking had a fence along the edge of the path because the cliff edge was quite close there. My wife, myself, my 2-1/2 year old daughter, and 16-month old son were strolling together, and my son toddled along ahead of us until he was about 18 to 20 feet away. He was past the end of the fence, because the fence stopped once the cliff edge was eight feet away from the path. My son stopped, looked at the end of the path, then looked back at me, made eye contact, and grinned. Right after that I had a blur of sensory impressions; after which I saw my right hand clutching the front of his overalls. I was on my stomach around two feet from the edge of the cliff. There was not enough time for verbal thoughts to have formed and been processed. Somehow, as soon as I saw my son's grin, I knew immediately that he was going to dash for the edge of the cliff, and I realized that he did not know such a death might well be fatal. Apparently (I do not have a clear recollection; I am taking my wife's word for it!), i immediately took three relatively small stepts, two much larger steps, then launched myself, catching the ground with my left hand to propel myself forward, so that I could intercept him before he reached the cliff edge. Clearly there is some fairly sophisticated processing going on here; none of it reached the level of verbal thought. I guess my questions are: (1) how much influence do self-reported empirical events like this one have in developing a broader, more general answer to the question about thought? (2) is there actual "thinking" involved here or is this more a 'fight-flight response mechanism' that doesn't quite rise to the level of actual 'thought'? Thanks!
Mitch Green
May 27, 2011
(changed May 27, 2011)
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Thank you for your question and the very dramatic example! Your question is, "When we think, do we have to think in words, or can we think without using words?" I take your example to be one in which you seem to have been thinking but not in words. You then break down your first question into two,... Read more
'Normal' people don't do very bad things (murder, rape, etc), so if someone does something bad, can't we assume that the person is sick rather than evil? Why is it that people with mental disabilities, people with addictions, etc. can use that as their excuse and usually get people to pity them while other "crazy" people don't get any pity whatsoever and instead get thrown into prison for the rest of their lives?
Allen Stairs
May 27, 2011
(changed May 27, 2011)
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We need to be careful to avoid equivocating here. What we can safely say is that most people don't do very bad things; the people who do are in the tail of the statistical distribution. However, that isn't enough to count them as mentally ill or disabled. To come to that conclusion, we'd need to kno... Read more
I have been a bit curious about the notion of the use of “possible worlds” as a way of communicating whether a proposition is either empirically or rationally true. When a proposition is said to be necessarily true (e.g. Circles are round) it is said that there is no possible world in which circles exist and are not round; circularity and roundness are inherently tied together by their nature. However, it seems upon further reflection that the use of the quantifier “all possible worlds” could only suggest all possible worlds in which ideas or abstract objects like circles and the concept of roundness are like our actual world; or, in a related sense, where there exist beings whose deductive logical “systems” are like ours. If this is true is it possible that our invoking the use of the phrase “all possible worlds” should really indicate “all possible worlds like our own”? While it may be nonsensical to state that there are square circles in some possible world, does it follow that this cannot be true in all possible worlds. Is it logically possible that that which we cannot conceive could be nonetheless true in some other possible world?
Allen Stairs
May 26, 2011
(changed May 26, 2011)
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It seem that some issues are getting blurred here. You suggest that when we say there are no possible worlds with round squares, we're implicitly talking only about worlds where the concepts of 'round' and 'square' are as they are in our world, or -- perhaps you see this as the same thing -- only in... Read more
In his answer to question 2275 (from Sep 7th 2008), Thomas Pogge wrote: “Most political leaders do not act well, morally, and in most cases this is because they are not moral persons, not serious about morality. To be serious about morality, one must try to integrate one’s considered moral judgments through more general moral principles into a coherent account of morally acceptable conduct; one must work out what this unified system of beliefs and commitments implies for one’s own life; and one must make a serious effort to honour these implications in one’s own conduct and judgments. Those who are not serious about morality typically do not act well, morally...” I am very interested in the notion of ‘moral seriousness’, and would be interested to know what the other panelists think about the nature of ‘being morally serious’, as opposed to that of merely ‘being moral’ – and whether they agree with Prof Pogge’s account. I would also be grateful if you – Prof Pogge – could elaborate on your previous comment a little, explaining/illustrating what you mean by the various elements in your description. For example, what do you mean by saying that a morally serious person must have a ‘coherent *account* of morally acceptable conduct’? It sounds as though only philosophers – moral philosophers – can be morally serious, but I assume that you do not mean this... Finally, has anyone written more extensively on this concept? I would be grateful for any references. Many thanks (in particular to Prof Pogge, whose answers on this web site always strike me as very thoughtful, thorough, and... morally serious).
Thomas Pogge
May 26, 2011
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Moral judgments are often distorted by self-interest. A morally serious person must try to combat this danger by thinking beyond the particular case. A very simple way of doing this is to contemplate analogous situations in which roles are reversed (the Golden Rule). By extending one's judgments to... Read more
I read a few responses to questions about suicide, and something struck me as odd about a few of the replies. One consistent factor responders have noted as a weighing against suicide is that the death of a suicide victim will very likely have devastating consequences on friends and family members. But, if we granted that potential suicide victims truly were suffering and were correct in judging that their circumstances were unlikely to improve, wouldn't we essentially be asking them to suffer for the sake of others? Wouldn't this be very similar to the situation where we ask if torturing one person would be justifiable if it could improve the lives of others, something which people tend to consistently give a negative response to? I can't see that anyone has a positive duty to suffer for the sake of others' happiness.
Thomas Pogge
May 26, 2011
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One important difference to torture is that the question here is whether the agent should impose a certain pain on her-/himself for the sake of others -- not whether the agent may or should impose pain on third parties. To illustrate the relevance of this point: it makes good sense for me to believe... Read more
Does the Anglo-American tendency in philosophy to privilege clarity in words over a richness of meaning reflect a philosophical purpose or a culturally ingrained bias? I notice a lot of American analytic philosophers seem to disproportionately have names that suggest a British heritage. Is that a coincidence?
Andrew Pessin
May 26, 2011
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while there is somethign to the 'anglo-american' generalization, i'm not sure i accept the premise of your question -- i find analytic philosophy to have plenty of 'richness of meaning' in it ... (and certainly there's no explicit decision to privilege clarity at the cost of meaning ...)
i think,... Read more
When we learn something, generally speaking, we have acquired some kind of knowledge. But what about when we forget things? It seems intuitive to say that we don't know the thing in question anymore. Yet often, we will suddenly remember things we forgot without learning them again - spontaneously, so to speak. So during the period between the forgetting and the remembering, do we know the information and not have access to it, or do we not know it? How should we conceptualize spontaneous remembering in such cases?
Andrew Pessin
May 26, 2011
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great question. one small part of the answer would rely on how we conceptualize the non-forgotten, stored knowledge itself -- does it exist as propositions or discrete entities somehow tucked away somewhere in the mind (or brain)? if so, then if forgetting means deleting, then such things shouldn... Read more
I have an ethical question about buying milk at the supermarket. Supermarkets will usually have many rows of bottles of milk on their shelves – with milk that has the soonest use-by date at the front of the shelf, and milk that has more distant use-by dates nearer the back. Clearly the supermarket would like people to take milk from the front, so that the bottles which will go bad sooner are bought before those which will stay good for longer, so that they are not left with unsaleable bad milk. However, as the shopper, I also have an interest in the milk that I buy staying good for as long as possible after I buy it. My question, therefore, is: is there anything unethical about my reaching to the back row for the milk that I will buy? On the one hand, it is out and easy to access (I'm not breaking in to the store room), but on the other hand, they clearly intend the rows to be deplenished from the front. – Many thanks for your answers!
Andrew Pessin
May 26, 2011
(changed May 26, 2011)
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I've often thought about just this issue, even as I (without fail) always pick out the milk from the back row! But I cannot see what could be wrong with doing this -- unless the store sets out a customer policy forbidding it, the store has allowed it (even if it would prefer we take the milk in fr... 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