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I am seventeen and dating a boy (man?) who is two years older than I. Our relationship is really going well, neither of us have any secrets and we feel comfortable talking about all subjects. Every moment I spend with him is valuable in a way I find hard to describe. Obviously, this has me thinking about long-term, very long-term. And my question for you wise men and women (who have much, much more experience than I) is this; can you truly know you love someone if you have only ever been with them? Can you even actually, whole-heartedly love someone if they are your only romantic and sexual partner? Especially since we are so young and facing many extended time periods apart. Are we too far from self-discovery, too apt to change to make it? I don't want to be naive, but I also want to have hope that this silly boy to whom I am so hopelessly committed to could someday be the man I spend my life with.
Charles Taliaferro
May 19, 2011
(changed May 19, 2011)
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Your question or questions are very personal and very hard to settle. I think it is possible to know that you have found a life-partner romantically at a young age, but this must be very rare and there are so many cases of when people commit to each other too early and set themselves up for a... Read more
There is a simple reasoning. Which is better, bread or love? It seems love is better than nothing. For sure bread is better than nothing. So bread is better than love. Of course this is a wrong reasoning. But I wonder whatever logical mistake is made here?
Allen Stairs
May 16, 2011
(changed May 16, 2011)
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There are two problems here. First, let's look at an argument about sports teams that's similar to yours but different in a simple way:
The Lions are better than the TigersThe Bears are better than the Tigers.Therefore, the Bears are better than the Lions
This is flat-out fallacious. The premises gi... Read more
Dear Philosophers, I have been dating a woman for one year. She's been away studying at a university in another country for the last few months, but is coming back soon. All the time we've been together, she's had some problems that I think were depression. But now she's become worse, so that it's having a big impact on her daily life. She's getting treatment abroad, but attitudes towards and treatment of mental health problems are terrible back here. Our conversations together are no fun at all - we only talk about her daily problems, which I can't help with at all. I feel like this is all too much for me. But I also feel (1) I have a responsibility to help her through this, (2) she might commit suicide if I left her, (3) that it would be callous to give up faith in her getting better. For my own sake, I think I should break up, but I don't know how much weight to give to the above three concerns.
Charles Taliaferro
May 15, 2011
(changed May 15, 2011)
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This is clearly a very difficult matter and I feel quite unqualified to reply, but it sounds as though there is a middle ground between staying in a dating relationship and (to use your terms) break up, leave her, give up faith in her, being callous. I suppose there are some relationships whi... Read more
I'm a psychology student with a question about ethics: Is empathy ESSENTIAL to morality. Could a person without the capacity for empathy still be a morally good person? (Note that I am not asking whether empathy is morally useful.) Psychopaths are often described as lacking empathy, and this is often offered up as an explanation for their immoral behavior, so one might be tempted to use them as evidence that empathy is necessary for morality. This, however, strikes me as a bit fast and loose because in addition to emotional deficiencies, psychopaths also show a remarkable lack or underdevelopment of practical reason. It may also be worth asking whether empathy can be used in immoral ways. A skilled torturer, for instance, might be a more effective torturer if she or he can accurately channel, measure, and thus manipulate the emotional pain of a victim. Or con artists may use empathy to better read a mark, and so on. One might counter that when we empathize, we further react with some degree of care or sympathy. But this also seems inaccurate. Sympathy, for instance, seems to involve a kind of well-wishing for the other. It is a third person emotion that involves feeling something for another; feeling what another ought to feel, but may not actually feel. Empathy on the other hand is a first person emotion; a kind of tuning-in to the emotional of another, feeling what they do feel, rather than what they should feel. Is this kind of emotion essential for morality? Can it hinder morality? Would we be better off, or necessarily immoral without it? (Also, is this a common question in moral philosophy?)
Gordon Marino
May 14, 2011
(changed May 14, 2011)
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What a rich question! Could a person without empathy be a morally good person? I suppose the old moralist Kant would say so. Hume, of course, would go in the opposite direction. It is, I guess, conceivable that such an individual might avoid all forms of transgressions, maybe even lead a saintly l... Read more
Why are philosophers concerned with the nature of time? Isn't this a scientific subject?
Jonathan Westphal
May 12, 2011
(changed May 12, 2011)
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Here are some questions about time that are not scientific but are philosophical. Does time flow? Does it pass? What does it pass? Does it move? If so, how fast? If speed (s) = d/t, what is d/t when s is the speed of time? What temporal distance does time travel in a unit time? Surely the unity... Read more
If a person does not believe P, where P is some proposition, is it fair to say that they then positively believe not-P?
Miriam Solomon
May 12, 2011
(changed May 12, 2011)
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Here's an example to help make the question concrete:
Let P be "It is raining."
I don't believe that it is raining. However it does not follow that I believe that it is not raining. (I don't have any beliefs about raining at the moment.)
Log in to post comments... Read more
If a person does not believe P, where P is some proposition, is it fair to say that they then positively believe not-P?
Miriam Solomon
May 12, 2011
(changed May 12, 2011)
Permalink
Here's an example to help make the question concrete:
Let P be "It is raining."
I don't believe that it is raining. However it does not follow that I believe that it is not raining. (I don't have any beliefs about raining at the moment.)
Log in to post comments... Read more
Why are philosophers concerned with the nature of time? Isn't this a scientific subject?
Jonathan Westphal
May 12, 2011
(changed May 12, 2011)
Permalink
Here are some questions about time that are not scientific but are philosophical. Does time flow? Does it pass? What does it pass? Does it move? If so, how fast? If speed (s) = d/t, what is d/t when s is the speed of time? What temporal distance does time travel in a unit time? Surely the unity... Read more
It is clear that determinism can give a logically valid account of human behavior; it is a viable theory of human action. But it seems that if determinism, or at least a deterministic account of behavior that precludes free will, is true, much of what we hold very valuable in most if not all human cultures (e.g. love; trust; the value of the person; etc.) is all an illusion. I, for example, do not freely place a value on my wife and love her because of this value; my "love" is a product of my genes, or my psychological history. Similarly, it also seems to me that atheistic accounts of the origin of morality (e.g. a need to survive and get along better to propagate our genes) are plausible, but likewise seem to remove deeper meanings involved in moral behavior (e.g. I choose not to murder someone because I find it violates, in some sense, a universal moral law that I could be held accountable for at some point now, or perhaps even after my death). I am not sure what philosophers who have discussed these issues have called this, but I can call it here "devaluing theory", the idea that some philosophical (and scientific) views of human culture (including human behavior) devalue much of what humans consider deeply meaningful in life. Do these concerns, the devaluing of human culture, give us good reasons to think that determinism, or at least complete determinism, as well as ethics grounded in the need for human survival, are not true?
Andrew Pessin
May 12, 2011
(changed May 12, 2011)
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A great question, which deserves a longer response than I have time for now! But just a very general response: how could concerns about what we value give us a grounds for determining what's true with respect to determinism? Determinism seems, as you've sketched it, to be a kind of scientific th... Read more
Hello philosophers, I have a question concerning experience. I have dreamt that I have had a French kiss. Although, I have never had such empirical experience in my real life. However, how have I managed to fell like it tastes in my dream? I mean, how have I managed to understand and feel the sense of it if I have never had it?
Andrew Pessin
May 12, 2011
(changed May 12, 2011)
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Hm, if you haven't *really* experienced it, then how do you know that what you dreamt was accurate? Moreover, even if you haven't had such a kiss exactly, isn't it possible that the specific sensory components of the kiss ARE all things you've experienced, if not exactly in that combination? (Why... Read more