Recent Responses
The law mandates that people must wait until they are 21 years of age in order to consume alcohol, on the grounds that that is the age at which the body is fully capable of handling alcohol. But it is well understood in biology and physiology that people's bodies grow and develop at different rates depending on any number of factors: environment, genetics, etc. And that is just the physical aspect of it. There is also the mental aspect of understanding the potential dangers of alcohol and knowing how much is safe to consume. Many 18 - 20 year old college students consume alcohol without any harm resulting. Is it accurate to draw a line in the sand and say "this is when you are ready for alcohol"? Sartre says that "existence precedes essence" which I interpret to mean that people are responsible for determining the course of their own lives. So shouldn't we have the freedom to determine for ourselves when we are ready for alcohol? Why should the government make that decision for us? If a person is both physically and mentally capable of drinking alcohol, but under the age of 21, then to enforce the minimum drinking age against that person you would be relying on argumentum ad baculum, wouldn't you? It seems like a violation of human dignity to deny me autonomy over my own digestive system.
And people are ready to drive
Allen Stairs
August 31, 2017
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And people are ready to drive cars at different ages. But I'm going to guess that it would be a bad thing overall if 12-year-olds were allowed to drive. And people are intellectually capable of entering into contracts at different ages, but even the 10-year-olds wh... Read more
Many people build their moral beliefs out of deep-seated gut feelings that themselves have no rational grounding. What I wanted to ask is: is this a good way to construct a belief system? If so, could any feeling at all serve as a foundational principle? For instance, would a moral system that takes a deep-seated racism as a building block be any less justified than one that relies on deep-seated empathy?
If I want to construct a
Allen Stairs
August 24, 2017
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If I want to construct a sound system of beliefs, then there's not much to be said for merely relying on gut instinct. That's not because gut instincts are necessarily wrong or unreliable. It's because if I'm trying to construct a system as opposed to simply enumerating... Read more
I am reading "How Physics Makes Us Free" and have a question about the central Daniel Dennett thought experiment in the opening chapter. The experiment treats body parts, crucially the brain, as a component of the body like a spark plug in a car (brain in a vat). It is, rather, part of an organism and in my mind indivisible from the nervous system. Even when higher brain function is dead a body will still reject a donated organ and attack it as alien. A thousand same-model spark plugs will work in a car without any issues. It is at the level of biology that identity first appears. Yet the thought experiment treats physics and psychology as the only relevant domains. If the thought experiment were true to biology it would not be enough to replicate all the synapses and nerves but the entire body as the biological instantiation of identity. Am I overstating a life-science claim to some part of this scenario?
You give an interesting
Stephen Maitzen
August 18, 2017
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You give an interesting argument that the ground of one's identity is biological rather than (just) physical and/or psychological. But it may run into a problem. Not only can one's body reject organs transplanted from someone else. It can also, in the case of autoimm... Read more
On theory that I've heard for the justification of ethics and moral responsibility in a deterministic viewpoint was that they would act as a kind of "conditioning" to make society better (i.e. we reward for the hope of them doing good and the future and punish so they refrain from doing bad). Are there any arguments against this viewpoint, and are there any other arguments for moral responsibility from a deterministic perspective?
This purely instrumental
Stephen Maitzen
August 18, 2017
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This purely instrumental justification for assigning moral responsibility is typical of hard determinism, which says that, because determinism is true, agents are never morally responsible for their actions, even though society can benefit from talking and acting as... Read more
Is there any good reason why it is improper to point out white disadvantage or hardship and lobby for white power? Historically, this sort of idea has been associated with violence, but is that history so toxic that the conversation can't even be had?
A few points.
Allen Stairs
August 17, 2017
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A few points.
At least in the US, the idea that there is widespread, systematic discrimination against white people, let alone systematic oppression, is not defensible. This is true even if some white people are sometimes discriminated against because they're white. It's also true... Read more
Some Christians claim to oppose homosexuality by saying, "hate the sin, not the sinner." Is this a meaningful distinction? Is it a cogent defense against accusations of homophobia?
Yes and No. (I'm a
Richard Heck
August 12, 2017
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Yes and No. (I'm a philosopher. What did you expect?)
Yes, it's a perfectly reasonable distinction. Suppose your sibling or parent or child (as makes the most sense to you) were to murder someone. I hope that you would find what they had done to be horrible and worthy of... Read more
Recently, I read an article about someone whose parents would purposely have sex in front of him when he was a young child. Many of the comments left in response to the article remarked that this amounts to child abuse. (For a less extreme example, it's commonly held that exposing young children to porn or graphic sex scenes is similarly inappropriate.) I agree that this sort of thing is egregious, but I don't know how to explain why. When the child is watching his parents have sex, what exactly is happening that harms him?
Allen has already said a lot
Richard Heck
August 11, 2017
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Allen has already said a lot about this, so I'll just add a brief note. Early in the response, he says, "Imagine a society in which people live in close quarters and privacy is a luxury." We don't need to imagine such a society! Most human societies prior to the ind... Read more
A question was asked earlier, "if something cannot be defined, can it exist?". I would like a better answer to that question, if you would please. The question refers to the existence of a 'thing' that cannot be defined, the answer was given for an object that has not defined yet. These are not the same thing. If there is no possible way to define an object, ever, can that object exist? Can a 'thing' exist with no identity?
Your distinction between
Allen Stairs
August 10, 2017
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Your distinction between something not yet defined and something for which there could never be a definition is a reasonable one, and thus an answer that bears only on the former doesn't answer your question.
Here's one possible approach. If something exists, it has so... Read more
We laud veterans for having "fought for their country" regardless of what the fight may have actually accomplished. For example, many people who regard the Vietnam War as a failure--or worse, a moral atrocity--still hold Vietnam vets in high regard. It strikes me that reverence for veterans rarely considers whether their actions actually made any of their countrymen better off (never mind people in other countries). We have a notion of honorable military service that is tenable only insofar as it abstracts away the actual practical outcomes of warfare. When we praise a veteran, what exactly are we praising them for?
One morally important
Michael Cholbi
August 6, 2017
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One morally important distinction here is between conscripted and voluntary military service. As you are probably aware, the United States currently has an all-voluntary military; every soldier is a soldier by choice. This has not always been the case (either in the U.S. o... Read more
Some biblical scholars claim that events recorded in the bible justify them to believe that a miracle like the resurrection most likely happened. What's puzzling to me about their claim is that it seems to me the job of historians in general is to determine whether a particular event most likely happened given historical documents they have. However, even if we grant that the resurrection is possible, isn't it also true that it is an extremely unlikely event to begin with? Are these biblical scholars consistent in holding that the resurrection (a highly unlikely event) happened when the methods they employ can only be used to determine whether a particular event most likely happened?
Just to see if I'm following.
Allen Stairs
August 4, 2017
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If I have it right, your issue is with Biblical scholars who think what's recorded in the Bible justifies believing that the Resurrection (for example) "most likely happened." But your last sentence asks whether these scholars are being consistent if they say th... Read more