Recent Responses
People say that the more wine you drink, the more you "learn to appreciate" fine wines (we're talking about over the course of a lifetime, of course, not over the course of an evening!). Assuming this is true, is one's taste in wines actually improving over time? Or is it just changing? If the connoisseur likes dry red wine from France, and the "pleb" likes sweet white wine from Romania, what makes the connoisseur's taste superior to or more refined than the pleb's taste? Is it just the institution of wine-loving that contructs one taste as superior to the other, or do the connoisseur's taste buds literally detect marks of quality that the pleb's doesn't?
Douglas Burnham
April 8, 2011
(changed April 8, 2011)
Permalink
The philosophical investigation of wineexperience has become a popular topic recently, with several bookshaving come out. You questions go right to some of the most commonlyaddressed problems.
First of all, notice that the questionsuse terms such as connoisseur or pleb, and contrast France with... Read more
People say that the more wine you drink, the more you "learn to appreciate" fine wines (we're talking about over the course of a lifetime, of course, not over the course of an evening!). Assuming this is true, is one's taste in wines actually improving over time? Or is it just changing? If the connoisseur likes dry red wine from France, and the "pleb" likes sweet white wine from Romania, what makes the connoisseur's taste superior to or more refined than the pleb's taste? Is it just the institution of wine-loving that contructs one taste as superior to the other, or do the connoisseur's taste buds literally detect marks of quality that the pleb's doesn't?
Douglas Burnham
April 8, 2011
(changed April 8, 2011)
Permalink
The philosophical investigation of wineexperience has become a popular topic recently, with several bookshaving come out. You questions go right to some of the most commonlyaddressed problems.
First of all, notice that the questionsuse terms such as connoisseur or pleb, and contrast France with... Read more
When reading a text, is it possible to determine the true meaning of the text, or is meaning that which is in some way picked up on by the audience, regardless of what literary critics say? I ask because I've been reading lately about critiques of the portrayal of women in modern popular media. A lot of literary critics seem to think that women portrayed as strong, independant Amazon-like warriors are just playing into objectifying dominatrix fantasies, while a lot of fans of these works (like Xena, for example) think just the opposite - that these portrayals are empowering. So are the literary critics right, because they can presumably take apart the text more intricately and exactly, to find its true meaning? Or are the fans right, because regardless of the structure of the text, they feel empowered by it?
Douglas Burnham
April 8, 2011
(changed April 8, 2011)
Permalink
A question was asked last year, which had a different aim (but a very similar example). The responses, though, included ideas that should help you with your question:
http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/3587
Log in to post comments
Most foul odors we smell that give us all a shock of disgust seem to come from bacteria (at least before our mastering of chemistry). We can explain this evolutionarily as a means for making us avoid the most salient disease vectors from our humble origins (excreta, spoiled meat, putrid water, etc.). My question is this, did the selection pressures of evolution act to assign the awful olfactory sensations to the particles emitted by dangerous bacteria and their waste, OR did we evolve the response of disgust to those already-assigned sensations? In other words, does my dog experience a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SENSATION when smelling (and rolling in) a dead animal - one that's not so bad, or does he experience the smell like I do he just LIKES IT BETTER than I do? I think this question might be about qualia, and whether there's a two-step process in how we perceive them. Do evolving organisms just shift around the few bad smells there are to the stimuli that best deserve them, or are smell sensations and qualia 'fixed' to sources and require a second-step evaluation of the sensation that assigns the "yummy" or "yuk" to the smell? I'm more interested in responses focused on the topic as it relates to philosophy of mind and less about the strict science that I might have gotten wrong. Thanks.
Peter Smith
April 8, 2011
(changed April 8, 2011)
Permalink
"Different qualia or different attitudes to the same qualia?" That seems an intractable question. It should make us suspicious. Maybe the very idea of qualia (as postulated by some philosophers) is the source of the problem. For sceptical thoughts along these lines, see Dan Dennett's justly famous... Read more
It often happens that authors or speakers criticize an opponent's supposed position, only for that position, upon closer inspection, to turn out to be a straw man, blown out of proportion and robbed of nuance. Generally, we agree that arguing against straw men is not particularly intellectually admirable, at least not if that's all one does. Yet sometimes, in everyday life, you meet people who are, in a sense, walking straw men. They espouse exactly the inaccurate, misrepresented beliefs that pass as straw men in more rigorous circles, yet these beliefs are their own. I can well imagine that, for some people, they have met so many walking straw men that it is these straw men, and not the thinkers behind them, who seem to be the real opponents; yet since their opinions are the theme-park versions of their favored sources (be it Derrida, Marx, Nietzsche or even religious texts like the Bible), criticizing them is considered bad sport in a debate. So where do these people fall in debates? Arguing against their positions seems generally past the point, because no well-known actual philosophers/thinkers have actually espoused their views - and yet they, too, are thinkers in a broader sense. So how do philosophers go about dealing with these walking straw men in their debates and arguments?
Charles Taliaferro
April 8, 2011
(changed April 8, 2011)
Permalink
Great question! I suppose the most common place where philosophers have worked to identify "straw men" or (another term sometimes used to name the same thing "Aunt Sallys") is in logic books that identify ordinary fallacies. My hunch, though, is that in debates, most philosophers would see... Read more
I live with my husband and his mother. My mother in law seems to have issues with me; she picks fights and tries to manipulate my husband into treating me like dirt just the way she does. She is more than just a meddler. She seems to have strange episodes that might qualify as a mental problem such as depression. My husband always takes her side and goes crazy on me saying that his number one responsibility is to his mother. My question is what is the morally acceptable thing here? Does my mother-in law deserve more of my husband's 'respect' than I do? It seems that he thinks I should never say ill about her even when she's clearly in the wrong.
Charles Taliaferro
April 8, 2011
(changed April 8, 2011)
Permalink
What a difficult situation! You may be dealing with a matter that involves different cultural traditions. If, for example, you and your family's background is Confusian there may be a primacy of hnor due to parentss, but if you are in Jewish or Chrisitian context then, while honor is due t... Read more
Modern logicians teach us that some of the inferences embodied by the Aristotelian square of opposition (i.e., the A-E-I-O scheme) are not valid. Take the inference from the Universal Affirmative "Every man is mortal" to the Particular Affirmative "Some men are mortal": the logical form of the first proposition is a conditional ("Every x is such that if x is a man, then x is mortal") and we know that a conditional is true whenever its antecedent is false. In other words, the proposition "Every x is such that if x is a man, then x is mortal" is true even if there were no man, so the aforementioned inference is invalid. But if the universal quantifier has not ontological import, why such a logical truth as "Everything is self-idential" implies that there is something self-identical? And, above all, why the classical first order logic needs to posit a non-empty domain?
Peter Smith
April 8, 2011
(changed April 8, 2011)
Permalink
What does it mean to say that the logical form of "Every man is mortal" is "Every x is such that, if x is a man, then x is mortal"? The content of this claim is, in fact, quite obscure!
However what is true is that if we are going to translate the English "Every man is mortal" into a a standard sin... Read more
What do we mean by rationality? Is it just the ability to judge whether the means will achieve the ends? Is it some all-encompassing understanding of existence? Or is it something else?
Sean Greenberg
April 8, 2011
(changed April 8, 2011)
Permalink
Philosophers distinguish different types of rationality. The ability to judge whether means will achieve ends is generally called 'instrumental rationality'. Epistemic rationality consists in proportioning one's beliefs to the relevant evidence--although it's a nice and subtle question just wh... Read more
Can one be happy, and sad at the same time, where the definition of happiness leans more towards a state of content, rather than joy, and sadness defined more as frustration (helplessness). For example, if one is currently experiencing a state of frustration, of helplessness, to a strong degree (perhaps crying)- and than, at the exact same moment experiencing happiness, or a feeling of content with life. Is this not paradoxical or contradictory? I must say that I have myself have experienced this. I suppose I would describe it as a state of currently being discontent with the specific situation one is in, but content with the general direction their life is going. But to experience the emotions at the exact same moment (NOT to feel frustrated, and after rationalizing their feelings, feel content).
Allen Stairs
April 7, 2011
(changed April 7, 2011)
Permalink
Your question is an interesting one. It's puzzling at first to imagine experiencing two very different, apparently conflicting momentary feelings at the same time. For example: it's hard to know what we would make of someone who claimed to be experiencing a feeling of great calm and extreme anxiet... Read more
What is an abstract concept, exactly? Is there any consensus regarding their definition among philosophers? What would be an example of a non-abstract concept then? And why? Thanks for your time (Juan J.).
Andrew Pessin
April 7, 2011
(changed April 7, 2011)
Permalink
good question. I might rephrase it slightly: which concepts are concepts of abstract things? then we offer one kind of definition of an abstract thing: a thing which (say) isn't located (or isn't the kind of thing to be located) in any one particular time or space. On this definition many con... Read more