Recent Responses
What impact has analytic philosophy had on American culture or its institutions outside of of the philosophy department of universities?
Charles Taliaferro
March 25, 2011
(changed March 25, 2011)
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Good question! Analytic philosophers have had some influence in specific areas of American cultural life. So, for example, analytic philosophers such as Nagel, Raz, Dworkin, Murphy and others have had some impact on jurisprudence, philosophers have contributed to political treatments of... Read more
Is it wrong to profit off someone else's misfortune, even if your profit doesn't make them any worse? Suppose a hurricane hits a nearby town. If I travel to that town and sell batteries at a 300% markup, I can make a lot of money off of their misery, but I didn't cause them any misery. Is that still exploitation?
Gordon Marino
March 24, 2011
(changed March 24, 2011)
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It depends upon what you mean by wrong. It certainly would not be a sign that you were a virtuous individual if a hurricane struck and you were filled with glee because of some of the products that you could sell them. A few decades ago, I was working as a Fuller Brush salesman in Florida. Aft... Read more
My psychology professor once told the class that power is a basic human motive. I asked the professor what was appealing about power and he responded that I was asking a philosophical question rather than a psychological question. I told him that my philosophy professor thinks that my questions are often psychological questions rather than properly philosophical questions. So is the question about why power is appealing a philosophical or psychological question and why is that? Also what is your answer about why power is desirable to people?
Charles Taliaferro
March 24, 2011
(changed March 24, 2011)
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Interesting! The historical relationship between "philosophy" and "psychology" is a bit complex. Some in psychology tend to see themselves as principally working from within the sciences or an applied science such as medicine, but some philosophers tend to see psychology as something tha... Read more
Since I live much closer to my parents than my other brothers (in terms of geography) do, do I have a greater moral duty to look after them once they'll be in need of assistance?
Charles Taliaferro
March 24, 2011
(changed March 24, 2011)
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Great question. One way to think of this would be to hold that you both have an equal duty to care for the parents, but in your case this might mean more visits and in-person contact, due to geography. So, imagine your older brother lives in China while you are in the states and 8 miles a... Read more
What is racism and why is it wrong?
Andrew Pessin
March 24, 2011
(changed March 24, 2011)
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Hm, your question is so deep yet so brief that one wonders what is motivating it. But perhaps a brief question initially warrants just a brief answer. I imagine that racism is a position that holds (1) that (physical) race is a meaningful/legitimate category or way of classifying human beings... Read more
Does anybody seriously believe that reality itself is merely a function of language, thought and social convention? Some postmodernists like to say this ("reality is socially constructed"), but I doubt any of them would be willing to drink arsenic that has been socially reconstructed into harmless water. Furthermore, if reality is a function of these other factors, then one could not expect anything unexpected to happen (in a reality that is a function of thought, why should a volcano suddenly erupt if nobody thought of it?); yet the unexpected clearly does happen. So why do people stick to extreme versions of anti-realism and constructivism, when more moderate positions that don't deny an external reality, yet still conserve the valuable aspects of postmodernism (understanding of culture, power structures, categorization and convention; deconstruction of beliefs & ideologies; interpretations of and assignment of meaning to natural phenomena; etc.), are perfectly reasonable and tenable?
Andrew Pessin
March 24, 2011
(changed March 24, 2011)
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Hm, you'd first have to specify who you mean by the proponents of "extreme versions" of anti-realism etc, and then ask them directly! (I'm not an expert here but I wonder if some very respectable philosophers (such as Goodman, Putnam, Quine etc) can often get reprsented in ways more extreme th... Read more
You often hear statements like "90% of our communication is non-verbal", though the percentage tends to vary. What exactly do these statements mean? How can you quantify communication? Surely, non-verbal communication can't communicate 90% of abstract concepts or information. So what is communication? Do claims that most of communication is non-verbal make any real sense, or are these just cliché statements?
Andrew Pessin
March 24, 2011
(changed March 24, 2011)
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Interesting question! Would be nice to look at specific examples of people making such claims, and then analyzing them; one suspects that such phrases are mostly rhetorical, ie dramatic ways of saying 'we communicate a LOT non-verbally', but it's not impossible that some might intend something... Read more
Chemists used to wonder why gasses tend to react with each other in small number ratios. But after the discovery of atoms, chemists have moved on to other questions. Are there any "dead questions" in philosophy? Are there any questions that were once up in the air, but are now moot or resolved?
Sean Greenberg
March 24, 2011
(changed March 24, 2011)
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"The only way we can ever get rid of philosophy," the great philosopher J. L. Austin wrote in "Ifs and Cans," is "by kicking it upstairs." In 'kicking a philosophical question upstairs'--which Austin takes to be an improvement on treating the question philosophically--a putatively philosophic... Read more
Isn't the standard analysis of knowledge circular? Specifically, in order to establish that one knows P, under the standard analysis, one must establish that she has a belief in P, that the belief is justified, and that the belief is also true. It's this last element which seems to make the standard analysis circular. Namely, to assert that P is true seems the same as asserting that one knows that P is true. Thus, since the standard analysis seems to require, as an element of establishing knowledge of P, that P is true, and since asserting that P is true seems to be the same as an assertion that one knows P to be true, it seems that the standard analysis requires one to successfully assert knowledge of P (viz., that P is true) in order to establish one's knowledge of P (since the truth of P is an element of knowledge under the standard analysis). Can someone please clear up my confusion?
Allen Stairs
March 24, 2011
(changed March 24, 2011)
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If I read you correctly, your point is this: if you're prepared to assert P, you should be prepared to assert that you know that P. And the converse is even clearer: if you are willing to assert that you know that P, you're willing to assert that P is true. That's an interesting and important ob... Read more
What is a variable and what function does it play in such quantified propositions as "There is at least a thing, x, such that x is F", or "Every x is such that it is F"? Does the variable refer to something in the world? Or does it refer only to things assigned to constants? In other words: does the variable stand for things or words? And if it stands for things, does it stand for named things or even for unnamed things?
Alexander George
March 24, 2011
(changed March 24, 2011)
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We get confused when we assimilate variables to ordinary referring expressions like "Obama". Because, as you realize, there's no good answer to the question "What does 'x' refer to in 'Every x is such that x is F'?", or - to put the question in colloquial English - "What does 'it' refer to... Read more