Recent Responses
What happens after death? I mean, I've thought about this for a while, and have concluded that this current life, the life we are all in, is merely for the purposes of enjoyment and pleasure (reading Aristotle's works :) ) So, when we die, does our perception of time immediately fade away? I mean this. Do we (after death) A) Immediately "respawn" (like HALO)? We die, then instantaneously take on the life of whatever creature that may be (thus time just kind of "skips scenes"? B) Wait in line, like at the DMV for a ticket? Do we simply sit in Limbo, waiting for our name to be called? C) Since there is no life after this (to some people), then life ceases to exist, explosions happen, stuff like that. Does that mean the moment we die,everything is gone? Thanks. PS, Please don't give me "well i'm not dead so i can't tell you haha" kind of stuff. Thanks. Only reason I am inquiring is I just joined a Philosophy club at our school, and I was very interested in this stuff. Thanks for the reply :3
Nicholas D. Smith
March 10, 2011
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Before I get to your question about death, I would really like you to reconsider your view of what life is all about. The view you express on this topic is generally called "hedonism," and this view is met with fairly strong resistance in most of the philosophical literature. Are there no... Read more
What does it mean to be "judgmental"? Is there a way to avoid being judgmental while also acknowledging that people sometimes engage in inexcusable evil?
Lisa Cassidy
March 10, 2011
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Making judgments - both insignificant and momentous - is essential for everyday life. But people who use the term as an insult mean something apart from 'using one's faculty of judgment.' To call someone judgmental is to say that one is quick to condemn others, and perhaps enjoys a sense of supe... Read more
What does it mean to be "judgmental"? Is there a way to avoid being judgmental while also acknowledging that people sometimes engage in inexcusable evil?
Lisa Cassidy
March 10, 2011
(changed March 10, 2011)
Permalink
Making judgments - both insignificant and momentous - is essential for everyday life. But people who use the term as an insult mean something apart from 'using one's faculty of judgment.' To call someone judgmental is to say that one is quick to condemn others, and perhaps enjoys a sense of supe... Read more
Is there a rational basis for deciding when I should sacrifice my life to save another person's life?
Nicholas D. Smith
March 10, 2011
(changed March 10, 2011)
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It seems to me that there might be any number of such bases, yes, but perhaps there is a single generic way to characterize most (if perhaps not all) of them. One way to think of your life (since, after all, you are going to die eventually anyway) is to regard it as a whole, and to evaluat... Read more
If there were a a good reason to believe that irrational thinking--or at least a certain train of irrational beliefs--leads to greater happiness and prosperity (and I think there is a bit of psych research that suggests this is true), could a rational person decide to think irrationally--to adopt irrational beliefs--and would that itself be a rational decision?
Nicholas D. Smith
March 10, 2011
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Before I try to give an answer to your question directly, I want to object to the claim that seems to be its basis. I do believe that recent psychological research about happiness supports at least some elements of what might be called "irrationalism." On the other hand, it seems to me th... Read more
Is the expression "ex nihilo nihil fit" which means "nothing comes from nothing" still widely accepted by modern philosophers?
Andrew Pessin
March 10, 2011
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I think the better question might be whether scientists accept it, and while I can't provide a genuinely empirical answer, my suspicion is YES -- otherwise there would be little motivation to pursue theories and explanations about the world ... It's precisely because we seek to explain "where"... Read more
So I was having an argument with a friend that went a little like this: He was saying that because he was a genius, he walked like a genius. I was saying this was logically invalid, that is, he couldn't walk like himself. If there was a particular way of walking that was specific to geniuses, and he was walking this way, then fine. He could be walking, and he could be a genius, so his walking was a genius walking, but it wasn't like a genius. He couldn't be like himself; he was himself. Who was correct?
Andrew Pessin
March 10, 2011
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Hm. Technically I'd ahve to side with your friend. The relation "is like" strikes me as a perfectly reflexive one, as the logicians might say: everything is like itself. If "being like" is a matter of "being similar", then why wouldn't "identity" simply be the hghest degree of similarity?... Read more
Can madness be explained in terms of irrationality?
Andrew Pessin
March 10, 2011
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If so, then we are all mad -- for much empirical research demonstrates the endless ways in which all of us behave irrationally practically all the time ... (see best-selling work by Dan Arielly, for example!) ... And anyway, surely we are familiar with at least the literary/cinematic stereotype... Read more
Some definitions can be justified - for example, cats seem to be a discreet category in the real world, and thus a definition of the word cat must adequately describe this category and how its members differ from other things in the world. But when it comes to things like love, justice, government or art, these things are human constructs, and not some discreet entity in the world; so how do we create justified definitions of these terms? How do we decide what true love is, or what true art is, or what true justice or government is? We all have intuitions, but these intuitions change with time and culture, and people tend to bicker about the details. So how are definitions that do not apply to physical phenomena justified?
Andrew Pessin
March 10, 2011
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This is a great question! I would be inclined, however, to probe it a few different ways. First, there are many who are skeptical of the idea that there are true "natural kinds" ("discreet categories") in nature -- rather, species are themselves notoriously difficult to define, and even "with... Read more
Scientific principles often deal with universal features of existence but a scientific experiment only deals with particular instances of those laws. So how can scientific laws be deduced purely from experiment? Aren't there always going to be a priori deducible scientific principles?
Miriam Solomon
March 10, 2011
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You are right that scientific laws cannot be deduced from experiment. They can't be deduced a priori (from pure reason) either. Deduction is only one form of inference, however. Usually both induction (generalization) and abduction (inference to the best explanation) are used in science. I... Read more