Recent Responses
Suicide is often said to be irrational or immoral. But what good reasons does a person have to go on living if they are unhappy and have no reason to believe that they will ever be happy? Isn't the opposite often the case that the choice to live is in fact more irrational than the choice to die?
Jean Kazez
March 10, 2011
(changed March 10, 2011)
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A person who is suicidal is likely to be depressed, and part of depression is pessimism--an unfounded belief that things will not get better. So chances are that a person who sees him or herself as rational for wanting to stop living is actually irrationally imagining a future that's much bleaker... Read more
Many philosophers think that mental states can be reduced to physical states. It seems to me however that properties such as sadness and happiness are adjectives that apply to a person's mental states. It doesn't make any sense to say "this is happy brain tissue" does it?
Jasper Reid
March 17, 2011
(changed March 17, 2011)
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I might just add one further observation here. At the risk of sounding pedantic, 'happiness' and 'sadness' are not adjectives (as you suggest). They're nouns. The corresponding adjectives here are the words 'happy' and 'sad'. Now, I would agree with you that there seems to be something deeply pec... Read more
Many philosophers think that mental states can be reduced to physical states. It seems to me however that properties such as sadness and happiness are adjectives that apply to a person's mental states. It doesn't make any sense to say "this is happy brain tissue" does it?
Jasper Reid
March 17, 2011
(changed March 17, 2011)
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I might just add one further observation here. At the risk of sounding pedantic, 'happiness' and 'sadness' are not adjectives (as you suggest). They're nouns. The corresponding adjectives here are the words 'happy' and 'sad'. Now, I would agree with you that there seems to be something deeply pec... Read more
Why aren't sceptics sceptical about scepticism?
Sean Greenberg
March 9, 2011
(changed March 9, 2011)
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It should be noted that most philosophers who are interested in skepticism aren't themselves skeptics: they see skepticism as raising a challenge that must be met by an adequate account of human knowledge, and insofar as they try to defuse skepticism, they manifest considerable skepticism about... Read more
Why are questions about God considered both religious and philosophical but questions about Jesus or Krishna are considered purely religious?
Sean Greenberg
March 9, 2011
(changed March 9, 2011)
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It's not altogether clear to me that it is correct to draw such a sharp distinction between philosophical and religious questions: for one thing, certain philosophers, like Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, and others deny that such a distinction may be drawn; for another thing, depending on what'... Read more
Can I a sociopath be held morally responsible for his/her crimes? Is there any literature written on the subject of ethics in relation with those who lack empathy for others (or psychopaths who have uncontrollable urges to kill)?
Sean Greenberg
March 8, 2011
(changed March 8, 2011)
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This is a very interesting question--sociopaths and psychopaths have long figured in the literature on free will, but relatively little sustained attention has been devoted to the question of whether they are morally responsible for what they do until quite recently. One psychopath who has been... Read more
What justifies adherence to the "principle of charity"? Are we trying to be nice? Is fecundity our aim? Is there reason to suppose that the strongest arguments tend to be those most authors actually intend?
Sean Greenberg
March 8, 2011
(changed March 8, 2011)
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I wanted to make some remarks on the principle of charity that go in a different direction from Eddy's answer to the question.The principle of charity admits of different interpretations: it can be understood--as Eddy seems to understand it--as enjoining one to make as much sense as possible of... Read more
I'm interested whether technological advancement can ever be morally good, and under what circumstances. It's a platitude to say that technology has both positive and negative effects (on the one hand, creature comforts, better health, cheaper goods and services; on the other hand, pollution, weapons, cultural homogenization, etc.) But, given the psychological evidence for "hedonic adaptation" (people quickly return to the same baseline level of happiness no matter what happens to them) and economic evidence such as the "Easterlin paradox" (average reported happiness of a country's citizens does not increase with average income), it seems unlikely that the supposedly positive effects of technology are genuinely good--especially those related to material prosperity. The supposedly negative effects may not be so bad either, but it's definitely not obvious that the good outweighs the bad, as people generally assume. Even if technology is neutral overall rather than bad, we probably shouldn't accept any degree of environmental destruction for its sake (though we currently accept some), nor should governments ever encourage technological advancement at the expense of other goals (which they do). And it would be morally wrong for a person to choose a job that advances technology over one that serves some better goal. There are a few specific technological advancements that seem completely good, like the invention of drugs to treat depression (since these make people unquestionably happier). But all technologies, and especially pure scientific discoveries, have unforeseeable consequences, so what seems good now may turn monstrous in the future. (For example, G.H. Hardy ironically declared that number theory and relativity would never have any military applications, a few years before the atomic bomb.) As a computer programmer, I'd like to think that I'm not doing something morally wrong by aiding the advance of technology. Indeed, most people who work in technology and science take it as obvious that all technological advancement is good. But the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. So, are there any defensible arguments that technological progress is actually morally good, especially ones that take into account the considerations above? I realize this is a big question, so I'd also appreciate any recommendations for further reading on this topic.
Miriam Solomon
March 5, 2011
(changed March 5, 2011)
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You do ask a big question, and an important one. I can offer a couple of thoughts to use in exploring the issues:
happiness is not the only measure of human wellbeing, important though it may be. (life expectancy, increased knowledge, quality of life experiences etc also matter)
there is no... Read more
This is a question about philosophy of economic theory and the concept of property. Supposedly when I buy a stock what I am doing us buying a share of a corporation. In other words I supposedly "own" a part of the corporation. I have several objections to that claim. I did not buy the stock so that I could have voting rights in that corporation nor did I buy it for the trivial dividends the stock supplies. Those things have no value to me or most investors, and with few exceptions no one buys a stock because they have a desire to have voting rights in that company. Certainly if you are going to own a part of something what you own is going to be what makes that thing valuable and profit is what makes a company valuable and thus to own a company is to own a share in it's profit and stocks don't really give you that. Is there some deeper and non-arbitrary sense of the term "ownership" that sophisticated economic theory relies or is "ownership" a loose term?
Thomas Pogge
March 5, 2011
(changed March 5, 2011)
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I don't find your objections compelling. The fact that you don't value something doesn't count against your owning it. For better or worse, your purchase of the stock gives you a say in the company's affairs and, no matter how little you may care about this entitlement, you still have it.
Second,... Read more
Doesn't moral goodness depend on our definition of moral goodness? For example, if we define "Good are those actions which upholds God's will, as in the Bible", our moral views are likely to be very different to those of people who define good as "Those actions which help, and do not hinder, others in achieving their own peaceful ends". Yet how can we arbitrate between different definitions of the good? There are actions which uphold God's will, as presented in the Bible, and there are actions which help, and do not hinder, others in achieving their own peaceful ends, so how do we decide which of these groups of actions gets the label "good"?
Charles Taliaferro
March 4, 2011
(changed March 4, 2011)
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This is a BIG question! Some skeptics, like J.L. Mackie, will deny that there is any real. objective thing in the world that matches up to "moral goodness." He might say that all we have are definitions, such as the ones you offer, each of which happens to be in error. But probably a majo... Read more