Recent Responses
Last night my 4 year old son asked me, "where was I before I was born (or in your tummy?) was I alone?" What should I tell him?
Richard Heck
December 16, 2010
(changed December 16, 2010)
Permalink
Kids do ask some amazing questions.
I am no expert on child psychology. I am just a philosopher who is also a parent. So please do not take what I will say the wrong way. I do not really mean to be giving parenting advice here.
To some extent, what you should tell your son depends upon yo... Read more
Is it moral (in a normative sense, I suppose) to start a non-profit that does 'less good' than other non-profits? That is, if your non-profit would facilitate donations to pay for cleft palate surgery for children but could be helping to fight malaria (apparently one the most cost-effect ways to save lives), is that immoral? Isn't your non-profit taking potential donations away from this 'better' non-profit?
Charles Taliaferro
December 16, 2010
(changed December 16, 2010)
Permalink
Great question! In some ethical frameworks (such as utilitarianism) there are principles of maximazation principles according to which we are morally obligated to do the most good possible (and the least evil or bad). If you adopt such a framework and have reason to believe that th... Read more
What would be the better choice: truth that will make you bitter or a lie that would make you happy? Let's say truth would be the better choice. Now the follow-up question: what is there to truth that makes it more valuable than happiness, even if this happiness is produced by a lie?
Sean Greenberg
December 16, 2010
(changed December 16, 2010)
Permalink
Here's one way to respond. If one were to suppose, with Kant, that human dignity is intinsically valuable, and that lying to another--even if that lie would promote the other's happiness, say by sparing that person a harsh and painful truth--does not respect that person' dignity, by fai... Read more
Why is there such a taboo in society about children and sexual content? It seems quite odd to me that we attempt to hide something so fundamental from children. Is it really the case that children, even very young children, are somehow harmed by knowledge of sex, or that they are too immature to comprehend the material? Isn't it more likely that lack of knowledge about sex could lead to unsafe experimentation in early adolescence (or even before, for especially precocious children)? Children seem to have a natural marked disinterest or repulsion about the nature of sex in any case; does hiding even moderately suggestive images and language, dressing up natural processes such as childbirth in misleading euphemistic fairy tales, and cultivating a general atmosphere of awkwardness and embarrassment when discussing sex around children actually help anyone? For my part, natural curiosity caused me to gain a working knowledge of the mechanics of sex from a biology textbook at age 7, so perhaps I am simply odd.
Gordon Marino
December 16, 2010
(changed December 16, 2010)
Permalink
Freud would certainly agree with your concerns but disagree with the notion that children do not have an interest in sex. I think there is a sense that children would not be able to integrate certain kinds of detailed information about sexual life but I'm not sure why we would want to con... Read more
Do colors have an independent existence?
Andrew Pessin
December 16, 2010
(changed December 16, 2010)
Permalink
A classic question, which has been MUCH discussed over the centuries -- especially with the rise of early modern philosophy and science (16th-18th centuries) -- rather than give 'the' answer let me mention some historical resources -- beginning at least wiht Galileo but especially promine... Read more
Catherine MackKinnon and Andrea Dworkin were among those feminists who lead the charge against pornography, so to speak, calling it what amounts to a central pillar in the edifice of patriarchal oppression. However, humans have only had free and easy access to visual pornography for the past few decades, maybe the past century, at most; and even literary pornography, like Fanny Hill, only dates back to the 18th Century. Before this, the inability to mass-produce pornographic materials seems to imply that it can't have had much the same impact as it could potentially have today - and many such depictions were on urns, floor mosaics or other objects with further purposes, so they weren't there strictly for sexual arousal. Yet it doesn't seem unreasonable to say that Western civilization has seen women forced into the status of second-class citizens for many more centuries than that, even millenia. So how can pornography be the central factor, or even a central factor, in the oppression of women? Or is it that it is the only important factor that remains (after, say, religion and antiquated views of women as naturally, biologically inferior)?
Andrew Pessin
December 16, 2010
(changed December 16, 2010)
Permalink
A fascinating issue. I'm not familiar with the specifics of MacKinnon and Dworkin, but I'm not sure that the considerations you mention would necessarily undermine their thesis, as you stated it. For whatever the history, it may well be that right now, these days, pornography plays that... Read more
Could it ever be rational to come to a belief on the basis of evidence which is only accessible to oneself? I have in mind, for instance, people who claim to have arrived at a belief in god by way of some critically personal spiritual experience.
Eric Silverman
December 11, 2010
(changed December 11, 2010)
Permalink
One very famous argument based on evidence only available to the self comes from Descartes... 'I think, therefore I am.' Sounds reasonable enough to me.
Log in to post comments
The website "Wikileaks" has been getting a lot of media attention recently after it's leaking of thousands of secret and classified US diplomatic cables. It was also in the headlines in April after it's release of classified footage showing US forces killing Iraqi civilians and journalists. Some governments have been critical of Wikileaks, Hilary Clinton referring to the recent leaks as an "attack on the international community and Sarah Palin describing head-man Julian Assange as having "blood on his hands", and calling for the US government to hunt him down with the same urgency as that with which they hunt down suspected terrorists. Is any of this backlash justified? I have a feeling that such harsh criticism is typical of a person who has been caught in the act of wrong-doing and points the finger at the person who reveals their crimes, in an attempt to draw attention away from their own misdeeds. Is Wikileaks responsible for the death of US soldiers in Iraq? Is there a point at which freedom of information becomes ethically unjustifiable?
Peter S. Fosl
December 10, 2010
(changed December 10, 2010)
Permalink
I'm inclined to think your psychological account of the response is correct, though perhaps incomplete. I also think the intensity of the fury against the leaks indicates the extent to which the government and many citizens have internalized institutional authority as normal and overridin... Read more
Is it possible that there exist types or methods of argument/reasoning that have not been discovered or employed before? (I do not mean specific arguments for specific problems, but Forms of arguments, so to speak.)
Richard Heck
December 9, 2010
(changed December 9, 2010)
Permalink
Sure, why not? Historically, there certainly have been. An example would be mathematical induction, which was known, in some form, to Euclid, but, so far as I know, is not present in earlier Greek mathematics. That seems to me to count if anything does. Now that was a long time ago, but why... Read more
Where can I find some good philosophical/political arguments for and against euthanasia?
Jennifer Church
December 31, 2010
(changed December 31, 2010)
Permalink
A very thoughtful article against the right to take one's own life is David Velleman's "A Right of Self-Termination?", in Ethics 109 (1999), pp. 606-628. I disagree with his conclusion, but his position is the one that has given me most pause about my own.
Log in t... Read more