Recent Responses
How can we precisely define cheating in sports? It does not appear sufficient to say that any instance of willful rule-breaking in sports counts as cheating. For instance, no one would say that one basketball player who fouls another is "cheating," even though there is an obvious sense in which that player is breaking the rules. The difficulty seems to consist in the fact that practically all sports infractions have corresponding penalties (such as opponent free throws) built into the rules of the game. It isn't obvious how we're to distinguish banal infractions, such as fouling a player in basketball, from obvious cases of cheating, such as blood doping in competitive cycling. If a cyclist has his title revoked after being caught doping (or if he is fined, or is banned from future races, or whatever), what would prevent us from saying that his infraction was accounted for by the rules of cycling in the same way as fouls are accounted for in basketball, and that it therefore did not constitute cheating?
Douglas Burnham
November 23, 2010
(changed November 23, 2010)
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A good question.Here are some very limited thoughts.
I suggest that we distinguish between rules external to the gameor sport that set it up such that it can begin -- e.g. rules thatdefine the conditions under which participants take part -- and theinternal rules that define how the gam... Read more
Can sexuality be fluid? Does it have to be black and white?
Charles Taliaferro
November 19, 2010
(changed November 19, 2010)
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Minor reservation about Professor Smith's observations: Peter may be absolutely right, though I suggest that amidst all the cheerfully multicolored possibilities, I think that there are some clear cut goods and ills or, to use your terms, black and white issues. Perhaps this is simi... Read more
If you personally cannot slaughter an animal by your own hand or even imagine doing so, then should you still eat meat? Do you still have the natural right to eat meat?
Charles Taliaferro
November 19, 2010
(changed November 19, 2010)
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Good question! If one could not imagine oneself slaughtering an animal for food under any circumstances, then perhaps one should reflect on whether one's reluctance stems from a realization (deep down) that there is something morally disquieting or even wrong about killing animals f... Read more
Do imaginary numbers exist?
Allen Stairs
November 18, 2010
(changed November 18, 2010)
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Although the name "imaginary numbers" may suggest some special issue about existence, I think the general view would be that the existence of so-called imaginary numbers is no more and no less problematic than the existence of more familiar numbers, including zero, negative numbers and irr... Read more
I am a practical person. I wonder whether a good philosopher is able always to answer the questions on this site with a reasonable certainty about how certain he is of his answers ("Philosopher Meta-Certainty Ability")? The readers of this site would clearly benefit from knowing the degree of certainty of the answers they read. Therefore, if the Philosopher Meta-Certainty Ability exists, then the readers of this site would clearly benefit from the answers to this site being prefaced with "I'm not so sure of this..." or "I'm really sure of this..." But the answers on this site do not have such prefaces. So it appears that either (a) the Philosopher Meta-Certainty Ability doesn't exist, (b) it does exist but the philosophers on this site are consciously not doing something that would clearly benefit the readers, or (c) it does exist but the philosophers on this site are non-consciously not doing something that would clearly benefit the readers. Either (1) there are some additional possibilities beyond (a), (b), and (c) that I am missing or (2) there are not. QUESTION: Is (1) true or is (2) true? Why? If (2) is true, which of (a), (b), and (c) are true? This line of question gets at a less intellectual question, which is "Should I act on the answer to a question that I ask on this site, given that in my life I try to make decisions only for which I have reasonable certainty?"
Charles Taliaferro
November 18, 2010
(changed November 18, 2010)
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Great question!I have been reading and contributing to this site since last May and believe that there is very little in the way of philosophers claiming absolute I-could-not-possibly-be-wrong certainty. I believe this is why there is so little use of the word "prove" or "refute" in... Read more
Hello, My question is the following: If a mentally and physically healthy person considers his/her life as meaningless and worthless, would that constitute a rational reason for him/her to commit a suicide.
Mitch Green
November 18, 2010
(changed November 18, 2010)
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Thank you for your question, which in spite of its brevity brings up a lot of hard issues. I won't try to answer it directly, but just add a few considerations:
1. Considering one's life to be meaningless doesn't show that it is. It may contain sources of meaning that one has not yet a... Read more
Can sexuality be fluid? Does it have to be black and white?
Charles Taliaferro
November 19, 2010
(changed November 19, 2010)
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Minor reservation about Professor Smith's observations: Peter may be absolutely right, though I suggest that amidst all the cheerfully multicolored possibilities, I think that there are some clear cut goods and ills or, to use your terms, black and white issues. Perhaps this is simi... Read more
I've just read about Cantor'd diagonal argument, and I have some questions about it... Let's say we want to map every real number between 0 and 1 to natural numbers. If I'm not mistaken, that can be done this way: If we have number of form 0.abcdef... (letters stand for decimals, but only some are shown since there is infinite amount of them), then we can produce number N which equals 2^a * 3^b * 5^c * 7^d * 11^e * 13^f * (next prime)^(next decimal). For example, number 0.12 equals to 2^1 * 3^2 (* 5^0 * 7^0 * ...) = 18. Given any natural number N, we can easily determine which real number it represents (if any). My first question is: is all this consistent with Cantor's diagonal argument? (Can both be true at the same time?) Cantor proved there is no one-to-one mapping (not just any mapping), is that important for his result? If yes, it somehow seems intuitive to me, at least at the first sight, that one-to-one mapping can be achieved by simply removing natural numbers that don't represent any real number between 0 and 1, and thus we could say "n'th representing number is number x (which is equal or bigger than n, because x = n + number_or_removed_numbers), which decoded, stands for real number y". Now, this would produce a list vulnerable to original Cantor's diagonal argument. I don't understand why... could it be that "normal" mapping (the one which just turns real numbers to natural, not one-to-one mapping) works, but there is something illegal when that mapping is converted (at least using described "technique" of removing certain numbers) to one-to-one mapping?
Peter Smith
November 17, 2010
(changed November 17, 2010)
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But what would an infinite decimal correspond to on the proposed mapping? It may be that every natural corresponds on that mapping to a real between 0 and 1. But you need -- and assert! -- that to every such real there corresponds a natural on this mapping, and that's quite plainly false wh... Read more
All human activities seem to have dramatic, defining, pivotal moments. Take basketball : 1987 Game 5 Celtics v. Pistons. Dennis Rodman rejects Larry Bird with 5 seconds left. Pistons take the ball. All they need to do is inbound the ball and hold it and they take a 3-2 series lead home. Instead, Larry steals Isiah's inbound pass and the Celtics win. Wow. Of course there are many such moments in sports. What are the equivalent moments in Philosophy? What Philosopher, finally, in what paper, knocked down a prevalent theory held for 1,000 years? That kind of thing. Can a few of you contribute your favorite moments in the history of philosophy?
Sean Greenberg
November 15, 2010
(changed November 15, 2010)
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This is a great question!! It would be wonderful if as many panelists as possible could respond, not only because I'm as curious as Jasper as to what people think, but also because I think that the responses would reveal much about the respondent's own philosophical temperament and prio... Read more
Is there a particular area of philosophy that studies or classifies the different kinds of theoretical problems in which philosophy (or any other activity) focus on, mainly in terms of their internal structure, nature or any additional characteristic theoretical problems might present, including their solutions (when possible)? Is there an area of philosophy that studies, for example, the "form" of theoretical problems, so to speak, so philosophers can become familiar with different types of problems and thus suggest appropriate strategies when approaching other similar problems? Something that would get the philosopher a rough idea regarding the type of solution he or she should or should not expect from his/her investigations? Thanks for your time. (Juan J., philosophy enthusiast and future philosophy student!)
Charles Taliaferro
November 13, 2010
(changed November 13, 2010)
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Dear Juan J., Thank you for your question! Philosophical reflection on philosophy is sometimes called meta-philosophy. There was a journal of that name that included philosophical reflection on such topics as the progress of philosophy and the challenges of arguing across philosoph... Read more