Recent Responses
Are TV shows like "Dr. Phil" or "Jerry Springer", etc. unethical? They do after all exploit people's problems - which should really be discussed in a private setting - to win viewers.
Oliver Leaman
October 15, 2010
(changed October 15, 2010)
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Bad taste, perhaps, but surely not unethical. In any case, the reality of the participants and their "problems" is often in question in any case. The shows do give us the opportunity to consider a number of interesting issues that can arise within human relationships, although chiefly for a... Read more
Considering that the primary drive which motivates human behaviour is the ubiquitous drive to reproduce; does happiness to a significant extent depend upon how physically attractive you are? From personal experience it seems like this is indeed the case; but how can we make sense of a world in which the ultimate goal of life (happiness) can be dependent upon such a superficial thing as physical attractiveness?
Gordon Marino
October 14, 2010
(changed October 14, 2010)
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I'm not sure that the goal of procreation trumps all others for human beings, so I can't accept your premise here. But I'm afraid that the world is in fact such that there are certain things that are beyond our powers that have an enormous impact on our "quality of life." I understand that... Read more
If you look at the leaves of a tree, they are seemingly randomly arranged. We call it chaos. If you take 100 pennies and arrange them on a flat surface in rows and columns of 10 it's called order. We assign the label chaos to something that occurs naturally and has done so for billions of years. Wouldn't that occurrence be considered order if it had been there a long, long time and the human species and our perceptions are very new in comparison?
Jonathan Westphal
October 14, 2010
(changed October 14, 2010)
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The positions and numbers of branches and leaves of trees and plants are governed by Fibonacci series: 1,1,2,3,5,8.13 . . . . , so there is order in their arrangement. Whether this pattern exists seems to have little or nothing to do with how used to it we are.
Log... Read more
If causality is a category of perception as Kant claims why are so many scientists unfazed intellectually by the claim that the Big Bang theory must be an incomplete theory of the universe because the existence of the big bang must have been caused by something prior to the big bang? Personally I side against the scientists in my firm belief that they are defying commonsense in their rejection of the idea that the existence of the universe at the time of the big bang must have had a prior cause. So scientists seem to be rejecting the idea that all occurrences have a cause.
Thomas Pogge
October 14, 2010
(changed October 14, 2010)
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According to Kant, causality is among the organizing concepts through which our mind unifies its experience. Like space and time, causality as well is then not objective (i.e. wholly independent of our mind), but still "empirically" objective in the sense that we cannot help but structure an... Read more
In the context of human rights, there is often talk about so-called "group rights." One such group right is the right to protection against genocide - i.e., against mass murder. Why is a "group right" necessary in such cases? If one accepts the validity of human rights at all, then one almost certainly accepts that all individuals, including all members of a minority group, have the right to life. Why provide an additional group right against genocide? Anyone committing genocide is necessarily and directly infringing upon the right to life. What is gained by formulating extra group rights, besides an additional offence to add to the records of human rights offenders? Other "group rights" are also, or could easily be, covered by individual rights (right to speak the language of one's choice, right to teach one's children the language and culture of one's choice, etc.). Groups, unlike the individuals that make up the group, cannot be said to suffer at all unless their constituent individuals suffer, whereas individuals can suffer regardless of the well-being of their group - and the well-being of the group (or the race, or the majority, or society, or a particular class) has often been the justification for atrocities in the past. Considering all this, what is the advantage of formulating such a thing as group rights?
Thomas Pogge
October 14, 2010
(changed October 14, 2010)
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I can see at least two responses to your challenge.
International interventions and sanctions are confined to the most serious violations of human rights. And the seriousness of crimes is not merely a matter of the harm done to the victims, but also a matter of the motivations of the perpet... Read more
Why do we seem to consider the life of a child more valuable than that of an adult in many situations? When we consider the actual qualities of a child versus that of an adult, we should find that the adult usually wins on any measure of intelligence, capability, moral faculties, and so forth. Is there any ethical reason why we should value the life of a child more than that of an adult? (And just to be extra clear, I can think of a very compelling evolutionary reason why we would value a life of child more, but I'm not looking for an answer from biology or psychology.)
Thomas Pogge
October 14, 2010
(changed October 14, 2010)
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Isn't the reason just this? When an adult dies prematurely -- say at age 40 -- then she is losing many years of valuable life. When a child dies, then she is losing those same valuable years above 40 and in addition all the good life years up to 40. So the basic thought here is simply that t... Read more
In the Platonic theory of forms, one could imagine a thing participating in many different forms at once. E.g. a large oak tree could participate in tree-ness, oak-tree-ness, bark-ness, leaven-ness, green-ness, brown-ness, large-ness, beauty, etc. One could imagine this could go on ad infinitum (i.e. ever more specification leading to ever more forms). Where is the limit? Or is there no limit? Or in reality, is there really only one form? (The Good?) or to put it another way the Form of "being." It might remind one of Parmenides....it is or it is not.... It seems to me that sensible things either participate in infinite forms or one form. Thoughts? Lou, New York
Nicholas D. Smith
October 14, 2010
(changed October 14, 2010)
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I think the only really honest answer to your question is that Plato is never quite as clear about this issue as we wish he were. On the one hand, as you say, there seems to be no obvious limit on how many Forms a given particular might participate in--after all, something can be not j... Read more
In everyday common sense, as I've always experienced it, a beaver dam or hut, a bird's nest or a termite mound are generally considered natural, while a human house is considered artificial. Given that beaver dams and beaver huts involve quite a bit of logging and engineering, termite mounds involve digging and using termite-produced chemicals to solidify the material, and bird nests can involve a bit of either technique, what is it that makes a human dwelling, such as a simple log cabin, more "artificial" than these animal-built structures? Where does "natural" end and "artificial" begin?
Charles Taliaferro
October 14, 2010
(changed October 14, 2010)
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Good question! Usually we label as "artificial" that which is an artifact of intentional, purposive activity. I am inclined to think that beavers and birds are purposive and they seem to have desires but perhaps we should be reluctant to attribute to them the full blown power of deli... Read more
Is there a fallacy where claim P is made, but the reply is to use radical people who have made claim P, but this usage of radical people is supposed to represent everyone who said claim P? I'll give an example below: 1. Suppose claim P is: 9/11 happened because of America's failed US foreign policy. 2. Jean Baudrillard has claimed a, b, and c to support P. Noam Chomsky has said d, e, and f to support P. (Note: Baudrillard and Chomsky are on the fringes of supporting P, meaning that they support P, but in very radical ways.) 3. However, a, b, c, d, e, and f are all false. 4. Therefore, P is false. Now, of course the fallacy is that one is only looking at two sources who argue for P, and by discounting those claims, there's a hasty generalization to say that P is false. So a hasty generalization, I believe is correct. However, my focus is on concentrating on the fringes. If one wants to argue against P, one doesn't argue against the fringes who argue for P. So it's sort of a straw-man, but at the same time, a, b, c, d, e, and f are true representations of Baudrillard and Chomsky. Specifically, is there a fallacy where one is discounting a claim where one only concentrates on the fringe groups that says P?
Richard Heck
October 15, 2010
(changed October 15, 2010)
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There was a nice post about this sort of argument on the Sojourner's blog recently: http://blog.sojo.net/2010/10/01/what-glenn-beck-and-alan-grayson-have-in-common/.
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What can make a philosophical theory "trivial"? Is triviality different from circularity?
Charles Taliaferro
October 14, 2010
(changed October 14, 2010)
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Great question! I do not believe that "trivial" is a technical term in our discipline, unlike the notion that an argument may be circular. A circular argument is one that assumes what it sets out to establish, rather than providing independent reason for thinking the conclusion is ri... Read more