Recent Responses
Does Quine's argument that there is no real boundary between analytic and synthetic statements include purely mathematical statements such as 1 + 2 = 3? Granted, sentences in everyday languages contain both analytic and synthetic elements, but cannot formal languages support purely analytical statements? Or does mathematics, being a human creation, inextricably model the natural world around us, and thus contain synthetic information? I'm trying to understand the short and (very difficult for me) book "Knowledge and Reality: A Comparative Study of Quine & Some Buddhist Logicians" by Kaisa Puhakka, which seems to represent Quine's thinking faithfully, but my training as a scientist leaves me ill-prepared for much of it. Thank you.
Alexander George
October 7, 2010
(changed October 7, 2010)
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Richard's response is helpful and interesting, but perhaps I would put matters a bit differently. He makes it sound as if Quine accepts the distinction between analytic and synthetic truth and goes on to argue that nothing counts as a truth of the first kind (perhaps "mellowing" his view... Read more
Do the laws of science disprove the existence of ghosts? The universe adheres to strict physical laws and constants; as Stephen Hawking notes; these laws MUST be adhered to 100% of the time, or they wouldn't be laws. In science, a theory can be supported by thousands of separate pieces of separate empirical evidence but it only takes ONE piece of empirical evidence which contradicts a theory for that theory to be disproven; in which case the theory must be discarded or modified. The existence of ghosts is evidence which would contradict thousands of theories in science; in physics, biology and chemistry (Newton's laws of motion, Einstein's equivalence of mass and energy, etc. etc.) The immutability of the laws of science are verified by the products of man's understanding and manipulation of these laws; technology, transportation, medicine, etc. etc. These things form the bedrock of modern civilization. I know that in science it is said that nothing can be "disproven"; for example, we can't completely disprove the existence of "unicorns", because in some far region of the universe a unicorn-like creature may exist. But when it comes to the existence of beings whose existence would contradict the immutable laws of science, surely we can describe their existence as "disproven"?
Miriam Solomon
October 7, 2010
(changed October 7, 2010)
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Science is fallible. There is a long tradition of claiming phenomena to be "physically impossible" or "against the laws of nature" and then finding out that it is the laws that are the problem, or some underlying assumptions. E.g. in the 16th century, it was against the laws of nature to c... Read more
I was reading an article where constructivist feminist views on gender were being discussed, and an example was given on how gender was constructed, how being a boy or a girl had nothing to do with physical bodies, and how physical bodies themselves are constructed by society. The text is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Instead, our sexed bodies are themselves discursively constructed: they are the way they are, at least to a substantial extent, because of what is attributed to sexed bodies and how they are classified. Sex assignment (calling someone female or male) is normative. When the doctor calls a newly born infant a girl or a boy, s/he is not making a descriptive claim, but a normative one. In fact, the doctor is performing an illocutionary speech act. In effect, the doctor's utterance makes infants into girls or boys." Isn't this kind of thinking somehow flawed? Surely, if the child was born with male genitals and the doctor said "It's a girl!", the parents would be briefly confused, perhaps ask the doctor what he means, and then go on happily considering the child a boy. Even if not, there have been many cases of parents trying to raise a child as a member of the opposite sex, and these efforts, correct me if I'm wrong, have never really led to a child being totally and completely a "typical" member of the intended sex; rather, there always seems to have been conflict, resistance. What's more, if the doctor is the originator of the child's boyhood, how does the doctor decide to pronounce the child into boyhood in the first place? How can the physical body, or even understanding of it, be totally constructed if the doctor is able to see the male genitals without knowing whether the child is a boy or a girl? More broadly, how can the physical world be constructed by society's and individuals' perception? Unless, that is, the physical world is all the dream of a single person - but surely most social constructivists don't take metaphysical solipsism as their base assumption.
Miriam Solomon
October 7, 2010
(changed October 7, 2010)
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Most constructivists think that assigned sex has something do with physical bodies; but how physical/biological information is incorporated into gender categories can vary depending on cultural, historical, pragmatic etc interests.
Genitalia are one way in which we assign gender, but not th... Read more
Does Quine's argument that there is no real boundary between analytic and synthetic statements include purely mathematical statements such as 1 + 2 = 3? Granted, sentences in everyday languages contain both analytic and synthetic elements, but cannot formal languages support purely analytical statements? Or does mathematics, being a human creation, inextricably model the natural world around us, and thus contain synthetic information? I'm trying to understand the short and (very difficult for me) book "Knowledge and Reality: A Comparative Study of Quine & Some Buddhist Logicians" by Kaisa Puhakka, which seems to represent Quine's thinking faithfully, but my training as a scientist leaves me ill-prepared for much of it. Thank you.
Alexander George
October 7, 2010
(changed October 7, 2010)
Permalink
Richard's response is helpful and interesting, but perhaps I would put matters a bit differently. He makes it sound as if Quine accepts the distinction between analytic and synthetic truth and goes on to argue that nothing counts as a truth of the first kind (perhaps "mellowing" his view... Read more
I recently read in the New York Times that a majority of philosophers are moral realists. That is, they believe there are right and wrong answers to moral questions. I have always been under the impression that David Hume has had the last word on this and that questions of morality are emotive. That is, the come from our emotions, not our reason. They are similar in kind to positions on aesthetics, for example, however in the case of morals we view them as much more important. This seems certainly correct to me. If not, how can any position on basic values or morals be verified? We can verify that the moon is not made of cream cheese, but we cannot verify in the same way that it is "moral" for that human beings survive.
Eric Silverman
October 6, 2010
(changed October 6, 2010)
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If I'm reading the question correctly, it assumes that if morals aren't empirically verifiable, then they must be based upon emotion rather than reason. Frankly, I don't know why anyone would make that assumption. There are lots of important claims that aren't based upon emotion, but that ul... Read more
Is it paradoxical for the US government to render embryonic stem cell research illegal, in a country where abortion is legal??
Eric Silverman
October 6, 2010
(changed October 6, 2010)
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The current debates about embryonic stem cell research concern whether federal funding should be spent upon it, not on whether such research is banned in the USA. Similarly, federal funding for abortion is more controversial than its legality.
Log in to post comments... Read more
I recently read in the New York Times that a majority of philosophers are moral realists. That is, they believe there are right and wrong answers to moral questions. I have always been under the impression that David Hume has had the last word on this and that questions of morality are emotive. That is, the come from our emotions, not our reason. They are similar in kind to positions on aesthetics, for example, however in the case of morals we view them as much more important. This seems certainly correct to me. If not, how can any position on basic values or morals be verified? We can verify that the moon is not made of cream cheese, but we cannot verify in the same way that it is "moral" for that human beings survive.
Eric Silverman
October 6, 2010
(changed October 6, 2010)
Permalink
If I'm reading the question correctly, it assumes that if morals aren't empirically verifiable, then they must be based upon emotion rather than reason. Frankly, I don't know why anyone would make that assumption. There are lots of important claims that aren't based upon emotion, but that ul... Read more
I recently read in the New York Times that a majority of philosophers are moral realists. That is, they believe there are right and wrong answers to moral questions. I have always been under the impression that David Hume has had the last word on this and that questions of morality are emotive. That is, the come from our emotions, not our reason. They are similar in kind to positions on aesthetics, for example, however in the case of morals we view them as much more important. This seems certainly correct to me. If not, how can any position on basic values or morals be verified? We can verify that the moon is not made of cream cheese, but we cannot verify in the same way that it is "moral" for that human beings survive.
Eric Silverman
October 6, 2010
(changed October 6, 2010)
Permalink
If I'm reading the question correctly, it assumes that if morals aren't empirically verifiable, then they must be based upon emotion rather than reason. Frankly, I don't know why anyone would make that assumption. There are lots of important claims that aren't based upon emotion, but that ul... Read more
According to Kant, as I understand him, nature has an orderliness that appears (or compels belief in) to have been ordered by a divine power, but that the validity of such an appearance can neither be proved or disproved by the power of (pure) reason. Darwin's theory shows (as I understand it) that all life is the product of successive random forces. Does Kant's philosophy remain unaffected by this Darwinian insight?
Sean Greenberg
October 5, 2010
(changed October 5, 2010)
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You're quite right about Kant. The purposiveness--orderliness--of organisms in particular and, indeed, of nature in general, while manifest in experience, cannot themselves, according to Kant, be proven from experience. In the Critique of Judgment (henceforth referred to as 'KU' and cited... Read more
If someone died at age 95, we wouldn't think him unfortunate--it isn't a bad thing, for him, not to have lived much longer. However, if someone died at age 15, we would thing him unfortunate. Why? I suspect that our intuition here has to do with the fact that 95 is well above the average life expectancy for humans, while 15 is well below average. But why should that matter here?
Thomas Pogge
October 4, 2010
(changed October 4, 2010)
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I suspect that your suspicion is partially correct: there is the intuition that someone who is doing worse than average and worse than most is unfortunate. But two other factors come in as well.
There is the fact that only a very small percentage of those who reach age 15 fail to reach 16 --... Read more