Recent Responses
Is the question of whether homosexuality is "a choice" at all morally relevant? Does it bear, e.g., on whether homosexual lifestyles are morally permissible, or whether gay marriage should be allowed? Many people seem to think so, including many of those who support gays and lesbians.
Allen Stairs
August 17, 2010
(changed August 17, 2010)
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Just one footnote to Sean. If homosexuality is a choice, it's not, as Richard Mohr once pointed out, like the choice of what sort of ice cream you're going to buy. Here's a thought experiment to try. Think of someone you find sexually attractive. Now try to choose not to have that response. P... Read more
I wonder what is the philosophical significance of sports? Some people play sports for competition, some others play for exercise while some play only for fun. Generally speaking westerners like competing while easterners like exercising. So British people invented soccer and Americans like basketball while Indians like Yoga and Chinese play Taichi. Why do people take such pains with their bodies to play an activity which would produce no any tangible outcome? I wonder. BTW, I think sports are the least activity man has ever invented.
Allen Stairs
August 17, 2010
(changed August 17, 2010)
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Sean has correctly pointed out that part of what you are asking calls for empirical answers. But your last sentence - about sports being the least thing humans ace invented - raises an issue of value. And what you seem to be saying is that since sports produce no tangible outcome, in your word... Read more
I was politicized early thanks to growing up in a war zone, and such a childhood imposes certain questions on a child's mind. After growing older and nurturing an increasing infatuation with socialism and anarchism, I am now at a new crossroads - totalitarianism. The reason for this is simple: I have no faith in humanity, nor in the so called 'rationality' of Mankind. In my opinion, people are overwhelmingly ignorant of what is best for them. How can they decide what is best for them without proper education? Furthermore, people are overwhelmingly selfish and short-sighted, how can a society function correctly if the majority of people are unfit to decide for themselves, and when they do so, they do so poorly (see George Bush). Another problem is media. Reading Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" in my teens nourished in me a deep hatred of privately-owned media, and as we all know: propaganda is rife in all societies. Finally, we come to the financial crisis. If I have understood it correctly, economic policies of the past decades were hinged on the belief that the economic system would perpetually correct itself thanks to the rationality of the individual financiers and economists, and that now with this new collapse, economists are for the first time dawning to the fact that humans are irrational after all. So I say unto you, that the representational democratic system, in the US as an example, is in itself largely totalitarian, as the individuals who vote do so rarely and are not told about the changes their representatives enact during their tenures, and that Plato was right all along - that philosophers should be kings. So wouldn't the best method of government be to ask leading people in the society to run for election (ie. no career politicians), and then have them 'train' for this position for 1 year where they live as hobos for 2 months, farmers for 2 months, etc etc, all the time monitored by the society - and finally compete for election (if they accept the offer) through televised debates, each receiving an equal time on all topics. How can democracy be a better system than this? And how can we reconcile our belief in democracy with the overwhelming evidence of the decrepitude of the stolid majority of humanity?
Charles Taliaferro
August 17, 2010
(changed August 17, 2010)
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Interesting! The idea of leaders having to undergo training in different professions (and even being a hobo!) is appealing (though whether it is practical is another matter). The case for democracy historically usually does go hand in hand with a case that human beings are indeed reaso... Read more
I'm not specifically sure how to word this question, so please pardon my lack of eloquence. What, if any, moral responsibility do we have to those who had hurt us deeply, say, someone who has cheated on their spouse? Should we forgive and forget? Just forgive but never forget? Ought we treat them normally, or is it ethical to hold a grudge? How does one ethically/morally handle the rest of the relationship, whatever it may be, when one has been significantly betrayed?
Sean Greenberg
August 16, 2010
(changed August 16, 2010)
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I wanted to add some remarks on this deep and subtle question, to which Charles has very interestingly responded. What's at stake here is when, on what grounds, and if, one should grant forgiveness. This is a thorny issue that, I think, goes to the very heart of human relations."Forgive th... Read more
I wonder what is the philosophical significance of sports? Some people play sports for competition, some others play for exercise while some play only for fun. Generally speaking westerners like competing while easterners like exercising. So British people invented soccer and Americans like basketball while Indians like Yoga and Chinese play Taichi. Why do people take such pains with their bodies to play an activity which would produce no any tangible outcome? I wonder. BTW, I think sports are the least activity man has ever invented.
Allen Stairs
August 17, 2010
(changed August 17, 2010)
Permalink
Sean has correctly pointed out that part of what you are asking calls for empirical answers. But your last sentence - about sports being the least thing humans ace invented - raises an issue of value. And what you seem to be saying is that since sports produce no tangible outcome, in your word... Read more
Is the question of whether homosexuality is "a choice" at all morally relevant? Does it bear, e.g., on whether homosexual lifestyles are morally permissible, or whether gay marriage should be allowed? Many people seem to think so, including many of those who support gays and lesbians.
Allen Stairs
August 17, 2010
(changed August 17, 2010)
Permalink
Just one footnote to Sean. If homosexuality is a choice, it's not, as Richard Mohr once pointed out, like the choice of what sort of ice cream you're going to buy. Here's a thought experiment to try. Think of someone you find sexually attractive. Now try to choose not to have that response. P... Read more
Is there a prevailing consensus on determinism vs. free will, and the implications of that debate for the status of moral prescriptions? I am reading a piece by Derek Parfit, for example, which addresses the topic so briefly that it makes me wonder if his (compatibilist) position is the only one breathing. Thank you! -philosophy fan
Sean Greenberg
August 14, 2010
(changed August 14, 2010)
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Just to add a little to Eddy's fine response, which neatly limns both what position is taken on free will by most philosophers and the general state of play of the debates around free will. I just want to comment briefly on the status of the debate on free will for moral prescriptions--whic... Read more
I am a new comer to philosophy and metaphysics in particular. I would like to know about the method of analysing and proving statements in metaphysics.Being a student of mathematics I am familiar with the axiomatic method. Are there any systematic methods for proving statements in metaphysics?
Sean Greenberg
August 14, 2010
(changed August 14, 2010)
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The following story is recounted in John Aubry's Life of Thomas Hobbes:"He was forty years old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman's library Euclid's Elements lay open, and 'twas the forty-seventh proposition in the first book. He read the proposit... Read more
Can you please provide some suggestions for a good supplementary text for Martin Buber's "I & Thou?" In spite of our philosophical backgrounds, a friend and I are getting a bit lost trying to comprehend it. We are not reading this for part of a college class, so do not know of any professors to ask.
Sean Greenberg
August 14, 2010
(changed August 14, 2010)
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In Between Man and Man, Martin Buber recounts the following story, which he takes to illuminate the experience at the heart of I and Thou:"When I was eleven years of age, spending the summer on my grandparents' estate, I used, as often as I could do it unobserved, to steal into the stable an... Read more
Why is guilt so often associated with love and relations? Should we banish guilt from our relations or is guilt a form of "ethical anxiety" towards an other, and thus desireable?
Sean Greenberg
August 14, 2010
(changed August 14, 2010)
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Guilt, like pride, shame, and embarrassment, is an emotion of self-assessment; all these emotions, too, are social emotions, in that they involve reference to (real or imagined) relations to other people and our place in the social order. Given that guilt involves--one might even go so far... Read more