Recent Responses
This question is in regards to social philosophy: Suppose someone is inclined to think that capitalism (at least, the capitalism that is being practiced at present) is neither fair nor egalitarian. In addition, they do not wish to (necessarily) take part in its practice (to make money). My question is this: how could this person expect to make any kind of "decent" money while not being a capitalist when capitalism is (as they say) "the only game in town"?
Andrew N. Carpenter
May 13, 2010
(changed May 13, 2010)
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For a sophisticated discussion of this question--and for a more detailed discussion of several of the issues that Eric raises--see G.A. Cohen's If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (Harvard University Press, 2000).
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This question is in regards to social philosophy: Suppose someone is inclined to think that capitalism (at least, the capitalism that is being practiced at present) is neither fair nor egalitarian. In addition, they do not wish to (necessarily) take part in its practice (to make money). My question is this: how could this person expect to make any kind of "decent" money while not being a capitalist when capitalism is (as they say) "the only game in town"?
Andrew N. Carpenter
May 13, 2010
(changed May 13, 2010)
Permalink
For a sophisticated discussion of this question--and for a more detailed discussion of several of the issues that Eric raises--see G.A. Cohen's If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (Harvard University Press, 2000).
Log in to post comments... Read more
What is the sense of literature at all? Sometimes I wonder if the sense of literature is merely a capitalistic one. I am a writer myself, I like to write, a creativity in me that walks its own roads. But why do we read fictional texts from others? If I read one of my own, I know "what it is about", I know the grounds, dreams, feelings, hopes, etc. I had while writing. But then someone else reads that- how could he read anything in that text, that I tried to put there rather in between the lines. Does reading literature tells us something about "the other"? Does literature work as a translator between two people with singular minds? Is literature a connection between "myself" and "the other"? Is then, therefore, the sense of literature to (very general) live in a human society?
Mitch Green
May 9, 2010
(changed May 9, 2010)
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Thanks for your nice question. It contains many components and I won't be able to respond to all of them. One reason is that I'm hesitant to offer generalizations about literature across the board. Instead, it comes in many genres and sub-genres, and plays different kinds of roles in different cultu... Read more
It has been long believed that the more you study philosophy, the greater the probability that you would see things more clearly and reasonably. However, the problem is sometimes, philosophical problems caught us too much that we would lose the insight of the present moment. Philosophy in other words has the tendency to get us lost in thoughts so much that we lose grip of reality. In my case, I would want to be a full-pledged philosopher but I also don't want to be a man always lost in thoughts. As professional philosophers, do you ever experience this? If so, how do you cope with it?
Allen Stairs
May 6, 2010
(changed May 6, 2010)
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It's quite possible to spend too much time in your own head, too caught up in thought. It's also possible to be too quick to resort to analysis and "reason" in cases where a different sort of response will serve better. I'd guess that most philosophers (among other sorts of intellectuals) have seen th... Read more
Why is it that people talk such awful things about each other, but still seem worried about what others think? Why is this self-image we are trying to uphold so important to us?
Allen Stairs
May 6, 2010
(changed May 6, 2010)
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I'm afraid that I don't know the answer, and whatever credentials I have as a philosopher won't help much. It's a question about human psychology/behavior and really good answers will have to come from the social and biological sciences. Philosophers might offer plausible speculations, but those specu... Read more
Why do we procrastinate? Why do we persist in avoiding doing something when we know avoiding it only hurts us more? Just because a task is unpleasant doesn't mean it will get any less unpleasant in the future when we have less time to do it. If I can logically reason, this why do I still procrastinate? Do we become "wantons" (those incapable of guiding our own free will) according to Harry Frankfurt when we submit to procrastination?
Jennifer Church
May 6, 2010
(changed May 6, 2010)
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Procrastination sometimes occurs because our immediate, short-term desires prevail over our calculations concerning longer-term costs and benefits. This does not make us into what Frankfurt calls "wantons", since we are still capable of reflective reasoning and we are still capable of being guided... Read more
Have any of you witnessed a student cheating in your very own ethics class? Did you just laugh at the situation? Have students tried to challenge why they were morally right for cheating? If you haven't caught a student cheating, what do you think of the situation in general and how would you react?
Oliver Leaman
May 6, 2010
(changed May 6, 2010)
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Ethics is not about teaching people about how to be good, so we should not be surprised that those both studying and teaching the subject are no better, and hopefully no worse, than anyone else. It is well known that librarians often complain to the philosophy faculty that books on ethics are the o... Read more
If the only financial institution in town is located on the only riverbed in town, is the sentence "Judy went to the bank" still ambiguous?
Eddy Nahmias
May 6, 2010
(changed May 6, 2010)
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Nice try. But the answer is yes, it is still ambiguous. The river's bank is presumably much bigger than the financial bank, so "Judy went to the bank" could mean she is fishing on the river's bank outside the financial bank or she could be cashing a check inside the bank on the bank.
Now, if you had... Read more
Even if there was no intelligent life at all in the whole universe, if there were no humans, or other thinking creatures, mathematics would still exist, wouldn't it? Of course no one would ever find out about mathematics' existence, but its truths would just be THERE... Isn't that magnificiant? We didn't make up mathematics. It just exists and doesn't require any atoms or whatever... Do you think it is something divine?
Richard Heck
May 5, 2010
(changed May 5, 2010)
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Thank you for this wonderful question.
I don't myself know whether to say that mathematics is something divine, but the idea that it is has a long history, going back at least to the early modern Rationalists. Many of them suggest, directly or indirectly, that, in uncovering the (as they saw it) fund... Read more
I find the notion of fictionalism in mathematics utterly perplexing. From what I understand of it, it seems that fictionalism is the thesis that mathematics is a created fiction, and that there is no mathematical truth separate from the relevant fiction. On this view, it seems, mathematical statements -- such as 2 + 2 = 4 -- are analogous to statements like “Humbert Humbert is infatuated by Dolores Haze.” But how can this be right? Does this mean I can construct a mathematical fiction in which, e.g., 2 + 2 = 5? On the fictionalist account, I can’t see why we ought to prefer, say, a mathematics in which 2 + 2 = 4 over one where 2 + 2 = 5 unless the former captures some inherent truth that the latter misses.
Richard Heck
May 5, 2010
(changed May 5, 2010)
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You aren't the only one who finds mathematical fictionalism puzzling. But the nature of the analogy between mathematics and fiction needs to be spelled out carefully and, once it has been, I think a sensible fictionalist will have the resources to deny that there is an equally good fiction in which 2+... Read more