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Are people and businesses misusing the word philosophy when they say, for example, "My philosophy is to always tell the truth," or "Our philosophy is that the lowest price is the best price?" Isn't that closer to a creed or an ideology?
Briefly, no. Words mean what
Allen Stairs
February 9, 2017
(changed February 9, 2017)
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Briefly, no. Words mean what people use them to mean, and words can have multiple meanings. Expressions like "My philosophy is..." are so common that they represent one of the meanings that the word "philosophy" has come to have in English. Of course it's not what... Read more
I've often heard people make the following argument about the n-word. It is self-defeating to insist that it is offensive for people, especially white people, to use the n-word. This taboo is precisely what empowers the word and makes it harmful; if we let people say it freely, it will lose its effect, which is what those concerned about racial invective should really want. I was wondering if the panelists are convinced by this theory of the meaning of the n-word and slurs more generally.
I am in my sixties, and I
Gordon Marino
February 9, 2017
(changed February 9, 2017)
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I am in my sixties, and I used to hear the N-word uttered quite freely and frequently by whites. The term still retained its poisonous power, which comes from a bloody history of oppression. It is true that some words like "sucks" lose their potency and connection... Read more
Acts of "kindness": I do things in my life for others like; hold doors, pick up liter and carry groceries. I have been under the assumption that I was doing these things for others. After making this a way of life, I find myself feeling guilty when I don't pick up trash or hold the door for someone. So my question is: Are my actions as well intentioned and selfless as I once believed or do I do those things to feed my ego to make myself think I am a good person? This has really got me thinking about my motivations for "doing the right thing". Am I secretly trying to make the unconscious case for my moral/socital superiority? Thanks for listening. Kai
Is there any reason at all to
Jonathan Westphal
February 2, 2017
(changed February 5, 2017)
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Is there any reason at all to think your motivation is selfish? It seems like an abstract possibility that you are trying "to make the unconscious case" for your moral and social superiority, but where is the evidence? There is the deliverance of your own he... Read more
Sociology undergraduate here, who is struggling to "see the wood for the trees", as the idiom goes. My two brief questions are the following: Is there anything unique within sociological theory, or is it just a spin-off of philosophy that lacks training on how to think? Additionally, is it the case that a philosophy degree can open doors into other fields, but sociology is more limiting to academic mobility?
This will be a very
André Carus
February 2, 2017
(changed February 2, 2017)
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This will be a very subjective response; others who have some acquaintance with the two fields will answer differently. Also I'm pretty out of date on sociology. One thing that has not changed much there, though, as far as I'm aware, is that like many social sciences, it... Read more
So a really old question would be "what's the meaning of life?". I wanna switch it up and ask "why do we even exist?". We've done so many negative things throughout history. The importance of knowing what we're made of and how we work means nothing to me, if I don't know why we exist on this planet we call earth.
I am not sure how old the
Jonathan Westphal
February 2, 2017
(changed February 5, 2017)
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I am not sure how old the question is, in exactly the form you give it. I suspect it is quite new. In the Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle asks whether 'there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the s... Read more
Is there any reason to think that professional philosophers change their minds more than other people?
I suspect, and this is
Sam Coleman
January 27, 2017
(changed January 27, 2017)
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I suspect, and this is confirmed by experience, that professional philosophers if anything change their minds somewhat less than other people. Your early experience with philosophy is that you change your mind all the time. As a learner, every new paper or book seems to... Read more
Not everyone who smokes gets cancer, but we still say things like "smoking causes cancer." How should we understand causal statements like this?
A good question, but as you
Allen Stairs
January 26, 2017
(changed January 26, 2017)
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A good question, but as you no doubt guessed, one that people have thought about. The short answer is that we'll say that X causes Y if X raises the probability of Y, even if it doesn't raise the probability to 100%
Let's be a bit more concrete. Think about clinica... Read more
Did Socrates believe that animals possessed souls? I come to a logical contradiction when I apply his teachings to the question.
I would be curious to hear
Nickolas Pappas
January 26, 2017
(changed January 26, 2017)
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I would be curious to hear what contradiction you arrive at. It's hard to guess from what you say just which aspects of his teaching imply that animals do have souls and which aspects imply that they don't. But I can summarize some of the things he says in Plato'... Read more
To know what beauty is, shouldn't one observe examples of it? But if one doesn't know what beauty is in the first place, how can one tell if one is observing examples of it?
Nice question! Here's a quick
Michael Cholbi
January 26, 2017
(changed January 26, 2017)
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Nice question! Here's a quick reconstruction of your reasoning:
(1) In order to know what X is, you need to observe instances of X.
(2) But one could only know one is observing instances of X if one already knew what X is.
(3) Hence, one can neither know w... Read more
As a non physicist, non scientist, I have a question, which may be really stupid. If quantum mechanics expounds that at an atomic level matter can be in 2 places, at one point in time, does this matter have mass in these 2 different places? If this matter can have a mass in more than one place, at one point in time, how can we attempt to calculate the mass of matter present in the universe as surely it would depend on what proportion of matter was in what number of places at any point in time? Does that mean its unit of measurement would need to include number of atoms, the proportions of this matter in what numbers of places, at a fixed point in time? Is there some basic reading that might help me understand this a bit more? Thank you.
It's not a stupid question.
Allen Stairs
January 21, 2017
(changed January 21, 2017)
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It's not a stupid question. The way that popular accounts "explain" quantum mechanics leads naturally to your question. The moral is that those popular accounts are not to be trusted.
Quantum mechanics is unusual in that on the one hand, we understand very we... Read more