Recent Responses
Is it immoral for a health insurance company to refuse to cover a person with a pre-existing condition?
Allen Stairs
August 27, 2009
(changed August 27, 2009)
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Timely! I'm inclined to tinker a bit with the question.
First, I think it's a scandal that in the USA, people with pre-existing conditions often can't get health insurance. Other developed countries have figured this out; it's about time the US caught up.
However, given the way the system wor... Read more
Why is viability used as a standard to decide whether a fetus can be aborted?
Jennifer Church
August 27, 2009
(changed August 27, 2009)
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There are some practical reasons for using viability as the standard for when a fetus may no longer be aborted. In particular, the viability of a fetus means that its life could be sustained without the mother's involvement -- which makes it much easier for others to effectively intervene.... Read more
I read recently a comment by a philosopher that Karl Popper's "falsifiability" theory is considered obsolete. Is this so? I always found it to be quite useful. If it's obsolete, what rendered it so, and by what was it replaced?
Eric Silverman
August 28, 2009
(changed August 28, 2009)
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I'll add a third problem to Popper's views... it classifies obvious psuedo-sciences as sciences such as astrology, so long as they make potentially falsifiable predictions. Furthermore, it does nothing to distinguish something radically implausible like astrology from something more plausibl... Read more
Recently I read an article in a newspaper about belief in God. The author was quite disparaging about atheists, maintaining that they have some essential flaw in their make-up. The author could not understand how anyone would chose to not believe in God. I am a Catholic and was always taught that "you must believe in God" and that "disbelievers would be punished". I was frightened by this and by the story of Doubting Thomas who didn't believe that Christ had risen from the dead as I knew that I wouldn't have believed that purported fact either. My question is can you choose to believe? I would think not.
Allen Stairs
August 27, 2009
(changed August 27, 2009)
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An interesting question. On the one hand, we can't simply choose to believe or not believe things. I couldn't simply decide to believe that Paraguay is in Africa, for example. But there are things we can do that make it more or less likely that we'll end up with certain beliefs. Pascal famous... Read more
When is rational to say "I do not have an explanation for this event, but the explanation you propose is not a good one." For example, my friend (hypothetically) believes there are ghosts in her house. As proof, she tells me some weird stories of things that happened in her house. I can't think of any good explanations for the things that happen in the stories. Nonetheless, can I still dismiss her conclusion that ghosts are in her house?
Jennifer Church
August 27, 2009
(changed August 27, 2009)
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It is rational to reject a purported explanation for a number of reasons:
1. Because a better explanation is available. (This is what you don't have in the case of strange happenings in your friend's house.)
2. Because the explanation relies on assumptions that are sufficiently doubtful for... Read more
Is it more important to spend one's time developing the skill of articulating one's positions precisely, or is it more important to spend one's time thinking about the content of important questions? Is it more important to spend time revising one's philosophy paper repeatedly so that one ensures that every choice of word is as perfect as possible so as to avoid any confusion or ambiguity, or is it more valuable to spend one's time thinking about questions? Obviously both are important, but which one is more so? And when the panelist responds, could s/he please indicate if this is a personal opinion of his/hers, or whether his/her response speaks for all philosophers (or most). Or, perhaps there is an agreed upon argument to establish which is more important? It seems to me that this latter possibility would be the most philosophically rigorous. Surely as philosophers and professors of philosophy many of the panelists have an opinion about this; I would greatly appreciate if the philosopher who responds would provide some objective reasons for his/her belief, or perhaps have the courage to state his/her opinion admitting that there are no objective reasons for them...
Donald Baxter
August 27, 2009
(changed August 27, 2009)
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My opinion is personal, but based on experience with trying to argue and publish arguments, with trying to teach students to argue and to write out arguments, and with conferring with other philosophers. Thinking and articulating go hand in hand. One must think very hard about philosophical q... Read more
Members of the Abrahamic faiths believe that we are all children of God and all equal in the eye of God. Therefore our lives are sacred and have an inherent equality of value that is beyond price. However, if God does not exist then a human life cannot be sacred. In this context can its value be beyond price? And if not, upon what basis should its value be calculated? It appears to me that if a human life has no inherent value then its only value is its social value, which for most purposes is its market value. But in that case there are categories of person whose lives cost more to society at large than they personally contribute, so that their social value is negative. And so logically it would appear on grounds of economy and social utility, and upon Darwinian principles of survival of the fittest, that such lives should be eliminated. Upon what rational grounds could one dispute this?
Oliver Leaman
August 27, 2009
(changed August 27, 2009)
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Surely one does not have to be religious to think that life has inherent value, one would just identify that value without reference to religion. Life would not perhaps be sacred, but still could be seen as having value, and that value need not be linked to its social role or economic standin... Read more
Do holes exist? Or are they pockets of nonexistence?
William Rapaport
August 25, 2009
(changed August 25, 2009)
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And there's a fun book by Roberto Casati & Achille Varzi, Holes and Other Superficialities (MIT Press, 1995).
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Doesn't time travel involve space travel too? If I travel back in time one year, say, in order to be in the same 'place' as I started, I'd need to travel across countless millions of miles of space, since the planet has moved during the last year. Since such instant space travel contradicts Einstein, how come so many philosophers seem to think it's possible? Martin, Wales, UK
Donald Baxter
August 25, 2009
(changed August 25, 2009)
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Nice conundrum. Here is a stab at it. If, in the example, time travel is traveling back one year of time in an instant of another time dimension--call it metatime--then Einstein has not been contradicted. He is silent about how much space can be covered in an instant of metatime. So time trav... Read more
Do holes exist? Or are they pockets of nonexistence?
William Rapaport
August 25, 2009
(changed August 25, 2009)
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And there's a fun book by Roberto Casati & Achille Varzi, Holes and Other Superficialities (MIT Press, 1995).
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