Recent Responses
In the movie Patton, an aide consoles the general upon learning that Rommel was not present in North Africa for the tank battle. "If you defeated Rommel's plan, then you defeated Rommel." If evolution defeats God's plan known as intelligent design can we apply the same logic to conclude that for evangelical believers at least their God is "defeated". Can we use the triumph of evolution as evidence that God does not exist since intelligent design is presented as His work?
Defeating Rommel's plan
Allen Stairs
December 9, 2016
(changed December 9, 2016)
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Defeating Rommel's plan amounted to defeating Rommel because there was something Rommel was trying to accomplish and defeating his plan kept him from doing that. Stopping someone from carrying out their plans is a straightforward case of defeating someone. But evo... Read more
Dear philosophers, I had two queries about Kantianism, and was wondering if anyone could assist. There's a letter of Kant's in which he says, essentially, that if a murderer comes to your door asking where your friend is, you may not lie to him, because the principle of allowing lies is not something that can be consistently maximised. I was wondering: (1) is there a problem of how to categorise an action? I mean, is the principle here, "It's OK to lie" or is it "One should not assist murderers"? How do you definitively characterise an action? (2) is there a problem of complexity of maxim? If one agrees that "It's OK to lie" can't be maximised, what about if exceptions are built in? "It's OK to lie to murderers who are likely to believe your lie" -- could something like that be maximised?
Thanks for your question.
Michael Cholbi
December 8, 2016
(changed December 8, 2016)
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Thanks for your question.
Before my response, a brief observation: You speak of principles being "maximized". I suspect you're confusing Kant's notion of a maxim with some other idea from moral philosophy (perhaps the utilitarian claim that right actions are thos... Read more
Representation of reality by irrational numbers. In the world there are an infinite number of space/time positions represented by irrational numbers. I should think that all these positions are real, even though they cannot be precisely described mathematically. Does this mean that mathematics cannot fully describe reality? What are the philosophical implications of this?
I would question your
Stephen Maitzen
December 8, 2016
(changed December 8, 2016)
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I would question your assumption that positions, magnitudes, etc., whose measure is irrational "cannot be precisely described mathematically." Consider a simple-minded example: In a given frame of reference, some point-particle is located exactly pi centimeters away f... Read more
People always say that one's action should not be aimed at disabling others to take their own actions, and the former is often subject of general denouncement. For example, when a pianist plays piano in his neighborhood at midnight and disturbs another person's sleep, people would say that playing piano is more of a disturbance than sleeping, and so one should avoid playing piano when someone else is sleeping. What is the intrinsic difference between the two? Cannot I say that the sleeping makes it inconvenient for the pianist to play piano, and so one should not sleep when someone else is playing piano? What is the logical basis of making any of such judgements?
There's no purely intrinsic
Allen Stairs
December 1, 2016
(changed December 1, 2016)
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There's no purely intrinsic reason, but there's still a reason overall. Here's a comparison. In the US, it's not just illegal but also wrong to drive on the left side of the road. In South Africa, the opposite is true. What makes it wrong to drive on the left... Read more
When Descartes says, "I think therefore I am", what sort of argument is he using? Is he simply saying, "There is an X, and X thinks, therefore there is an X", in which case he might as well have said "I walk therefore I am" or, with Barbara Kruger, "I shop therefore I am"? Or is the argument here more esoteric?
I can't do better than to
Stephen Maitzen
December 1, 2016
(changed December 2, 2016)
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I can't do better than to refer you to Section 4.1 of this SEP entry: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology. It even addresses the specific question "Why I think rather than I walk?"
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What do people mean, in a more philosophical sense, when we refer to predatory animals or apex predators as "strong" and to prey animals as "weak"? For instance, deer and elk can easily break the ribs of an attacking wolf, and deer and elk aren't necessarily easy to kill, but people think of wolves as strong while deer and elk are weaker. I'm not a science student, but I know enough science to know that apex predators are much more vulnerable than commonly thought and that it's more of a food web than a food chain. But wolves and lions are majestic and mighty while deer and rabbits are weak, easy prey. Can you help me to unpack the implied philosophies involved? Other than the Great Chain of Being, unless that's really what I'm looking for. I'm not looking toward the life sciences. Are there philosophical theories or schools of thought which consider strength and weakness in a sense that might be applicable to a predator/prey dynamic?
I am not familiar with any
John Sanbonmatsu
November 27, 2016
(changed November 27, 2016)
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I am not familiar with any philosophical theory that uses the terms "weak" and "strong" in reference to predator/prey relations as such, and I doubt very much that such a framing is helpful to the development either of a sound ecological framework or to an ade... Read more
I read a fascinating article about free will the other day. The first premise seems unremarkable to me: we initially make our decisions based on emotion, and then rationalize those decisions after the fact by reason. That premise seems well-correlated to me with empirical evidence in many cases; though there might be a small subset of cases in which people actually reason something out first before acting. However, the author then asserted that, because our decisions are primarily driven by emotion, that we only have the illusion of free will. I am not quite sure I completely followed the logical chain from the premise (emotions drive most decisions) to the conclusion (we feel like we have free will even though we actually do not). My questions to the panel are, (a) is the initial premise as reasonable to you as it seems to be to me, and (b) how does the conclusion follow logically from this premise? Thanks very much!
I have to admit: I'm as
Allen Stairs
November 24, 2016
(changed November 24, 2016)
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I have to admit: I'm as puzzled as you are.
Let's suppose I'm trying to decide which flavor of ice cream I want. My choices are chocolate and rum raisin. I like them both, and there's nothing unreasonable about eating either. What would make the author of the a... Read more
Hi! I'm someone who strongly dislikes Trump, but I also feel that I ought be loyal to whomever is President. What I wanted to ask is -- should loyalty be considered a virtue, or is it inherently a silly, irrational thing, and closer to being a vice? Could it, for instance, be responsible for partisanship and disunity? I've read that 90% of people who identified as Republican and voted, voted for Trump: is unthinking loyalty to a political party (if indeed that was one of the factors here) an evil?
Tough question(s). There is
Charles Taliaferro
November 23, 2016
(changed November 23, 2016)
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Tough question(s). There is a recent book with Cambridge University Press by Simon Keller, The Limits of Loyalty (2007), that is highly critical of loyalty. While I am not as critical of loyalty as Keller, he highlights enough cases (real and imaginary)... Read more
Are there good reasons to believe in God?
I believe that there are. I
Charles Taliaferro
November 23, 2016
(changed November 23, 2016)
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I believe that there are. I find versions of the cosmological and teleological arguments convincing, as well as an argument from religious experience. You might check out on the free online Stanford Encyclopedia the entry The Cosmological Argument and th... Read more
Hello. I'd like to ask about proof of miracles and of God -- and, in particular, what the standard of proof is. Arthur C Clarke said something like, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Well, if a voice booms down from the heavens, tells you that it's God, parts the Red Sea and gives prophecies that come true, are there no other explanations for these events except "miracles", and would the unusualness of these events be strong enough to establish that the voice in fact is God?
Interesting! The way you
Charles Taliaferro
November 23, 2016
(changed November 23, 2016)
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Interesting! The way you frame the question, it appears you may be assuming that explaining an event in terms of God is only feasible if all other explanations (that we know about or can imagine) are exhausted / untenable. I suggest that a lower standard of... Read more