Recent Responses
If there is no proof that god exists, is there any evidence that he does and what form would this evidence take to be worthy of philosophical examination?
Charles Taliaferro
June 19, 2010
(changed June 19, 2010)
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And I might commend my own Philosophy of Religion: A Beginner's Guide (Oneworld Press, Oxford) and Dialogues about God (Rowman and Littlefied) for a review of many of the arguments that seek to address the existence of God from the standpoint of evidence.
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Does the Western education system violate human rights? It does after all restrict freedom of movement (as absence from a set class at a particular time results in punishment and it's illegal to skip school altogether). It also violates freedom of thought - one of our most fundamental rights - as it requires a student to think about a set subject at a set time. Even intrinsic biological necessities such as the expulsion of bodily waste are often denied to students. Is it fair to conclude that there is something radically wrong with this system?
Thomas Pogge
May 22, 2009
(changed May 22, 2009)
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Insofar as pupils have the same human rights as adults do, your argument is compelling. If we did to adults what we are doing to adolescents, we'd be violating their human rights.
An obvious defense of our education system (BTW, non-Western ones are not much different and mostly more restrictive) wo... Read more
I am not schooled in philosophy but do enjoy thinking about philosophical questions. In the gaps of time I have in my ordinary day-to-day existence, I have given some thought to better understanding human behavior and have come to believe (or, more accurately, am trying to further refine my basic belief) that human beings "can not but act in their perceived best interests." I believe that each decision that an individual makes represents the sum of that individual's accrued experiences, which informs that individual's "decision" (and I believe the concept of "decision" to be a bit of a fiction, but I will use the term because I do not know a better term). I believe that, when confronted with a decision, an individual weighs, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the gravity of the decision and the individual's degree of experience, sophistication, intelligence, etc., the sum of his/her experiences and ultimately makes a decision based on his/her perceived best interests at the time. I believe this premise to be near inviolable (although I do have difficulty fitting people's self-destructive tendencies into this framework, i.e., if people always act in their perceived best interests, why do they procrastinate?). I was hoping you could help me refine and/or provide some feedback/criticism of my thoughts as well as letting me know whether there are any proponents of this view or an approximation of this view (preferably letting me know if there are any accessible reads on the subject for a busy salaryman such as myself). Thanks! Mark
Thomas Pogge
May 22, 2009
(changed May 22, 2009)
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Procrastination and weakness of the will (as when people continue to smoke and to eat a lot of red meat even while they understand the health risks and want to lead a long healthy life) are obvious problems for the view you are entertaining. Another problem is moral and altruistic conduct. You are k... Read more
No matter whether one adopts a deontological or consequentialist account of ethics it is apparent that there exists a moral imperative to prevent genocide. To what extent and to what cost this imperative must motivate our actions is, I suppose, a subject of serious debate, however. But how can we define genocide? Surely we can all agree that the murder of 10,000,000 people constitutes genocide. But what if we subtract one fatality? Still genocide, of course. Minus one more? The same is still true. But at some point that logic fails; when we get down to the death of one, a few, or no people we certainly no longer have a case of genocide on our hands. It seems there is a sorites paradox here. If the number of people killed is ultimately arbitrary, how is the concept of genocide meaningful? Surely we can still find moral value in the deaths of millions (or even in the death of an individual), but it seems the label in itself is ultimately kind of subjective and meaningless.
Thomas Pogge
May 22, 2009
(changed May 22, 2009)
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The number of victims is not the only consideration entering into the judgments of whether a genocide is taking place. Other relevant factors are the nature and size of the victim group and the motivations and intentions of the perpetrators. Still, we can hold these other factors fixed and ask your... Read more
Richard Holloway, in 'Godless Morality', argues that "ritual practice" is not the same as "ethical principle." As an example, he argues that the practice of refraining from eating pork in Muslim and Jewish religious cultures is not per se an ethical action, merely the instantiation of an ethical principle which is keeping a promise to one's god. Thus, to eat pork, the ethical principle broken would be that of breaking a promise; the eating of pork itself would not be unethical, as the proscription of pork was merely a historical/sociological/anthropological/geographical accidentality. Clearly there are many ways to break a promise, but only one ethical principle for each 'set' of manifestations of it (following Holloway's theory). The above is, at any rate, the way I have tried to explain it to my grade 12 (last year of high school) Philosophy students. Does this explanation hold, and what are the problems with it? (I am presuming it is problematic because, although it appears convincing, I am still troubled by it...but I can't articulate why!). Many thanks.
Thomas Pogge
May 22, 2009
(changed May 22, 2009)
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One distinction at work here is that between (as I would say) duties and obligations. We are subject to certain (general) duties regardless of circumstances, and we acquire (specific) obligations pursuant to such a duty in the presence of certain triggering conditions contained in this duty. To use... Read more
To what extent can anything be unnatural if every substance initially came from the earth to begin with? Wouldn't that make all things natural? A colleague of mine reminded me that there are ways to alter different things, but does that make it unnatural if the process by which we have altered a substance is natural? Such alterations exist via heat (natural), combining with another substance (which is also natural) to cause a reaction, and so on... But what makes something (a product of a reaction, perhaps) unnatural? Say reactant A, which is natural, is combined with reactant "B", which is also natural, to create a product which we would call unnatural. How can we call the product of two natural substances unnatural? To make a long question short, what is the difference between natural and unnatural? Keeping in mind that all things are naturally found on earth. What makes something "artificial"?
Allen Stairs
May 21, 2009
(changed May 21, 2009)
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If "natural" means "part of nature broadly conceived," then it's hard to see what's uncontroversially not natural. But what this really shows is that there is mre than one meaning of "natural" and more than one contrast that someone might make.
Someone who believes that the material world was made... Read more
The reason behind human appreciation of beauty is sometimes framed in evolutionary terms; we find a certain body type beautiful because it reflects good health, or we find a blossoming fruit tree beautiful because it can provide us with food. It is impossible to explain modern appreciation for art in simple evolutionary terms because it has been so heavily culturally constructed, any explanation for the evolutionary mechanism behind the appreciation of a Roy Lichtenstein work would be a stretch. But the roots of our contemporary aesthetic sensibilities are in this appreciation for natural beauty, which in turn was grounded in non-aesthetic value. But it seems to me like there are so many natural things that we find beautiful that would serve no purpose, or would actually be dangerous. The Sahara desert, poisonous plants or insects, or storms are certainly considered beautiful, but an early human would be ill-advised to seek them out for this reason. Are there other theories as to the origin of our aesthetic sensibilities? Or can this question be answered by a slightly more sophisticated evolutionary explanation?
Louise Antony
May 21, 2009
(changed May 21, 2009)
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It's very easy to speculate about the evolutionary origins of a trait, but often very difficult to defend such speculations with evidence. Natural selection is not the only engine of evolutionary change. So there's no particular reason to think that our capacity for aesthetic pleasure is an adap... Read more
What does it mean to exist?
William Rapaport
May 21, 2009
(changed May 21, 2009)
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I agree with Jonathan Westphal that there's no simple answer to your question as you pose it.
One (no doubt overly simpleminded) way to approach an answer to the question is to make a list of things that exist and then see if they have any properties in common. But what would you put on this... Read more
Do you think that it is morally wrong to store the DNA of innocent people on a central database? Living in Scotland, the law says that people who have been charged of a 'violent or sexual offence' can have their DNA stored in a database for 3 years (with the possibility of extending that to 5). This isn't the DNA of people who have been convicted, but the DNA of people who have been charged and subsequently released (essentially innocent in respect to the law). In discussions with friends, I often come across the argument as follows: 'if you haven't done anything wrong, then you don't have anything to worry about'; at which point I often reply: 'if I haven't done anything wrong, then you have no need to hold my DNA'. Do you feel that a government has a duty to hold the DNA of 'potential' criminals like this in order to benefit society at large?
Peter S. Fosl
May 21, 2009
(changed May 21, 2009)
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I'm with you. There is a security interest in having as complete as possible a database of DNA, but there is a contrary interest in privacy that I believe trumps the security interest. One reason for this is that, alas, your friends are simply wrong to think that simply because one is innocent one... Read more
Is it wrong to lie when we're questioned on matters of our intimacy? I mean cases where the other reasonable option would be to refuse to answer but for some reason we prefer not to. More specifically, I mean cases where it was wrong to ask in the first place.
Jonathan Westphal
June 11, 2009
(changed June 11, 2009)
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'[I]n general truth-telling is morally preferable to lying . . .', Peter Fosl writes. This doesn't seem quite right. Lying is wrong, and telling the truth is right, not just a bit "morally preferable", even if there are worse things than lying. There seem to be too many ways of avoiding or de... Read more