Recent Responses
Where moral codes come from? Are they something to aquire or are they inherently in our genes?
Peter S. Fosl
May 21, 2009
(changed May 21, 2009)
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Both. General capacities and inclinations for thought, feeling, and conduct are biologically based (not just in our genes but in virtually all our tissues). But the specific way those capacities and inclinations are conceptualized and formulated in principle, narrative, argument, and prohibition s... Read more
Someone asked [http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/1411], "How do we know our right hand from our left hand when there is literally nothing that can be said about one which cannot be said about the other"? Mark Lange posed this question in turn, "Suppose there were a universe that was utterly empty throughout its history except for a hand (unattached to any body) floating in it. (Pretty gruesome, but let's not think too hard about that!) Would that hand be a right hand or a left hand? Now we cannot appeal to the hand's relations to other things to give it its handedness, since there are no other things." The thumb is on different sides of each hand. Put the palm down and you can tell which hand it is by looking to see if the thumb is on the inside or outside. What am I missing? Gloves come in left and right, you know? You could even tell this in a void.
Jennifer Church
May 21, 2009
(changed May 21, 2009)
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When you imagine a space that is empty of everything except one hand, you are still imagining the appearance of that hand from a particular point of view (or, perhaps, from several different points of view). That point of view is what tells you it is a right hand versus a left hand, for it is fr... Read more
Where would be good school to study mereology at the graduate level? I'm not looking for any school with specifics in mind, given that I already understand the options available by wanting to find a good program in just general mereology. Thank you for your time.
William Rapaport
May 21, 2009
(changed May 21, 2009)
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It depends on what you want to do with your knowledge of mereology. The Department of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo (State University of New York) is a world center for research on applications of ontology to artificial intelligence and informatics, and much of their work is based on... Read more
When I get sad and depressed I am often told to "wise up" and stop moaning because people in Africa suffer far more than I do. Is this a logically valid point? Does the existence of vast quanities of human suffering in Africa necessarily negate my suffering?
Miriam Solomon
May 21, 2009
(changed May 21, 2009)
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I love this question and have often pondered it myself. I don't think sufferings need to be compared with one another. All human pain is of moral concern and deserves unique respect.
Utilitarians like to quantify pain. Even if one does this, and thereby compares different pains, it does not follow... Read more
It seems easy to define "Monday": some day is a Monday if and only if it comes immediately after a Sunday. The problem is that if we do the same for every day of the week, our definitions will become circular at the seventh try. The only way I can see out of this is to say, for instance, that May 18, 2009, is a Monday, or that May 18, 1750, was a Monday (according to the Gregorian calendar), or that today is Monday. But isn't it strange that we have to give an example in our definition? And are there other words that we can only define with an example?
Allen Stairs
May 21, 2009
(changed May 21, 2009)
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If setting the meaning of words always required sticking within the circle of language, we'd be stuck. At some point, someone said "Let's call this day 'Monday'." (This is fictional history, but something like this happened.) It's a bit like my parents saying "Let's call this child 'Allen'."
In gen... Read more
Hi! I've read some philosophy stuff and I came to notice some kind of a "family resemblance" among some pairs of philosophical terms. You work with dichotomies such as type/token, concept/referents, set/members, whole/parts, object/appearances, property/instantiation, description/satisfaction... Well, you'll know many more of those than I do. My question is: do you have a general name for all those dichotomies? Thank you!
Peter Smith
May 17, 2009
(changed May 17, 2009)
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Apart from the fact that we have pairs each time, I'm not sure I see any other pattern here (even a "family resemblance").
But one thing is clear, the pairs are certainly not all "dichotomies" -- for a dichotomy divides things into two non-overlapping kinds. And while, if we believe Frege, objects ("... Read more
When I read contemporary theories of sexual ethics, they all seem to boil down to "if it's consensual, it's okay." I'm not religious, but this sounds awfully reductionist to me. Isn't there more to sex than just pleasure and emotional bonding? I could go hiking with a woman and that would be pleasurable and bonding. Are there any significant differences between sex and hiking? Or am I appealing to a baseless intuition?
Peter Smith
May 17, 2009
(changed May 17, 2009)
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But note there's no conflict being saying that "if it's consensual, it's ok" while also saying there can be more to sex than pleasure and a bit of temporary (maybe very, very temporary) bonding. After all, saying something is ok is saying it is permissible, it isn't positively wrong, it isn't to be c... Read more
Are there any situations were forgiveness would be immoral?
Jennifer Church
May 15, 2009
(changed May 15, 2009)
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Although there are many situations where it would be immoral to discount the wrongness of an act, and many situations where it would be immoral to absolve a person of responsibility for a wrong act, I do not think that forgiveness can ever be immoral. This is because I view forgiveness as a matt... 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
For months I have had an exhaustive debate with various colleagues on the ethics of testing for correlations between race and IQ. I have arrived at the conclusion that while current methodological quagmires surrounding the testing render the results of such a study untrustworthy at best and potentially racist at worst, I still think that in the interests of free inquiry such tests proceed. However, the question remains, can a study on intrinsic group differences which is fraught with methodological uncertainty and whose results have relatively narrow applicability have any ethical basis? Are there other considerations for deciding whether such a study should or shouldn't be conducted?
Marc Lange
May 14, 2009
(changed May 14, 2009)
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I am no expert on these matters. (For an expert opinion, you might consult Philip Kitcher's recent work.) But I would like to point out that "the interests of free inquiry" is an ambiguous phrase. It is one thing to say that ethically, such a study should not be conducted. It is quite another thing to... Read more