Recent Responses
Why do people praise virginity as a value? Sex is a wonderful part of the human experience, why is it sacralized so? Isn't it just as silly to say "I'm saving myself for marriage" as it is to say "I'm only eating pork chops for the first time on my wedding reception" or setting some other normal human event to happen on a specified day? Shouldn't we want to experience the best things in life as soon as possible (of course we shouldn't experience sex when we're ten, but you get my meaning)? I'm not going for sexual promiscuity but why is it so important to say "you were my first" or for a person to think they were the other person's first?
Allen Stairs
May 14, 2009
(changed May 14, 2009)
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I'll leave it to Freudians and others to speculate on what part of some people's psyches makes virginity seem valuable. Suffice it to say that I share your bewilderment. Obvious caveats and qualifications assumed, there's no clear reason why staying a virgin should be considered virtuous. (Odd, by t... Read more
Suppose I take a taxi with a friend. She gets out when the fare is $3 and I get out when the fare is at $6. How should we distribute the total cost fairly? One idea is that I should pay double what my friend pays. $6 = X + 2X where X is the amount paid by my friend. So I would pay $4. But another idea is that we should share the fare up to her exit, then I should pay alone after. So X = $3/2 where X is the amount paid by my friend.
Richard Heck
May 13, 2009
(changed May 13, 2009)
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Here's another idea. Figure out how much would it have cost each of you to take the taxi separately. Let's say it's $3 for her (it went straight to her place), and $5 for you (the taxi had to go a bit out of its way, from your point of view). Then each of you should pay the appropriate proportion of... Read more
Recently the headlines have reported some clerks of the court refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in states where same-sex marriage has been recently legalized. If such a person has strong beliefs about the immorality of gay marriage, are they acting ethically if they refuse to issue these licenses?
Richard Heck
May 13, 2009
(changed May 13, 2009)
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No, they are not. They are violating the legitimate rights of the people who are applying for the license.
This is the sort of place that a comparision to inter-racial marriage is worth making, even though there are lots of differences between the two cases. It really did happen that inter-racial co... Read more
Putting aside the legal aspects and ramifications of illegally downloading music - is doing so morally wrong? Put another way, do we do something morally wrong when we download or otherwise take music that we did not pay for? If we acknowledge a private right to property, and that taking someone's property is stealing, then, can we say we steal (in the same sense, which is to say with the same moral implications) when we take the recognized intellectual property of another, specifically some artist's or artists' music?
Richard Heck
May 13, 2009
(changed May 13, 2009)
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The notion of "intellectual property" is fraught with difficulty, and my first reaction to this kind of argument is to question whether there is any such thing. Indeed, there are intelligent and thoughtful people who do precisely that. See, for example, this post by Richard Stallman.
But one does no... Read more
Suppose a woman hates to fold laundry and is some sort of embryological neuroscientist. The woman conceives a child and takes a potion she has developed at an early stage before the embryo is conscious and when abortion is currently permissible such that when the child is born, the child has no desires other to fold laundry and put it away. The child is a sort of willing laundry slave. Let us suppose that the child is incapable of having any other desires than to do laundry and is incapable of being happy doing anything else. In fact, the child is completely happy in this state of laundry slavery. I have the intuition that the embryo is harmed at the moment the potion is taken even though the child who is born is incapable of objecting. If it is morally wrong to deny the embryo of its future freedom at the point when the potion is taken, why is it okay to deny the embryo of its future life at that same point through an abortion? The existence of future person who is harmed doesn't seem to matter in the laundry slave case, so why does it matter in the abortion case?
Richard Heck
May 13, 2009
(changed May 13, 2009)
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Different people will have different views about this, but I think the obvious thing to say is this. Taking the potion you described harms a person who will one day exist. Having an abortion does not harm a person who will one day exist. So that is the difference: In the one case, a person is harmed... Read more
What's so bad about Holocaust denial?
Richard Heck
May 13, 2009
(changed May 13, 2009)
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Well, the first thing that's bad about it is that it flies in the face of the obvious evidence. But that's not what you meant, presumably. Merely believing something false isn't usually held to be morally objectionable, the way Holocaust denial is.
So why is that morally objectionable? Well, I think... Read more
This is a difficult question to ask. But does the fact that Hitler had what could be described as noble intentions - he wanted to make the world what he thought would be a better place - in some way mitigate the moral repugnance of his actions?
Richard Heck
May 13, 2009
(changed May 13, 2009)
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I don't know if it mitigates it, but I think it's important to understand that, even people who do things as horrific as what Hitler did, very often do not think of themselves as doing anything wrong. Maybe Hitler is a bad example, as he is known to have been pretty nuts, but take Osama bin Laden. F... Read more
What do derivation systems in a formal logical language tell us about logic? Or about the propositions in the proof? Are their purpose only to show us that a particular proof or argument can be demonstrated using that particular language? IN other words, why do we have derivations in formal logic ... what is their grand purpose?
Richard Heck
May 13, 2009
(changed May 13, 2009)
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Peter always gets to these before I do. I agree with what he says, but will add a couple points.
First, modern logic emerges in the work of Gottlob Frege, one of whose contributions was the first formal system of logic. Frege is explicit about his motivations. Here's a passage from his paper "On Mr... Read more
What do derivation systems in a formal logical language tell us about logic? Or about the propositions in the proof? Are their purpose only to show us that a particular proof or argument can be demonstrated using that particular language? IN other words, why do we have derivations in formal logic ... what is their grand purpose?
Richard Heck
May 13, 2009
(changed May 13, 2009)
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Peter always gets to these before I do. I agree with what he says, but will add a couple points.
First, modern logic emerges in the work of Gottlob Frege, one of whose contributions was the first formal system of logic. Frege is explicit about his motivations. Here's a passage from his paper "On Mr... Read more
If I make a claim, based on empirical evidence, that itself invokes the existence of unobservable entities (e.g., those which are very small) am I making a supernatural claim? For example, if I claim that there are tiny elephants which act as the smallest building blocks of all that exists, is this supernatural or is it simply a scientific claim, given that we currently do not possess the means to observe existence at this level but we might eventually develop such means?
Peter Smith
May 12, 2009
(changed May 12, 2009)
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If you have a powerful theory about the smallest building blocks of the world, aboutwhat the laws governing them are, how they combine to generate morefamiliar entities, and this allows you to make more or less successful predictions about the world, then you are presumably giving a scientific accoun... Read more