Recent Responses
When did the definitions of induction and deduction change from reasoning from the universal to the particular (deduction) and particular to universal (induction), to this non-distinction of the strength of support the premises give to the conclusion? When did it happen and who did it?
Jasper Reid
March 11, 2009
(changed March 11, 2009)
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I hadn't originally intended to attempt a reply to this one, simply because the history of this is something that I've never really looked at in detail. But I do have to take issue with something that Allen Stairs says: "The distinction between deduction and induction never was a distinction betw... Read more
When did the definitions of induction and deduction change from reasoning from the universal to the particular (deduction) and particular to universal (induction), to this non-distinction of the strength of support the premises give to the conclusion? When did it happen and who did it?
Jasper Reid
March 11, 2009
(changed March 11, 2009)
Permalink
I hadn't originally intended to attempt a reply to this one, simply because the history of this is something that I've never really looked at in detail. But I do have to take issue with something that Allen Stairs says: "The distinction between deduction and induction never was a distinction betw... Read more
How can I hear my voice in my head without speaking?
Jonathan Westphal
March 9, 2009
(changed March 9, 2009)
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"How can I hear my voice when I'm not speaking?" is your question. If we reserve the word "hearing" for what the ears do, and "the voice" for what the mouth speaks - not unreasonable, I think - then your question becomes, "How can I "hear" my "voice" when I'm not speaking?" i.e. "How can I un... Read more
I would like to know if any panelists can tell me about good programs of study for Continental philosophy in the United States - particularly taught from a Continental perspective. It has been written by Brian Leiter that "all the Ivy League universities, all the leading state research universities, all the University of California campuses, most of the top liberal arts colleges, most of the flagship campuses of the second-tier state research universities boast philosophy departments that overwhelmingly self-identify as 'analytic'" and John Searle commented "without exception, the best philosophy departments in the United States are dominated by analytic philosophy, and among the leading philosophers in the United States, all but a tiny handful would be classified as analytic philosophers." The more respondents, the merrier.
Lisa Cassidy
March 9, 2009
(changed March 9, 2009)
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Since you have checked out the Leiter page you must have seen the Continental rankings there. My understanding is that his report has been expanded in the past few years to include Continental philosophy, feminist theory, applied ethics and other approaches that are not 'analytic,' so that is a st... Read more
Is there anything to the idea that someone only really understands a concept if she can explain it to someone else? Sometimes I think that the things we know most certainly (such as that 1+1=2) are actually the most difficult to explain.
Jennifer Church
March 8, 2009
(changed March 8, 2009)
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Most concepts get their meaning, at least in part, from their relations to other concepts. The concept of a contract, for example, gets its meaning from its relations to other concepts such as the concept of a promise, the concept of an obligation, the concept of a free agent, and so on. Likewi... Read more
For what I've seen until now, logical laws are always assumed to be necessarily true (in the "all possible worlds" sense), but is it possible that this necessity is weaker? Is it possible that our logical capabilities are adaptations to physical regularities of the actual world and are still evolving, together with our minds? If our logical capabilities are tracking our evolution, then the Necessity of Logic laws could be only Physical, instead of Metaphysical, and there could be possible worlds where the Physics would constrain Logic differently. This (I think) would also have implications regarding the Ontological commitment of Logic: instead of assuming that there is none, it would be possible, even likely, that the physical existents of the World would appear in our logical theories. Has anyone put forward sustained arguments for/against this?
Allen Stairs
March 7, 2009
(changed March 7, 2009)
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People have talked about this. One oft-cited paper is Hilary Putnam's 1968 paper "Is Logic Empirical?" (Reprinted in his Mathematics, Matter and Method as "The Logic of Quantum Mechanics.") Putnam's arguments were of a "web of belief" sort: our beliefs form a web with some more central than others... Read more
Setting aside the sort of lies told by parents to children, are there any lies which, in the panelists' view, it would benefit people in general to believe? (For instance, you might think that although there is no god, religious belief is so beneficial as to outweigh a strict concern for truth.) Or is it the case that there is no lie worth believing?
Jean Kazez
March 6, 2009
(changed March 6, 2009)
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There are some ideas in ethics that I consider it valuable for people to believe, even though I'm not sure that they are strictly true. For example, the ideas in the UN declaration of human rights are not so much true as approximations to the truth. Jeremy Bentham might have been correct when he... Read more
I hear people look at a woman from a distance and exclaim "She is beautiful". I did that myself before. But my experience in relationships with women leaves me with a big question. Is beauty visible? Or what makes a thing beautiful?
Nicholas D. Smith
March 6, 2009
(changed March 6, 2009)
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Good looks are visible, of course--or else we wouldn't call them "looks." So, looking at a perfect stranger and declaring that person "beautiful" seems to me obviously to be a judgment about how the person looks. Looks are, however, just one aspect of a person that can be beautiful, and as... Read more
I've noticed that most comments on abortion ignore the question of foetal conciousness and the stage at which the foetus becomes sensitive to pain, and is susceptible to suffering in the course of the abortion procedure. The gradualist approach (the foetus has few rights in early pregnancy but more rights at later stages) is attractive but suffers from the drawback that it does not provide a definite point in gestation at which personhood can be considered to start. Would it be reasonable to think of the onset of foetal consciousness as providing such a starting point? (I know there are immense practical difficulties in identifying the onset of consciousness but I am looking at this question as a matter of principle.)
Miriam Solomon
March 6, 2009
(changed March 6, 2009)
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The idea of giving rights to fetuses as soon as they are capable of consciousness is, I think, discussed in the literature. Fetuses have a functioning central nervous system very early in pregnancy (typically before pregnancy is detected) and possibly consciousness of some sort starts at this p... Read more
It is a well publicized fact that voters are less likely to vote for atheists than for individuals of practically any other sort of minority. Why is this sort of discrimination generally not regarded as indicative of a really significant injustice? Why isn't the difficulty of atheists to achieve political office viewed as on par with racism, homophobia or other kinds of discrimination?
Allen Stairs
March 5, 2009
(changed March 5, 2009)
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Let's flip the question around a bit. Suppose I believe that people who hold certain particular religious views are likely to favor policies I don't like and oppose policies I like. That gives me a reason to worry that if I vote for a candidate of that religious persuasion, I'd be voting for someo... Read more