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What is the point of life? Aren't we ultimately living each day just waiting until the day we die?
There is no obvious logical
Jonathan Westphal
September 29, 2016
(changed September 29, 2016)
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There is no obvious logical if any connection between your premise ('Aren't we ultimately living each day just waiting until the day we die?' which is really an assertion: 'We are ultimately living each day just waiting until the day we die'), and your co... Read more
It seems to me that most theories involve postulated objects, and then various laws that describe how those objects must or can relate to each other. So, you might postulate an id, ego and superego, or genes, or electrons, protons and protons, etc. It also seems to me that there are at least two types of "simple" when talking about explanations. There's a brevity "simple" -- like a maths proof or a piece of computer coding with minimal steps. And there is also an ontological "simple" -- an explanation relying on as few postulated objects as possible. If it's true that there are at least these two types of "simple", well, does that render parsimony often difficult to apply, if you're committed to it as a good rule of thumb when deciding what to believe in? One candidate theory could be ontologically complex but brevity-simple, whereas the alternative theory might be ontologically simple but convoluted. Here are some things that worry me: (1) does appealing to deities lead to simpler explanations that ones that don't involve deities? Does OCcam's razor cut in favour of gods or against them? (2) philosophers are interested in all sorts of things that apparently aren't physical -- like universals, concepts, propositions, meanings, mental states, laws of logic. If one is commmitted to physicalism (on the basis of ontological simplicity), should one endeavour to be eliminativist about anything you can't jab with a stick, even though you can land yourself in explanatory difficulties by trying to do without these notions?
Good questions. The
Stephen Maitzen
September 26, 2016
(changed September 29, 2016)
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Good questions. The philosopher David Lewis (1941-2001) rightly insisted on distinguishing two kinds of ontological simplicity or parsimony: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative parsimony concerns the sheer number of postulated entities; qualitative parsimony... Read more
Dear philosophers, I've been told that instead of looking for objective moral facts, many philosophers see the task of ethics as bringing intuitions into "reflective equilibrium". But if intuitions aren't a sort of sixth sense that allows people to perceive moral facts, and are merely behavioural tendencies from nature and nurture, why ought we try to systematise them? What special authority do they have, and why <a href="https://www.viagrasansordonnancefr.com/">duree action viagra</a> should we care about them?
I think there may some some
Allen Stairs
September 25, 2016
(changed September 25, 2016)
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I think there may some some false dichotomies afoot here.
Most of us think there are some first-order moral facts. For example: I may think (I do, actually) that torturing people just for fun is wrong. However, if I'm doing moral philosophy, I'm not trying to... Read more
Why is the sorites problem a "paradox"? Isn't it fundamentally a problem of definition?
The sorites problem is a
Stephen Maitzen
September 22, 2016
(changed September 23, 2016)
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The sorites problem is a paradox for the reason that any problem is a paradox: it's an argument that leads from apparently true premises to an apparently false conclusion by means of apparently valid inferences.
I don't think it's fundamentally a problem of def... Read more
Can a feeling that God exists count as a good reason for believing in God? Could it also count as good reason for public policy -- for funding churches and religious schools?
Hi, great question! I will
Yuval Avnur
September 22, 2016
(changed September 22, 2016)
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Hi, great question! I will focus on your first question, because I think your second question, about public policy, requires discussion of all sorts of things about the distribution of goods in a society, and the law (in the US, for example, we have to keep in mi... Read more
How can understanding of issues be advanced even when definitive knowledge can’t be had?
I'm not entirely sure what
Yuval Avnur
September 22, 2016
(changed September 22, 2016)
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I'm not entirely sure what you have in mind by 'definitive knowledge'. I suspect you mean a sort of certainty, so that we have definitive knowledge that p when (and only when) we know for certain that p is true. If I understand your question this way, it boi... Read more
Hello. I wanted to ask about revenge. (1) Is there anything morally wrong with taking revenge? (2) If the urge to take revenge is a genetic instinct (and surely, it's quite plausible that it might be), why should it have less moral authority than any other feeling about right and wrong? The background to this question is that, while there's no explicit eye-for-an-eye in the laws of most contemporary societies, usually judges take community expectations and appropriate punishment into account when sentencing, and not just factors like legal requirements, precedence, rehabilitation and deterrence -- so revenge is arguably still very much a part of modern law.
Modern legal systems and
Michael Cholbi
September 22, 2016
(changed September 22, 2016)
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Modern legal systems and practices are probably shaped by a number of different factors, as you note. Criminal sentencing, for example, is likely to reflect concerns about rehabilitation, deterrence, consistency — and revenge. You rightfully ask: Should revenge... Read more
I'm a literature student and I've become aware that Marxist theorists (Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton, and so on) often talk about 'dialectics' - a term, I have traced to Hegel. But I'm unclear what is meant by this or how the term has been adopted. Is there anywhere you could point me which has an overview/guide to this?
Why not try here: https://www
Douglas Burnham
September 22, 2016
(changed September 22, 2016)
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Why not try here: https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm
Very crudely: dialectic describes a process whereby some social formation (e.g. a set of economic relations, a political institution, a set of religious beliefs, or even cultural forms (like... Read more
Hi, I'm struggling to understand free will. I've been told that either of the following scenarios is commensurable with free will: (1) an omniscient being that knows all future events; (2) a block universe where future and past in some sense coexist with the present. But if free will is commensurable with these scenarios, would it be merely epiphemomenal? Would free will play any causative role if either of these conditions was true?
Your question suggests that
Eddy Nahmias
September 22, 2016
(changed September 22, 2016)
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Your question suggests that you are thinking that free will must be something (e.g., a causal power) that is not a part of the rest of the universe, that it must be something that is (1) outside of the universe about which the omniscient being has complete know... Read more
Are there any good reasons to think that life has intrinsic rather than instrumental value?
First, let me offer a gloss
Michael Cholbi
September 15, 2016
(changed September 15, 2016)
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First, let me offer a gloss on your question: By 'life' here I take take you to mean something like an individual person's being alive or continuing to live, as opposed to all of human life, or biological life in general.
I must admit that I cannot think of a... Read more