Recent Responses
Does philosophy have anything interesting to say about the problem of terrorism?
Yes, please go to the free,
Charles Taliaferro
August 11, 2016
(changed August 11, 2016)
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Yes, please go to the free, online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and see the entry: TERRORISM. There is a good survey of the terms, concepts and work that philosophers have contributed to. Because that will give you a full overview and guide plus recomm... Read more
I don't know if this a philosophical question or scientific question, So this is my question, If A create all things, is it logically safe to say that A is uncreated?
The analogy to printing money
Stephen Maitzen
August 11, 2016
(changed August 11, 2016)
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The analogy to printing money fails. There's an obvious difference between (a) "I create everything except myself" and (b) "I print all the money except what's in my wallet." Given the impossibility of creating my own creator, (a) implies that I am uncreated. By... Read more
John needs money to buy the farm he has always dreamed of. If his aunt dies this week, John will inherit the needed money from her, although John does not know that. He does not like his aunt very much. Miles away, his aunt is stuck in her home, which is in flames. Mary breaks into the house and saves the aunt, who would have died otherwise. My question is: did Mary (unknowingly) harm John? (I am a lawyer.)
Great question! I suggest
Charles Taliaferro
August 11, 2016
(changed August 11, 2016)
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Great question! I suggest that Mary did not (unknowingly) harm John, given the case as described. One reason for thinking this is not a harm is a kind of slippery slope line of reasoning. If John is harmed by the rescue of his aunt, many, many people are bein... Read more
Are feelings/emotions susceptible to moral judgment? For example, can a person be blamed for merely feeling in a certain way, without acting on it?
It's an interesting question.
Allen Stairs
August 11, 2016
(changed August 11, 2016)
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It's an interesting question. If an emotion simply wells up in you, it might not be reasonable to blame you—especially if you don't act on it. In any given moment, we may not have much control over what we feel. But here are two things to consider.
First, we... Read more
I don't know if this a philosophical question or scientific question, So this is my question, If A create all things, is it logically safe to say that A is uncreated?
The analogy to printing money
Stephen Maitzen
August 11, 2016
(changed August 11, 2016)
Permalink
The analogy to printing money fails. There's an obvious difference between (a) "I create everything except myself" and (b) "I print all the money except what's in my wallet." Given the impossibility of creating my own creator, (a) implies that I am uncreated. By... Read more
Assuming the best possible thing is happiness, (because, after all, everything a person does is to acquire that), if everyone was connected to an IV which injected a chemical that causes complete happiness, wouldn't that be the best possible life? And wouldn't killing them not be a crime, since the only reason murder is "wrong" is because we instinctively fear death, and these people would not have instincts, and would therefore be the equivalent of robots? Since they wouldn't know that they're about to die, they'd be happy until they'd cease to exist - and once they cease to exist, they can't be unhappy. For that matter, no one would volunteer for such a type of happiness, since such happiness would be equivalent to ceasing to exist. So why are happiness and life inherently good? Are they inherently good? Why is it bad to murder someone? Are morals at all important? And so on. In other words, happiness does not semantically equal good. Happiness is a completely different concept, which cannot be considered either good or bad. And therefore, preventing someone's happiness is not bad. Disclaimer: For no good reason whatsoever, I also enjoy happiness. (Sorry for the semantics there.) And I'm not depressed. It's just that I'm a thirteen-year-old.
You ask a whole bundle of
Michael Cholbi
August 5, 2016
(changed August 5, 2016)
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You ask a whole bundle of questions at once -- more than can be tackled in my response. Let's focus on two interrelated strands of your question: the badness of death and the wrongness of killing.
Suppose we could use chemical measures to make people (as you say) comp... Read more
I don't know if this a philosophical question or scientific question, So this is my question, If A create all things, is it logically safe to say that A is uncreated?
The analogy to printing money
Stephen Maitzen
August 11, 2016
(changed August 11, 2016)
Permalink
The analogy to printing money fails. There's an obvious difference between (a) "I create everything except myself" and (b) "I print all the money except what's in my wallet." Given the impossibility of creating my own creator, (a) implies that I am uncreated. By... Read more
Why do we need a contrast to recognize a sensation? For example -; Think of hearing the same sound since your birth and think that you are hearing it without any variations. We will fail to recognize that we are perceiving a sensation and we won't be able to recognize the sense organ. Iam only 15,Forgive me if my question is fallacious. Thanks.
Thanks for your interesting
Stephen Maitzen
August 5, 2016
(changed August 5, 2016)
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Thanks for your interesting question. I don't think there's anything fallacious about it. But I do think that, at bottom, it's an empirical question -- one that we can't expect to answer just by thinking hard about it. What you say in answer to it seems plausible to... Read more
I've read that consciousness, and a "soul", might be connected by quantum entanglement. As I understand it, "warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules" in neuronal cells generate EEG, or brain waves. Then, after death, the quanta that once generated electrochemical activity in the neocortex, somehow gets dispersed throughout space-time. And these particles are then linked by quantum entanglement. This phenomenon could encode, or preserve, information within the space-time fabric indefinitely, outside of a physical body. Could this be possible supporting evidence for the existence of a soul?
The rule of thumb when you
Allen Stairs
August 4, 2016
(changed August 4, 2016)
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The rule of thumb when you hear someone claim that quantum mechanics explains or underwrites something about minds is to be very, very suspicious.
Let's suppose that two particles within some microtubule get entangled. (Caveat: I know more or less nothing about microtu... Read more
How do we know that some beings have a status as 'persons' and some beings do not? If we attempt to delineate certain characteristics of personhood, we run into the quandary of, say, labelling the mentally ill as non-persons or labelling cancer cells as persons. Is this a problem? Is there a way to avoid this? Must we have the rights which personhood entails in the first place?
A person (from the Latin
Jonathan Westphal
August 4, 2016
(changed August 4, 2016)
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A person (from the Latin persona, mask) is merely one who has standing as a legal agent, and so, almost without exception, a person is a human being. (There is a body of law in the United States which suggests that groups of persons, in particular corporations, are... Read more