Recent Responses
As a young philosophy fanatic attempting to get to grips with the incumbent philosophical zeitgeist's obsession with logic as the source and answer to all its 'problems', I am having trouble finding any substantial reason for the unwavering authority and importance with which this analytic and logical character is treated within the whole of philosophical academia. Where is the incontestible evidence for such an incontestible reverence of such fundamental logical principles as the law of non-contradiction, other than within human intuition and common sense?
Allen Stairs
January 30, 2008
(changed January 30, 2008)
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Before getting to your question, just an observation: all the philosophers I know believe that they should reason well and steer clear of contradiction, but I don't know any who think that logic is either the source of or the answer to all our philosophical problems.
In any case, I'm not sur... Read more
Recently, my stepsons' mother told my husband and me that her husband has been hurting her children (my stepsons). The last incident (the worst, she said) involved him "spanking" the youngest hard enough to leave a long bruise and picking them both up by the head, shaking them and screaming into their faces. He has a long history with CPS and I have spoken with his ex-wife who believes he has been molesting her daughter, as well as abusing her daughter and son (the reason she divorced him). The boys' mother seemed very concerned at first, using terms like "It's a deal-breaker. He can't beat my kids," but has changed her tune to "God made marriage first and children second, so I have to stand by my husband. Children leave you, a spouse is forever." My husband and I have contacted CPS and all have been interviewed. CPS said that they have determined abuse has taken place, but it doesn't look like they are going to do much about it. All that has been done so far is the boys' mother and stepfather have signed a contract stating that their stepfather is not allowed to be alone with the boys, discipline the boys (verbally or physically) and that their mother is not allowed to discipline them physically. The boys are already staying with their mother and stepfather 50% of the time. Since the contract was signed, the children have said that their stepfather has started to kick and hit the dogs (stating that they are animals, so it doesn't hurt them). My husband seems relieved that the drama is over and doesn't want to take any further action. I'm afraid he is in denial. As a concerned stepparent, do I have an obligation to do more than has been done regardless of my husband's preference to let it go? I believe that the boys are in danger of being injured or worse. Would it be more harmful to them to try to remove their stepfather from their lives, or to hope that he can learn (at age 45) to control his temper?
Matthew Silverstein
February 1, 2008
(changed February 1, 2008)
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You ask two questions:
1. As a concerned stepparent, do I have anobligation to do more than has been done regardless of my husband'spreference to let it go?
2. Would it be more harmful to them to try toremove their stepfather from their lives, or to hope that he can learn(at age 45) t... Read more
If I believe I can see something which isn't there, most of us would agree that I am mistaken. But what about other senses? Can I mistakenly believe that I feel pain or cold?
Cheryl Chen
January 29, 2008
(changed January 29, 2008)
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We often use the verb "to see" in such a way that to say I see a cat is to imply that there's a cat in front of me (and that my eyes are open, etc.) In this way, my beliefs about what I see could be mistaken: I can believe that I see a cat, but I could be wrong if there is no cat there for m... Read more
In what sense can someone come to 'own' a piece of land?
Joseph Levine
January 25, 2008
(changed January 25, 2008)
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First of all, the question of what grounds private ownership applies to all goods, not just land. So I'm going to treat the question as the more general one about how one can come to own anything. There are two basic approaches to this question: a "natural rights" approach and a "social i... Read more
Consider the following game that costs $2 to play: You roll a fair, six-sided die. You are awarded a $6 prize if, and only if, you roll a six; otherwise, you get nothing. Should you play the game? Well, considering the odds, the average payout - or "expected utility" - is (1/6)x($6)=$1, which is *less* than the $2 cost of playing. Therefore, since over many trials you would lose out, you should not play this game. That line of reasoning sounds OK. But let's say you are given a chance to play only once. What sort of bearing does this "average payout" argument have on this special "one shot" case? If you are in this for a single trial, it is not obviously irrelevant what the trend is "over many trials?"
David Papineau
January 25, 2008
(changed January 25, 2008)
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Good question. My own view is that what happens in the long run is irrelevant to the rationality of betting (or in your case not betting) according to the odds in the single case. I think that it is a basic principle of practical rationality that your choices should be guided by the prob... Read more
Is time simply movement? The physicist Brown said that all atoms are always moving. And all what happens simply happens because atoms move, doesn't it? So, if you could stop all atoms from moving, would there still be time?
Douglas Burnham
January 25, 2008
(changed January 25, 2008)
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Nice question.
Is it not the case, however, that everything you say is compatible with the proposition 'Time is a dimension or framework within which things happen'? If all the atoms stopped moving then time would carry on, so to speak, but nothing would happen.
Similarly, we could sugge... Read more
How do we know if we are reasoning correctly? Consider, for example, this witty “proof” that a ham sandwich is better than eternal bliss: Nothing is better than eternal bliss. But, surely, a ham sandwich is better than nothing (despite Leviticus 11:7). Therefore, a ham sandwich is better than eternal bliss! Admittedly, the error in *this* argument may be easy to see. But, of course, in more subtle lines of reasoning it is much harder to check for bugs. How, then, can we be confident, in general, that our arguments are fallacy-free?
Richard Heck
January 24, 2008
(changed January 24, 2008)
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I've generally become pretty good at detecting fallacious reasoning, both my own and that of others. I'm not perfect, to be sure, but pretty good. So, overall, it seems that, in any given case, my chances of having committed an undetected fallacy are fairly small. How small depends upon the... Read more
Richard Dawkins has written: That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. Is this valid, logically? If not, what are the consequences? He is talking about religious belief, i.e., belief in some God or other. Dawkins' statement makes sense to me but can any logical argument invalidate it? Would he then have to retract his statement, or is there a gray area between semantics and logic?
Richard Heck
January 24, 2008
(changed January 24, 2008)
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I don't know the context of this claim, nor why Dawkins thinks---I take it he does think this---that no-one has any "evidence" for religious belief. Most theistically inclined epistemologists of religion, in the analytic tradition, anyway, think we do have certain kinds of evidence for belie... Read more
When is somebody a "competent speaker" with a certain word? For instance, what do I have to know or do to be "competent" with the word "water"? I suppose I don't have to know that it is H2O.
Richard Heck
January 24, 2008
(changed January 24, 2008)
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Well, there's no short or agreed answer to this question. Not even some kind of a vague consensus. On one end, you have people who think that having once upon a time heard the word "water", and as a result having added it to your vocabulary, is sufficient for competence. On the other end, th... Read more
Upon whom is the burden of proof when interpreting a given phrase: those who would interpret it literally, or those who would interpret it non-literally (e.g., metaphorically, etc.)? I have heard people say that our default interpretation should always be literal, and that we should only deviate from this understanding if we poitively have reason to believe that it was not intended literally. Does this presuppose that things are more often meant literally than non-literally? Or is it based on the thought that non-literal uses of phrases (e.g. metaphoric ones) are always developments of their literal uses, and that the literal sense is therefore somehow ‘primary’ in an interpretational as well as a chronological sense? Presumably the answer as to which should be the default position will also depend on the context of the phrase – for example, is it found in a poem, or in a pamphlet of technical instructions (in the former non-literal uses may be more prevalent than literal ones; and you’d be surprised how many metaphors are used even in technical, scientific and philosophical prose). What then, of ‘context-less’ writings – e.g., if we found an ancient manuscript, in a language we understood, but knowing hardly anything of the culture that produced it – we may not know if it is poetry or prose, or on their predilections for non-literal language use. In such a case, would we simply have to say that we have no way or prioritising literal and non-literal interpretations over one another, or is there an absolute priority of one? (This question arose for me in being told that the burden of proof lay on me for interpreting Biblical anthropomorphism in a manner that is not committed to the materiality of God, and that the default position is to take the anthropomorphisms as intended literally, therfore committing the author(s) of the Bible to the view that God is a material being much like a human being). - Sorry for such a long question - your thoughts would be much appreciated!
Emma Borg
January 24, 2008
(changed January 24, 2008)
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Your question relates to a central issue in philosophy of language concerning the bearers of linguistic meaning: are they objects you can describe formally, like sentences, or much more context-bound entities, like utterances? According to one school of thought, advocated by philosophers like F... Read more