Recent Responses
Consider a first-order axiomization of ZFC. The quantifiers range over all the sets. However, we can prove that (in ZFC) there is no set which contains all sets. Soooo.........how can we make a _model_ for ZFC? The first thing you do when you make a model for a set of axioms is specify a domain, which is a set of things which the quantifiers range over......this seems to be exactly what you can't do with ZFC. So what am I missing?
Richard Heck
December 24, 2007
(changed December 24, 2007)
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This kind of concern has had a good deal of influence on research in logic over the last several decades. It was, for example, a major force behind Boolos's work on plural quantification.
More recently, there has been an explosion of research on what is called "absolutely universal" quanti... Read more
I thought that modern philosophy tended towards the tentative, the open-ended, and the permanent possibility of error, yet some philosophers on this site answer questions, usually on moral issues, with an almost dogmatic certainty worthy of Pope Ratzinger. How come?
Allen Stairs
December 20, 2007
(changed December 20, 2007)
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Without discussing specific posts (though I dare say I'm one of the people who fit your bill), it might be something like this: just as some things are pretty clearly true or false, some things are pretty clearly right or wrong. And if the question posed is "first-level" -- i.e., one that... Read more
If you choose to bring a child into the world, you are necessarily condemning the child to suffer, in at least the following ways, if not more: (1) The child will experience physical pain. (2) No matter how hard you try, you will foist your own failings and fears onto the child, which will directly and indirectly cause the child great suffering and psychic pain. (3) The child will have to go through the difficult and painful process of figuring out how s/he fits (or doesn't) into a society with values that are -- for lack of a better general descriptive term -- pretty warped. (4) The child is likely to have excruciatingly-painful adolescent experiences figuring out the mating system and social cues of humans. If you want evidence for the magnitude of this pain, ask any adult to remember in detail one of these adolescent experiences without cringing. (5) Unless the child believes in God or the equivalent, s/he will live every day of his/her life knowing that any meaning to life is self-generated and death is impending and final. (6) If the child lives long enough, s/he will have to watch people s/he loves deeply, die. (7) The child will her/himself get old, get sick, be lonely, and die. Finally, the decision to have children is clearly completely self-interested. The child does not yet exist, and therefore has no say in the matter. Therefore, it would seem to me that that decision to have children is completely morally reprehensible. Can you offer some explanation for how/why the vast majority of the population feels that it is morally okay to have kids? I simply cannot fathom how anyone could possibly choose to inflict all of that pain on another human being.
David Brink
December 20, 2007
(changed December 20, 2007)
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I think parenthood is a huge responsibility that is not always taken seriously enough, with the result that many people who are unable or unwilling to live up to the demands of good parenting have children and don't do well by them. We require education and licensure to drive a car yet lea... Read more
How should we think of abortion in view of common sense beliefs about death? In Question #1596, Professor Gentzler's solution to the problem of death-as-punishment was to suggest that we should see death, not as placing a person in some worse state (since a dead person is in no state at all), but as depriving him of what benefits he might have enjoyed had he lived. Yet by this same brand of reasoning, couldn't we argue that aborted fetuses are harmed in an analogous way? In both cases we have a puzzle about people who in some sense don't exist; the dead person because he is no longer conscious, the fetus because it is not sufficiently developed.
Jyl Gentzler
December 20, 2007
(changed December 20, 2007)
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I think that you are right to see the relevance of these considerations to the question of abortion. I briefly address some of the complex issues that the question of the moral permissibility of abortion raises at http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/1247 .
Log in... Read more
What are some points to keep in mind when writing for a philosophy class? I just finished a course where every thing I wrote seemed to be wrong.
Jyl Gentzler
December 20, 2007
(changed December 20, 2007)
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A. Read James Pryor’s and Peter Horban's very helpful advice on writing philosophy papers at http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html and at http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/writing.htm .
B. Follow the general writing advice of the Harvard Writing Center at http://www.fas.harva... Read more
How do you think technology will affect the teaching and practice of philosophy? During my undergraduate degree (in philosophy), I took notes in numerous classes on a laptop and could download papers from a variety of journals as PDF. I have seen numerous academic perspectives regarding technology and learning - from Bert Dreyfus' idea that the podcast of his lectures at Berkeley on philosophy and literature reduced class attendance, to law schools having "laptops off" sessions to science professors encouraging (or even requiring) graduate students to blog about their lab work. I even saw a theory that ethical theories are implicitly tied to the technology of their time - the printing press linking with Kant, utilitarianism, Mill-style liberalism, the mass media of television, radio and newspapers doing the same for Rawls and Nozick. And, of course, many philosophy professors like Brian Leiter now have blogs and some have podcasts too. At technical conferences, we use technology to provide things like "backchannels" during discussions where the topic is discussed during the talk - people post links, argue, throw insults around and involve outside experts. It is a sort of live peer review. A speaker recently came onto chat during a conference for some informal pre-talk peer review. Would you consider having a backchannel chat running in the background (or perhaps broadcast up on a screen) during, oh, Introduction to Metaphysics? As someone who is an avid user (and amateur programmer) of technology and a prospective philosophy graduate student, I would be interested in specific anecdotes or perspectives that you have on how the philosophy classroom and the daily practice of philosophy professors is going to adapt or cope with the shift to the Internet. In short, could the Internet spark a significant shift in philosophy as it is currently studied and practiced?
Kalynne Pudner
December 27, 2007
(changed December 27, 2007)
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Oh, and one more brief comment, an anecdote: Saul noted that "[m]ost philosophersstill read prepared talks, and few use multi-media aids." This is quite true, at philosophy meetings, but can be a source of considerable anxiety for the philosopher invited to present at interdisciplinary... Read more
I find it hard to read Derrida. Is one supposed to grapple with every word, in the same way that one would do with maths, or to just surf along the text, going 'I can sort-of-understand' in the same way one would read some poems (I am sure I am offending some poets here, but just want to illustrate my point).
Andrew N. Carpenter
December 17, 2007
(changed December 17, 2007)
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One reading strategy that was taught to me when I first began studying philosophy as an undergraduate, and which has served me well since, is to read slowly enough that you can paraphrase the key point of each paragraph or other "chunk" of text -- the idea is not to rush ahead until... Read more
My dog sometimes acts in an aggressive way because he feels he has to protect my family like we're his pack. I find it interesting that although he lives in an environment very different from what would be natural, he still feels the need to do this because of his instinct. He feels that the world is in his control and is oblivious to politics and other issues that affect the whole world. How do we know that we are any different to my dog? We assume that he knows very little about the world, but he probably thinks the same about us and so how can we know that the world isn't actually being run by him? Or if not by him how do we know that everything we think we control and understand isn't actually in the control of ants, or plants, or stars? Millie =]
Andrew N. Carpenter
December 16, 2007
(changed December 16, 2007)
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I agree that acknowledging that "the mere possibility of doubt doesn't provide a reason for doubting" is one part of a sensible answer to your question: that (1) we aren't sure whether we can prove complete certainty that your dog--or that Allen's scrap of tin-foil--does not contro... Read more
My dog sometimes acts in an aggressive way because he feels he has to protect my family like we're his pack. I find it interesting that although he lives in an environment very different from what would be natural, he still feels the need to do this because of his instinct. He feels that the world is in his control and is oblivious to politics and other issues that affect the whole world. How do we know that we are any different to my dog? We assume that he knows very little about the world, but he probably thinks the same about us and so how can we know that the world isn't actually being run by him? Or if not by him how do we know that everything we think we control and understand isn't actually in the control of ants, or plants, or stars? Millie =]
Andrew N. Carpenter
December 16, 2007
(changed December 16, 2007)
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I agree that acknowledging that "the mere possibility of doubt doesn't provide a reason for doubting" is one part of a sensible answer to your question: that (1) we aren't sure whether we can prove complete certainty that your dog--or that Allen's scrap of tin-foil--does not contro... Read more
If Descartes believed that God would not deceive him and God can defy logical impossibilities, then wouldn't it follow that God could be deceiving him nonetheless since God can be both evil and Good? I hope I'm getting Descartes' position right.
Jasper Reid
December 15, 2007
(changed December 15, 2007)
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It does indeed seem that Descartes believed that God was not constrained by the laws of logic. However, what he did nevertheless believe was that human thought was thus constrained. In an absolute sense, maybe a so-called logical impossibility was in fact possible: but the important point i... Read more