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Why are performance-enhancing drugs seen negatively for athletes, but no problem for musicians? Why do we worship The Beatles (big-time drug takers and their creativity amplified substantially through drug use) and attack Ben Johnson?
Jyl Gentzler
June 16, 2007
(changed June 16, 2007)
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You might also look at the answers to Question 906.
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Can there ever be a meaningful distinction in science between the "unknown" and the "unknowable"? I see no reason why science should not,in 100,000 years or so, unlock what now seem to be unknowable questions like the nature of a Prime Mover, if he exists, simply by accruing more and more knowledge of the universe. We know pretty much what happened a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang and we acquired this knowledge in about 100 years so why assume everything before that is unknowable? Surely the scientific method would insist that this is "presently unknown". Is it that metaphysics and the persistence of religious belief color our approach? Is "unknowable" even a valid term in philosophy, and, if so, what definitive, unassailable examples are there of it (which would also apply, say, 100,000 years from now)? Thanks in advance.
Thomas Pogge
June 15, 2007
(changed June 15, 2007)
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Let's begin by distinguishing two senses in which something might be said to be unknowable. In some cases something is said to be unknowable because it isn't the kind of thing about which, in principle, knowledge could be had. For example, do you know the minimum number of hairs a man must have on... Read more
First, congratulations for the website. I'll try to phrase my question in an intelligible way: How do we realise, if we ever really do, that we are mortal? Indeed, until we are dead, at which point we are not conscious anymore, we have no affirmative knowledge of the fact that we are mortal. Is it an inferrence made from our observation of the world, and of the idea that we are no different? Or is it something that is culturally acquired by social influences - in which case I should maybe seek answers from social anthropologists? Could then it be considered more of a presumption than a realisation? And yet it is holds such a grip on people that it would be hard to suppose it is a mere presumption. Thank you. Olivier
Oliver Leaman
June 14, 2007
(changed June 14, 2007)
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I suppose it is both an observation from our experience of the world and also socially influenced. Freud suggests that we cannot really think of ourselves as dead; even when we imagine our funeral taking place, we are still sort of there watching, and so alive and conscious. As you say, we cannot... Read more
I've been thinking about how people generalize all the time when trying to figure out if something is moral. Let's say I enact some form of vigilante justice, like shooting some criminal at large whom I know will repeat heinous acts if unstopped. Naturally I would find myself on trial and would face some variation of the argument: so do you believe, then, that everyone should take the law into their own hands? It seems that this generalizing argument/question flows naturally from the demands of logic. But I think it's a perversion of thought and distortion of morality. Why would Justice be so limited a concept that it must bow in all instances to some simply statable, spiffy sounding, ostensibly proceeding from almighty logic claim like the generalizing one? I feel that I can answer "no" to this question without surrendering my belief that what I did was right. It shouldn't involve me in any contradiction (nor would it be a huge deal if it did) to claim: what I did was right, but I don't believe that everyone should be taking the law into their own hands. Perhaps because there would be too many mistakes, for example. But I know that I didn't make a mistake. I'm positive of it. Can you, as a philosopher, believe me, without trying to slam dunk me away with a spiffy sounding "how can you be sure, if others can't be sure?" or some other spiffy sounding logical argument?
Jyl Gentzler
June 14, 2007
(changed June 14, 2007)
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Let me add just one small point to Thomas’ very helpful discussion of the role of generalization in moral argument. Why is it that people engage in this odd behavior of challenging your actions by asking you whether you would accept the generalization that all people of type T are entitled to eng... Read more
Richard Rorty is dead and I think philosophy is poorer for it. But I have found during my undergraduate philosophy studies that most Anglo-American academics are largely hostile towards most of what he has written. Perhaps some one or more members panel can confirm this widespread hostility and articulate the more common reasons behind it.
Saul Traiger
June 13, 2007
(changed June 13, 2007)
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Richard Rorty had a long career during which his viewsevolved. He influenced a wide range of philosophers grappling with some of thekey directions philosophy was going in the second half of the 20thcentury. A student of Wilfrid Sellars, in some of his early work in theepistemology and in the philo... Read more
I have been reading Kant recently and have wondered what his stance would be on homosexuality, not in marriage, but just in general. It seems that he would say it is immoral because it goes against one's duty, since if everyone was homosexual, there would be no new babies. Can this be true? Is there something else in Kant's thinking that would contradict this?
Alan Soble
June 17, 2007
(changed June 17, 2007)
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A few additional remarks. Kant's explicit condemnation of homosexual (or same-sex) sexual relations can be found in his Lectures on Ethics (the Vorlesung). His arguments are grounded in the Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative (not the First, as suggested by the question), but mostly on... Read more
Alex George wrote [http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/question/1663] that we can't ask "why should we be convinced by logic" or some similar question without thereby already submitting to logical priority; i.e., because the question itself has logic embedded in it. I'm not sure I understand this claim fully. Logic studies entailment relationships; if p, then q, therefore if not q, not p. On the other hand, logic doesn't tell us how to love another person. Insight from experience might tell us that. So there are other ways of knowing things, and different sorts of things, than logic. So if someone asks why choose to listen to logic at all, when I can learn plenty of important things from other roads to knowledge, why isn't this a fair question that doesn't already involve logic?
Richard Heck
June 13, 2007
(changed June 13, 2007)
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Recent epistemology has made a lot of the distinction between justification and something else that goes by the name warrant or entitlement, though some philosophers use "warrant" as an umbrella notion that covers both justification and entitlement. And of course the distinction gets drawn in diff... Read more
Richard Rorty is dead and I think philosophy is poorer for it. But I have found during my undergraduate philosophy studies that most Anglo-American academics are largely hostile towards most of what he has written. Perhaps some one or more members panel can confirm this widespread hostility and articulate the more common reasons behind it.
Saul Traiger
June 13, 2007
(changed June 13, 2007)
Permalink
Richard Rorty had a long career during which his viewsevolved. He influenced a wide range of philosophers grappling with some of thekey directions philosophy was going in the second half of the 20thcentury. A student of Wilfrid Sellars, in some of his early work in theepistemology and in the philo... Read more
I have read in more than one place that "rationality is normative". I'm not too sure about what this means. I guess "normative" is whatever is related to what one ought to do or think. Does the first sentence just mean that one is rational when one thinks as one ought to? Should I also say that cooking is normative, since one ought to cook some ways and not the other? Where can I read more about this? The Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy has no article on "rationality", nor on "normativity".
Richard Heck
June 13, 2007
(changed June 13, 2007)
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It's hard to be sure what "rationality is normative" means, but I think I know what someone who would write that would mean. (That is: what they meant, whatever it is their words meant.)
The word "rationality" is an abstract noun, formed from the adjective, "rational". So we ought really look at... Read more
Peter Fosl said in a post that philosophers are "astonishingly" bad writers. What exactly does he mean by this, and what makes writing bad or good? I assume he does not mean to say that it is bad because it doesn't appeal to a wide audience since, as he says earlier in the post, our culture is heavily invested in what may be considered shallow pursuits. Certainly it's not philosophy to blame if the masses aren't interested, is it? But I don't mean to direct this question just at Peter Fosl. First of all, every other panelist let this comment go without so much as a protest. Do you all consider yourselves bad writers, then, and astonishingly bad ones, at that? Or, perhaps, does philosophy, by its very nature, lend itself to uninteresting, technical, boring writing?
Oliver Leaman
June 13, 2007
(changed June 13, 2007)
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I am sure Peter does not think he is a bad writer, and if he does then he is mistaken! But it is certainly true that as philosophy becomes more technical and professionalized it has often lost its connection with ordinary language and issues. Some say that it started with Kant, who was one of the... Read more