Recent Responses
In reading various relatively contemporary secondary literature on several different philosophers, I've noticed that many of them seem to intimate (or sometimes outright state) that the philosopher in question has been badly misunderstood, at least from a time shortly after their death, until relatively recently. Has the standards of scholarship really drastically improved in the last 20 or so years, or is this sort of claim perennial to the secondary literature on philosophy?
Jasper Reid
April 7, 2007
(changed April 7, 2007)
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I think the standards of scholarship have improved over the last twenty years (or maybe the last forty or so -- it's been a gradual development). At least in the better work that is being done in the history of philosophy nowadays, there is a far higher level of rigour than one used to find. This h... Read more
Are all of the senses (taste, sight, etc.) equally credible?
Peter Lipton
April 4, 2007
(changed April 4, 2007)
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This is an excellent question, but one of the reasons it is not easy to answer is that we are not comparing like with like, because different senses give us information about different kinds of thing. It’s not like two people who tell you about astronomy where we might say that one person is more... Read more
Hey, I am studying year 11 philosophy at school and we are required to write a philosophy essay on a topic we are passionate about. I have always been interested in whether the world (people, places e.t.c) around me is "real" or a dream or information that is being fed into our brains e.t.c. Could you please suggest some resources I could use. As I have just started philosophy my "philosophy vocabulary" is very narrow please keep this in mind. Sally
Roger Crisp
April 3, 2007
(changed April 3, 2007)
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The obvious place to start is with Descartes' *Meditations*. If you're short of time, you could read just the first two. Alongside you might find helpful ch. 4 of *Philosophy: The Basics* by Nigel Warburton. If you're then feeling a bit braver, you might try Tony Brueckner's article 'Brains in a Va... Read more
What purpose does one have to do anything to assist another human if it does not directly benefit one? Our lives are short (sometimes), why should we even consider doing things which do not directly help ourselves? Why do we feel better about ourselves when we help others? Survival of the fittest says we should abandon everyone else to ensure our own survival and procreation. Why do we and animals alike have the need to ensure the survival of our species instead of ensuring the survival of ourselves or our immediate kin.
Roger Crisp
April 3, 2007
(changed April 3, 2007)
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You seem to be raising a couple of puzzles here. One is how it has come about that human beings are sometimes motivated to help strangers, given that we might have expected evolution to produce beings concerned to promote the survival only of themselves and their kin. One immediate answer to this q... Read more
In what sense is being put to death a punishment? How we can talk about things like "suffering" or "loss" if a person is dead (i.e., not conscious)?
Jyl Gentzler
June 13, 2007
(changed June 13, 2007)
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Of course, murder is not a victimless crime! But how can that be, Alex asks, if the victim no longer exists in order to suffer the harm that has been done to him? If you must exist in order to have interests, then how can a dead person’s interests suffer as a result of his death?
To see the harm t... Read more
When I go and get really very drunk, I sometimes forget what happened the following morning. Was I conscious during the periods that are blacked out, or do I forget them because I wasn't conscious? Similarly, when I dream and forget it the next morning, am I conscious? I guess most people would answer No, but it doesn't seem so obvious to me. What's the deal with consciousness? Are clever scientists researching it or do people think it's not understandable? Any chance you know how I can read some research or learn some more about it (without doing a psychology degree)?
Peter Lipton
April 1, 2007
(changed April 1, 2007)
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You could have had lots of conscious experiences yesterday that you forget today. What makes an experience conscious is its character at the time, not the traces it leaves in memory.
This raises the tantalising question of how you know that you haven’t had all kinds of wild experiences in the pas... Read more
In what sense is being put to death a punishment? How we can talk about things like "suffering" or "loss" if a person is dead (i.e., not conscious)?
Jyl Gentzler
June 13, 2007
(changed June 13, 2007)
Permalink
Of course, murder is not a victimless crime! But how can that be, Alex asks, if the victim no longer exists in order to suffer the harm that has been done to him? If you must exist in order to have interests, then how can a dead person’s interests suffer as a result of his death?
To see the harm t... Read more
Do affirmative action programs make sense in a free market society? Affirmative action programs seek to create equality of opportunity. Free markets seek to reward the best ideas/practices (and hence create inequality). Are the two ever reconcilable then (where one creates equality, the other undoes it)?
Thomas Pogge
March 31, 2007
(changed March 31, 2007)
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The conflict you see would really exist if the only way to reward the best ideas/practices were through superior opportunities (either for the person or for her offspring). This might happen in a society in which opportunities are for sale. In such a society, the more affluent people can buy a s... Read more
Why is it that solipsism can't be 100% refuted? It seems that the theory is very flawed and is called incoherent. And if this is the case then why is it said to be irrefutable? Is the only reason that it can't be refuted is because we can't directly experience what another peron is experiencing, so in other words we can only experience life through ourselves. Is this correct?
Peter S. Fosl
March 31, 2007
(changed March 31, 2007)
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Hume once described skepticism as a "malady that can't be cur'd" (a colleague of mine says it's like herpes in that way), and perhaps it's the same with solipsism. The suspicion that it can't be fully refuted depends upon the concern that any reasons brought against it might be gounded simply... Read more
Is it possible to have an empirical theory of ethics?
Peter Lipton
March 30, 2007
(changed March 30, 2007)
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Moral questions typically have an empirical component. For example, the question whether we have an obligation to paint all the roofs in the world white depends in part of the question whether doing this would reduce global warming, and that is an empirical question. And as Miranda Fricker poi... Read more