Recent Responses
I was shown a paper that my brother had gotten off of a website and it was about Taoism. Now, I am not to educated in the subject at all, but took a look at one of the questions posed and gave my opinion as to what I thought the answer was: If nothing has potential to be something is it really nothing? I started to think of it like this: 0 = nothing (in mathematical terms) 0 has potential of being any number but let's keep it simple and say that 0 has the potential of being 1. 0 is still 0 and always will be 0 until the moment 1 is added to it. If we rephrase the question using this logic it seems to answer itself: If 0 has potential to be 1 is it really 0? Of course it is still zero. Then I started to think of the context they use it in. The "nothing" they question seems to be thought of as a tangible item. Just because we as humans define a space as nothing, does it mean it is in fact a thing- no. An area in space is obviously nothing, so why do we think it could be something just because we name it "nothing"? My ultimate question would be... Why was this question was posed in the first place? Am I right? -Steve, 17
Alexander George
January 24, 2006
(changed January 24, 2006)
Permalink
I think your suspicions that there's a confusion in the use of the word "nothing" is on the right track. You can get yourself into a bind -- and people have for millenia -- if you assume that every word, in order to be meaningful, must refer to something. Because then in order for the... Read more
Could you please tell me what is meant by the term 'sense data'? I am not clear whether it refers to what we immediately perceive around us, or to images inside our heads. Or is there a third meaning? And why is it controversial?
Rachana Kamtekar
January 24, 2006
(changed January 24, 2006)
Permalink
‘Sense data’ refers to the images. The idea is that objects in the world impinge on our senses and this causes us to perceive images. We are have immediate and full knowledge of these images (although not of the objects that cause them). Philosophers who believe in sense data disagree... Read more
If I read something I wrote long ago, am I engaged in a different sort of activity than reading something someone else wrote? What if I don't remember writing it?
Richard Heck
January 24, 2006
(changed January 24, 2006)
Permalink
Perhaps the best way to approach this question would be to ask: Inwhat ways is your epistemic situation different when you are readingsomething you wrote yesterday? We writers are in thissituation all the time. One of its dangers is that one can fail to recognizepotential ambiguities. Suppos... Read more
The word 'color' has three meanings, as far as I can tell: 1, certain properties of atoms and molecules that make them emit electromagnetic radiation in the so-called visible range; 2, mixtures of frequencies of this electromagnetic radiation that go to the eye of the observer and produce an image on his/hers retina; and 3, sensations of color that this observer experiences. So if I am looking at a green leaf, which of these three meanings of 'green' am I experiencing?
Douglas Burnham
January 24, 2006
(changed January 24, 2006)
Permalink
John Locke makes a similar distinction between primary qualities -- roughly your (1) and (2) -- and secondary qualities -- your (3). On his analysis, this is between qualities that actually inhere in things, and qualities that are only in our ideas of things because they are a result of t... Read more
Some years ago I heard one of the Beatles in the course of a conversation about his career opine that 'after all I might easily have been someone else, mightn't I'. I remember not being sure about this proposition. One half knows what is being got at but on the other hand, it seems barely intelligible. Could I easily have been someone else? Ian g
Jyl Gentzler
January 27, 2006
(changed January 27, 2006)
Permalink
Several years ago, in a fit of anger at her father, my daughter turned her anger on me and demanded that I explain to her why I had ever gotten involved with him. I pointed out to her that she had no right to be angry at me on these grounds, since she wouldn’t have existed had it not been f... Read more
What is a relational property? In an earlier question about a car driving down a road and appearing to get smaller with distance, Prof. Moore wrote that this appearance is a relational property of the car, as opposed to the real size of the car, which is an intrinsic property of the car --- and what I see is this relational property. [See, http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/question/548.] But it is clear to me that what I see is a small car: how can a small car be a relational property, whatever that is?
Richard Heck
January 23, 2006
(changed January 23, 2006)
Permalink
A relational property is a property a thing has only in virtue of how it is related to something else. A common example is fatherhood. Whether I'm a father depends upon my relation to something else, namely, my child (if I have one). So the claim is that, in so far as the car appears to be s... Read more
Sometimes, in the midst of a discussion with some of my philosophy-type friends, one friend will hand-wave dismissively at something I say as "merely an empirical matter". What is so mere about philosophical discussions surrounding empirical matters?
Richard Heck
January 23, 2006
(changed January 23, 2006)
Permalink
Nothing, in my view. But there are approaches to philosophy that regard any question on which empirical facts might bear as somehow not really philosophical. This conception of philosophy is, it should be said, very much a recent invention. Certainly Aristotle did not make this kind of divis... Read more
In the town where I live, many people dress themselves quite eclectically with what seems to be the intention of 'being seen'. Given that this is possible (i.e., wearing clothes simply for the purpose of attracting attention and displaying said clothes in a public area), can we consider these people to be 'art'? If not, then could we consider them as art if they exhibited themselves in a specifically defined gallery-space?
Thomas Pogge
January 22, 2006
(changed January 22, 2006)
Permalink
This revolutionary question was raised in a different way by Andy Warhol when he first painted Campbell soup cans (around 1962, I believe) and especially when he displayed Brillo boxes in gallery and museum settings (these were commercial wholesale boxes containing little steelwool soap pads... Read more
If there is a hypothetical situation where you have to kill someone to save another's life, what would be the ethical thing to do?
Thomas Pogge
January 21, 2006
(changed January 21, 2006)
Permalink
Much depends of how these two lives are causally connected: Why is killing the one necessary to saving the other?
One obvious connection is this: A is about to kill B and killing A is your only way of preventing this. In this sort of case, killing A is ordinarily justified (see answer to que... Read more
I may have too much access to philosophical materials to be considered eligible for this site, but I have not yet found a satisfactory answer to the following question: Why should an undemocratic country's sovereignty be accorded any moral significance? In other words, if a country is ruled without the consent of its governed, why should the fact that it is a separate country (as opposed to other political form) affect our moral calculus?
Thomas Pogge
January 21, 2006
(changed January 21, 2006)
Permalink
With respect to some aspects of sovereignty, there may be a good reason. The fact that a country is ruled undemocratically is not sufficient justification for conquering and annexing it.
With respect to other aspects, there is no good reason. We recognize dictators as entitled to sell us the... Read more