Recent Responses
Why is murder considered a crime when the person who was murdered was going to die whether or not that person killed him or her?
Jyl Gentzler
December 3, 2005
(changed December 3, 2005)
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While it is true that, given the current state of technology, each of us will eventually die, it is not true that, no matter what, each of us will have a life of a particular length.
A longer life is often more valuable than a shorter life because it often contains more good things than a... Read more
What's the difference between philosophy of language and semiotics?
Mitch Green
December 1, 2005
(changed December 1, 2005)
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Here is how I understand the difference between semiotics and philosophy of language. The former is a *doctrine* about the nature of meaning, roughly to the effect that the most important types of communication depend upon one or another form of code. This doctrine is applied (controversial... Read more
The best, general definition of love I've come up with is: one's willingness to do what one truly considers best for another without regard for personal desires. There are 2 things I should point out: 1) by "willingness to do" I mean that which will be done unless impossible or prevented by something external -- if I am willing to do X and X is possible then I will do X unless something or someone prevents me from doing it. 2) I say "truly considers best" to draw a distinction between the lazy "this is what I was told is best" or "I don't really know but I think this is best" and the more difficult "best" that is determined by effort, honesty, study, research, etc. Likewise, I disallow a "best" determined according to what the lover desires, or wants. Is this a good (accurate, useful) definition?
Alan Soble
December 1, 2005
(changed December 1, 2005)
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I think this is a plausible statement (and it is stated very well, obviously--are you a philosopher already?) of at least a necessary condition of love. But it is beset with troubles. One is that it putting it into practice may be paternalistic and in some ways will involve denying the autonom... Read more
I'm applying to very competitive doctoral programs in philosophy. Everything in my application package is stellar except for my GRE scores. How much do admissions committees at competitive programs weigh GRE scores? Does Math matter more than Verbal? Is there a general baseline score I should try to aim at getting over?
Richard Heck
December 1, 2005
(changed December 1, 2005)
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As Lynne said, it varies. Most of us have seen enough applications, and known enough students, to know better than to take GREs with anything other than a pound or so of salt. In my own reading of applications, a low verbal score is a red flag, but I'll disregard it if further reading of the... Read more
A friend of mine has informed me that she has secretly stopped using birth control in hopes of becoming pregnant and forcing her boyfriend to quit the theological seminary program he's in to be with her. (He's training to be a Catholic priest; she's in love with him; obviously if he becomes a priest he cannot be with her.) My question is: Do I have any moral or ethical obligations to do anything? I don't really know the boyfriend that well. I think it's an interesting question because none of these people are purely good or purely evil. While my friend may be acting very selfishly, so is the boyfriend, since he's essentially just stringing her along until he reaches priesthood. What to do?
Richard Heck
December 1, 2005
(changed December 1, 2005)
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What a mess! Obviously, your friend and her boyfriend have some serious issues. What on earth is she doing dating someone in Catholic seminary? and what on earth is he doing still dating her? And man, what is he doing having sex with her? Is he unsure what he intends to do? Has he led her to... Read more
Many describe the pleasure that crack-cocaine brings as completely outside the normal range of human experience. It is said to offer the most wonderful state of consciousness, and the most intense sense of being alive the user will ever enjoy. Isn't part of the meaning of life, to feel alive? If so, then shouldn't we all try crack cocaine, because otherwise we may not ever experience that intense sense of being alive? From here also stems the arguments against using crack cocaine: the extreme low and obsessive craving that follows the most "intense sense" of being alive. But is it wrong to experience extreme bliss just because it will set a higher bar for pleasure and we will be harder to please later on?
Richard Heck
December 1, 2005
(changed December 1, 2005)
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Robert Nozick once raised the following question. Suppose there were an "experience machine" capable of producing nothing but wonderful experiences. Enter it today and your memory of doing so will be erased, but for the rest of your life you will enjoy nothing but happiness, indeed, perfect... Read more
Is there a particular theory against the philosophical possibility of eternal life? I ask this because it seems to me that if eternal life were possible, men may lose the incentive to philosophize, hence the demise of philosophy.
Nicholas D. Smith
December 29, 2005
(changed December 29, 2005)
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I agree with Richard Heck's response, but would like to respond to the first part of this question. I think there are some fairly persuasive reasons for thinking there is no such thing as eternal life--though I doubt that an argument could be given to show its impossibility. So:
(1)... Read more
Are you as Philosophers allowed to say that the rock on my desk is red? For we really don't know. We perceive it as red but what if our eyes are not showing us what is really there? For all we know, everything could be black and white.
Peter Lipton
December 3, 2005
(changed December 3, 2005)
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The popular dispositional theory of colour that Richard mentions has a curious consequence. If being red is just being such as to tend to produce a certain kind of sensation in us, then it isn't even possible that what tends to look red to us isn't really red but is really say some shade of... Read more
I recently read <i>Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i>, and it claimed that the universe is so big that any thing you can imagine is true somewhere. If that is true, does it mean that as I or someone else imagines a place that it blinks into existence right then or was it there all along? In a way are we all collectivly creating the world we inhabit now? I apologize for my spelling and grammar. I've never studied philosophy so sorry if that was a bad question.
Richard Heck
December 1, 2005
(changed December 1, 2005)
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I think the idea in the book was that anything that is possible is actually true somewhere: It is not that anything one does imagine becomes true, but that anything one can imagine is true, somewhere or other, the assumption being made that, if one can imagine it, it must be possible. (Wheth... Read more
Why do people participate in meaningless activities such as politics, education, mathematics, philosophy and such when either we are all going to die so it won't matter what we have done, or maybe our existence and/or this world is all an illusion so it doesn't matter what happens because it's not real?
Cheryl Chen
July 12, 2007
(changed July 12, 2007)
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I'm not sure I understand what it is for something to "matter", if it isn't shorthand for mattering to someone or other. As Richard Heck points out, something a person does might matter to other people after her death. And certain things I do matter very much to me right now–or will matter to me... Read more