Recent Responses
Is it morally wrong to tell children that Santa exists? Regardless of how much joy and excitement kids get from believing the Santa myth, it is an outright lie, so how can it be regarded as morally right? Should we always take the moral high ground and tell the truth where children are concerned, or should we make exceptions? When they find out the truth, aren't we teaching children that no one, not even their parents, can be trusted?
Louise Antony
November 22, 2005
(changed November 22, 2005)
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I have a very strong opinion about this matter, one that results in my condemning some of my very best friends: I think that there are no good arguments for teaching a child to believe in Santa Claus, or for not telling the child the truth the first time he or she asks. So I quite adaman... Read more
What is feminist knowledge?
Louise Antony
November 22, 2005
(changed November 22, 2005)
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I'm not completely sure what you are asking. Presumably you do not want to know what it is that feminists know that others don't, though I could write you a book on that. I suspect what you're curious about is feminist theories of knowledge, or feminist epistemology. This is a book-le... Read more
What books are most important for a neophyte philosopher to read?
Peter S. Fosl
December 1, 2005
(changed December 1, 2005)
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I recommend Plato's Apology, Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy, Camus's Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, Bryan Magee's The Story of Philosophy, David Cooper's anthologies, and perhaps The Philosopher's Toolkit.
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Do people invent equations, or do they discover them? Examples of the sorts of things I am thinking of are Newton's laws of motion, or Mandelbrot's sets.
Peter Lipton
November 22, 2005
(changed November 22, 2005)
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It helps to begin by distinguishing laws of nature from our hypotheses about them. Then the first question is whether there really are laws of nature out there. I'm one of those philosophers who believes there are, though just what it takes to be a law is hard to say. For example, is a law... Read more
If I am made up of countless organisms, who is experiencing the independent thoughts?
Lynne Rudder Baker
November 22, 2005
(changed November 22, 2005)
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*You* are. You, the person, are the subject of your thoughts; you are the one whose thoughts they are. The countless organisms you mention make up one big organism--the human organism that constitutes you. It seems to me a mistake to think that your brain is the subject of though... Read more
Is an unflinching commitment to always be a pacifist morally desirable?
Oliver Leaman
November 22, 2005
(changed November 22, 2005)
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Is an unflinching commitment to always be anything morally desirable? This suggests that nothing at all could move one to take a different view, and that sort of absolutism might well be felt undesirable. We normally think that it is preferable to take each situation as it comes and then... Read more
If we are part of a 4-D spacetime, why do we experience past and present?
Marc Lange
November 22, 2005
(changed November 22, 2005)
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What we experience depends on what information about the world we receive and when we receive it. We receive information about the world through our senses, as when a ray of light arrives in one of our eyes from an event that occurred sometime in the past. (That light ray may have been launc... Read more
After a discussion about time travel, I asked my high school science teacher, “How can we be sure time even exists? How do we know it’s a tangible thing that can be traveled through?” His simple reply was to say that time can be measured. Therefore, it exists. That answer was never enough. As I’ve grown older, I still believe that time doesn’t exist, because all it is, is a term used to describe the interaction between matter. As matter interacts, the physical world changes, thereby creating one’s perception of ‘time’. The more gravity one has, the slower matter interacts and the inverse. One can’t go back in time, because one can’t rewind all the infinite physical changes that have taken place. However, one can speed up the interactions. So, I pose you the same question. How can we be sure time exists?
Marc Lange
November 22, 2005
(changed November 22, 2005)
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Newton proposed that there is "absolute time", over and above the motions of clocks and pendulums and celestial bodies that (to some degree of accuracy) measure absolute time. Newton did so in the context of a scientific theory that aimed to account for some of our observations of the motion... Read more
Assuming that one's death means the end of one's consciousness. What purpose does a belief in God serve that a non-belief in God cannot?
Richard Heck
November 24, 2005
(changed November 24, 2005)
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I guess I find the question strange, because I don't think of beliefs as "serving purposes". One might simply say that, if God exists, then the belief that God exists is true, and that's quite good enough.
Then again, there is an interesting question what "belief in" something is. Zoltan... Read more
How much, if any, of our money should we donate to try and alleviate the profound levels of human suffering which exist in many parts of the world? I assume we accept that we have a strong moral obligation to alleviate human suffering if it is within our power and that this obligation becomes all the sharper if we benefit materially from the forces which keep people in poverty. For instance some would argue this is the case in Africa. Say I could live in relative if basic comfort on 50% of my salary. Am I morally obliged to donate the other 50% to initiatives which aim to redress the life-threatening poverty in which other people live? I accept that long-term solutions to the problem may be provided by government action on trade etc. over which I as an individual have little or no control. But I would like to know whether, in the absence of these long-terms solutions, the panel feels that I (together what I assume is the vast majority of westerners) am acting immorally by donating only a small proportion of my relative wealth.
Thomas Pogge
November 22, 2005
(changed November 22, 2005)
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Let's distinguish cases along the lines of your second sentence. Begin with the least disturbing case, where we have neither contributed to, not benefited from, severe poverty or its causes. Their severe poverty is due to a meteorite, say, and our wealth is well-earned through hard work an... Read more