Recent Responses
On knowledge: is there any circumstance in which I am without doubt free from the sceptical possibility that all things are in my imagination only?
Nicholas D. Smith
November 3, 2005
(changed November 3, 2005)
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There is yet another way to doubt what Descartes supposed we could know with certainty. It seems that one might also wonder if we might be fallible even in the ways in which we categorize our own experiences. Descartes imagines a very powerful malin genie (an evil demon) who would del... Read more
Is this a probable way to think about death?: the same "nothingness" we 'experience' before we are born and have memory is what we will 'experience' when we die. (It just makes sense to me - what about to whomever reads this?)
Alexander George
November 2, 2005
(changed November 2, 2005)
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I agree with you that the state before you're born is like the state after you've died in that in neither will you exist. But I don't agree that these are states that we somehow experience. I note that you yourself place "experience" in scare quotes, indicating that perhaps it's not to... Read more
Would you please explain two quite philosophical terms, "semantic" and "syntactic", to me in plain and ordinary language? It seems impossible for a person without much philosophical knowledge like me to understand these two terms...
Gabriel Segal
November 1, 2005
(changed November 1, 2005)
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Syntax has to do with grammarand semantics has to do with meaning. The syntax of a language can bethought of as a set of rules that determine which things are expressions of thelanguage and which things are not, and that determine the identity of eachexpression in the language. So, for exa... Read more
One of my teachers says that there is no such thing as "absolute truth". Could you tell me if she is correct in this statement?
Peter Lipton
November 1, 2005
(changed November 1, 2005)
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Philosophers disagree about this, but I think there is such a thing as absolute truth.
We need to distinguish the question of truth from the question of knowledge. It may well be there there is no such thing as 'absolutely certain knowledge', something we believe to be true and that we co... Read more
Can a person imagine doing something while doing the thing imagined? For example, can I imagine touching a key on my keyboard while touching it?
Amy Kind
November 5, 2005
(changed November 5, 2005)
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I think it is easy to imagine things that you are presently doing that you don't realize that you are presently doing, as in Peter's Luxembourg example, above. More interesting is whether you can imagine things that you do realize that you are presently doing. Peter's example of the naked supe... Read more
Hello experts, I have a question that burns my mind. Rorty is usually considered as one of the most significant philosophers of today. However, I simply cannot understand him. Firstly, he speaks against epistemology, yet he argues for "pragmatism" (which I presume is a theory of knowledge). Secondly, he argues against metaphysics, yet he argues for "eliminative materialism" (which I presume is a theory of metaphysics). What is happening here? Seems illogical to me.
Peter Lipton
November 1, 2005
(changed November 1, 2005)
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Here is a cartoon version of Rorty's radical philosophy. The job of language and thought is not to represent an independent reality, but to give us tools that help us to thrive. Some thoughts and ways of talking are better than others, because more conducive to thriving than others, and Ro... Read more
In the beginning of <i>The Republic</i>, Socrates demonstrates to Thrasymachus, I think, that his theory of justice, i.e., "do good to one's friends and evil to one's enemies", is false because it may be that one has evil friends and good enemies, or be mistaken about in fact who is our friend and who is our enemy. I wonder, though, about this: We are faced with three potential questions. One possible question is "who are our true friends and our true enemies?". Another possible question is "are our true friends good and our true enemies evil?". A third possible question is "what is justice, considered apart from irrelevancies like our friends?". It seems to me that we are much more likely to be right in our judgments about the first two questions than we are in our third. We might be wrong in all three, of course, but if asked to either 1) accurately identify one's friends and evaluate their worthiness or 2) create a theory of justice, I would suggest that the vast majority of people (perhaps why we are not 'golds') would be more accurate more often handling #1 than #2. What am I missing?
Nicholas D. Smith
November 4, 2005
(changed November 4, 2005)
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I think the passage you have in mind in one in which Socrates refutes Polemarchus, not Thrasymachus. But at any rate, I guess I don't share your confidence in our ability to judge the first and second questions much more accurately than we can the third. Of course, if we mean by "frie... Read more
What is meant by the phrase "owing it to yourself"? How can you "owe" anything to yourself? What "loan" are you repaying when repaying a debt to yourself? Do we, as a matter of fact, ever "owe" anything to ourselves?
Peter Lipton
November 1, 2005
(changed November 1, 2005)
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I agree that this is a funny expression. It's not as if I can borrow money from myself and then get in debt to myself. Maybe we just use this expression to say something like: 'This is something you can do, it is perhaps not something you would do as a matter of course, but doing it would... Read more
Why do many philosophers posit that there are no members in the set of necessary beings? There seem only two explanations if they are correct: 1) Necessary beings are logically possible, but none exist in this world or 2) Necessary beings are logically impossible. Explanation 1 seems untenable since if a necessary being exists in one world (is logically possible), then it must exist in all worlds (and thus this one) by virtue of its necessity. But explanation 2 (which seems likely the more preferred one) seems to do no better, since the set of necessary beings is made a subset of the set of impossible beings. While perhaps this is merely a trivial case, it still seems unsettling, if not contradictory. Is the existence of at least one necessary being necessary? Or is there some other explanation for how none could exist?
Richard Heck
November 1, 2005
(changed November 1, 2005)
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There's another distinction that needs to be made here and that is relevant to the objection to explanation (1): We need to distinguishdifferent sorts of necessity. Nowadays, most philosophers and logicianswould agree that there is nothing whose existence is logically necessary, even the obj... Read more
The fact that we have eyes is proof that a consciousness was present, prior to our creation, which was aware of the existence of light. And while this truth does not confirm the existence of a God, doesn't it verify an intelligence older than our own?
Richard Heck
November 1, 2005
(changed November 1, 2005)
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There are many simple creatures that are sensitive to light: Theywill move toward it or away from it. I believe there are some suchcreatures that are single-celled. In any event, such creatures are sosimple that it's hard to think of them as being "conscious" at all, andbiologists can tell a... Read more