Recent Responses
What is the definition of love? Can you define love without listing characteristics of love?
Alan Soble
October 30, 2005
(changed October 30, 2005)
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What a relief! Others have decided to add to this thread. The search for the fine gold thread of love -- the property "common to" and possessed by all types or forms of love -- has gone on for centuries. Another problem with Gert's succinct account is that it doesn't apply to our love for thin... Read more
Does infinity exist in reality?
Richard Heck
October 29, 2005
(changed October 29, 2005)
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My thesis supervisor, George Boolos, wrote his own dissertation on the analytic hierarchy, whose description I shall omit. Suffice it to say, for present purposes, that the sets it concerns are infinite, and there are infinitely many of them. At the end of his oral defense, one of his examin... Read more
I have read many philosophic essays pertaining to applied ethics in the abstract, and many political essays dealing with specific ethical questions. There always seems to be a gap between the level at which the former leaves the problem and the latter takes it up. Why is this? How can this gap be bridged? For example, I (like most rational people I think) am bothered about the ethical issues involved in the question of abortion. Yet I have never seen a systematic treatment of the question beginning with philosophical principles? Does such a treatment exist? If not, why not? If so, why does it not enter more into the public debate? Thanks.
Richard Heck
October 29, 2005
(changed October 29, 2005)
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There are many excellent philosophical discussions of abortion, andmany of these do tie the question to general moral issues. One classicarticle is Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion", Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971), pp. 47--66. Thomson's argument begins, contrary to what... Read more
Is it possible for a human to ever do a selfless act? When someone does do a seemingly 'selfless' act, it is normally because of religious duties or an excuse to brag about it at a later stage, or even to get that good feeling you get when you know you have done a good deed (which is essentially selfish, considering that you get a mental reward, instead of a material one).
Jyl Gentzler
October 29, 2005
(changed October 29, 2005)
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The fact that we usually feel pleasure after we are aware of having performed an act that we believe to be good does not imply that we performed the good act for the sake of the pleasure we expected to feel when we succeeded. True: we do many things simply for the sake of the pleasure that... Read more
Is it possible for a human to ever do a selfless act? When someone does do a seemingly 'selfless' act, it is normally because of religious duties or an excuse to brag about it at a later stage, or even to get that good feeling you get when you know you have done a good deed (which is essentially selfish, considering that you get a mental reward, instead of a material one).
Jyl Gentzler
October 29, 2005
(changed October 29, 2005)
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The fact that we usually feel pleasure after we are aware of having performed an act that we believe to be good does not imply that we performed the good act for the sake of the pleasure we expected to feel when we succeeded. True: we do many things simply for the sake of the pleasure that... Read more
I'm interested in such statements as "Life is strange", "The world is an amazing place", etc. How meaningful are they when we don't have other examples of "life" or "world" to compare them with? If they are not meaningful (and I don't know whether you will conclude that they are) why do people have a propensity for making such statements?
Peter Lipton
October 29, 2005
(changed October 29, 2005)
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Even if in order to find something strange or amazing you need something familiar or mundane to compare it with, we could make sense of your statements in terms of the variety within a single life or a single world. It would be something like the sentiment that no matter how much you have e... Read more
Is it better overall to have a country in which most people are firmly convinced that engaging in warfare is never morally permissible, or to have a country in which people believe that engaging in warfare can sometimes be moral? The second alternative has considerable initial plausibility to my mind and certainly seems to be the more popular one by a wide margin, but I've found that the people whom I otherwise respect most for their intellectual abilities tend to believe the former. So I wonder.
Ernie Alleva
October 29, 2005
(changed October 29, 2005)
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There surely are intelligent and morally thoughtful individuals who are pacifists and believe that going to war is always morally unjustified, However, I think that this view is ultimately morally unacceptable. I believe that there can be circumstances where going to war would be morally jus... Read more
What is the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? For example, in South Africa "terrorists" in the full definition of the word were reconsidered as freedom fighters after the regime change. Is it in this case (and in others) characteristic of the academic philosopher profession to simply repeat the view of the status quo?
Alexander George
October 29, 2005
(changed October 29, 2005)
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If a terrorist is someone who seeks to achieve his goals either by terrorizing innocents or through the threat of such terror and a freedom fighter is someone who is engaged in a struggle to liberate a population from a tyrannical ruler, then some terrorists have been freedom fighters an... 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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How do thoughts exist in our brains? How are they stored? Is this a chemical or electrical process?
Louise Antony
October 29, 2005
(changed October 29, 2005)
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To properly answer your question, I'd need the help of a cognitive psychologist and a neuroscientist, more money than God has, and at least a hundred years. Make that two hundred years.
To the extent that yours is a philosophical question, rather than a question for science, it's a questio... Read more