Recent Responses
What is the best way to approach Spinoza's ethics?
Sean Greenberg
October 21, 2005
(changed October 21, 2005)
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Spinoza's Ethics is an extraordinarily difficult work. I find that it is one of the two most difficult texts written by an early modern philosopher: the other is Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. One reason for the difficulty of Spinoza's text is its style: Spinoza's geometrical method is... Read more
Why are philosophers these days so concerned with fleshing out possible rules for concepts (e.g., Crispin Wright's analysis of intentions)? Do they believe that people actually follow these rules? But how can that be if most (if not all) people can't even say what these rules are precisely? And wouldn't a more plausible answer be found in our being conditioned to behave in certain (imprecise) manners with certain words or phrases, much like, e.g., learning to use our legs to walk? If so, shouldn't this be more a matter of empirical investigation (on the level of science) than this sort of conceptual analysis?
Richard Heck
October 23, 2005
(changed October 23, 2005)
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I'm with Mitch and Peter, so far as what they've said goes. But neither of them answered your first question: Why do philosophers go in for this kind of thing in the first place? The answer is that philosophers who do go in for this kind of thing think that, if we could articulate the rules... Read more
Do philosophers and other popular thinkers now mistake automaticity for the unconscious? Do we now say that water upon a river flowing down the path of least resistance is behaving unconsciously? So, too, is it now correct to describe neural pathways of least resistance as exhibiting an “unconscious”?
Peter Lipton
October 21, 2005
(changed October 21, 2005)
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One way one might try to distinguish automaticity from the unconscious would be to say that of these two types of state, only unconsious states are representations, are about anything. For example, my unconscious desire to be reunited with my childhood sled (cf. Rosebud in the great movie... Read more
Why do most philosophers tend to answer complicated questions with complicated answers? Why can't there be something simple? Is it that we can't accept simple answers to difficult questions?
Joseph G. Moore
October 20, 2005
(changed October 20, 2005)
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I suspect this will be exactly the type of complicated answer you have in mind, but... philosophers often do succeed in giving concise answers to important philosophical questions. Here are two almost randomly-chosen one liners: Difficult question #1: What makes an action morally right... Read more
If you don't have any reasons whatsoever to believe that a certain thing exists, should you deny that it exists, or simply withhold judgment on the question?
Nicholas D. Smith
October 21, 2005
(changed October 21, 2005)
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I agree with Peter, but would mention a famous debate on just this subject--the debate between William James (in his famous essay, "The Will to Believe"), who contends that there can be non-evidential reasons for certain kinds of belief of the sort you seem to be talking about, and W. K... Read more
How do you teach somebody how to learn something?
Peter Lipton
October 20, 2005
(changed October 20, 2005)
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Someone who didn't know how to learn anything could not be taught anything. So for people to be teachable, they must already have some ability to learn, an ability that was not taught to them. But that doesn't mean that people can't be taught to learn various things, just that unless peopl... Read more
Does the square root of 2 exist?
Daniel J. Velleman
October 19, 2005
(changed October 19, 2005)
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If I interpret your question as a straightforward mathematical question--Is there a number whose square is 2?--then the answer is of course yes. The numerical value of the number is approximately 1.41421.But perhaps that isn't what you meant. Perhaps your question is about the sense... Read more
How do philosophers address the nature-nurture controversy?
Louise Antony
October 29, 2005
(changed October 29, 2005)
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Let me add some comments to Mitch Green's and Gabriel Segal's. (And a quick plug: you might want to check out my entry on "Nativism" in the new edition of the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, due out soon.)
Two quick points, and then a longer one.
First: Showing that a trait has a "... Read more
Do any of the panelists think that there are any moral constants over time? That is to say, anything that all societies have rejected as immoral? It seems to me that just about everything that we regard as right or wrong is based on the society that we happen to be in. For example - slavery. We think it's wrong now, but other societies in different times have had little problem with it. So is it really a case of 'There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so?' as Hamlet put it.
Jyl Gentzler
October 19, 2005
(changed October 19, 2005)
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If you look around the world or study human history, it is easy to beimpressed by the apparent diversity of opinion about what sort ofactions are morally permissible or impermissible. Moreover, it might seemthat certain moral disagreements– e.g., concerning the morality ofearly-term abortion... Read more
Why are philosophers these days so concerned with fleshing out possible rules for concepts (e.g., Crispin Wright's analysis of intentions)? Do they believe that people actually follow these rules? But how can that be if most (if not all) people can't even say what these rules are precisely? And wouldn't a more plausible answer be found in our being conditioned to behave in certain (imprecise) manners with certain words or phrases, much like, e.g., learning to use our legs to walk? If so, shouldn't this be more a matter of empirical investigation (on the level of science) than this sort of conceptual analysis?
Richard Heck
October 23, 2005
(changed October 23, 2005)
Permalink
I'm with Mitch and Peter, so far as what they've said goes. But neither of them answered your first question: Why do philosophers go in for this kind of thing in the first place? The answer is that philosophers who do go in for this kind of thing think that, if we could articulate the rules... Read more