Recent Responses
I'm grateful for Allen Stairs' response to question 5821, but he, like Richard Heck and Stephen Maitzen when answering question 5792, ASSUMES that words like "all" have the same meaning in everyday English as they have when used by logicians. That's what seems very strange to me. At least, everyday "all" is ambiguous. Professors Stairs, Heck and Maitzen believe that "all the strawberries he has" always means "all the strawberries he may have", and never "all the strawberries he does have". But look at the latter example ("does have"): you're still using the word "all", but here it is clearly said that he has some strawberries. Why can't that happen (in the right context) with "all the strawberries he has"? By the way, in several Romance languages, there is a difference between (e.g., in Portuguese) "todos os morangos que tem" (indicative) and "todos os morangos que tenha" (subjunctive). Both can be translated as "all the strawberries s/he has", but the first sentence indicates that he (or she) does have some strawberries, and the second sentence says nothing about that. If you need to make the difference clear in English, you'll say "all the strawberries he does have" vs. "all the strawberries he may have". You have to have a special reason to use the subjunctive form (the one that does not imply that he has some strawberries: "all the strawberries he may have") when you're talking about some¬thing you know (whether he has strawberries or not), because in that case you're explicitly refusing to give some relevant information. In English, too, I suppose, when the speaker knows what he's talking about, there must be a special reason for someone hearing him to interpret "all the strawberries he has" as "all the strawberries he may have". Without such reason, it means "all the strawberries he does have". At least I think you should agree that "all" is, in English, ambiguous.
I'm not convinced that your
Stephen Maitzen
May 7, 2015
(changed May 7, 2015)
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I'm not convinced that your expression "all the strawberries he does have" is a recognized way of disambiguating the expression that you say is ambiguous: "all the strawberries he has." When would we use the expression "all the strawberries he does have"? As far as I... Read more
An elementary precept of logic says that where there are two propositions, P and Q, there are four possible "truth values," P~Q, Q~P, P&Q, ~P~Q, where ~ means "not." Do people ever apply this to pairs of philosophy propositions? For example, has anyone applied it to positive and negative liberty, or to equality of opportunity and equality of condition, or to just process and just outcome? On these topics I can find treatments of the first two truth values but none of the second two. If this precept of logic is not applied, has anyone set out the reasons?
I'm not entirely sure I
Allen Stairs
April 7, 2015
(changed May 22, 2015)
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I'm not entirely sure I follow, but perhaps this will be of some use.
Whether two propositions really have four possible combinations of truth values depends on the propositions. Non-philosophical examples make the point easier to follow.
Suppose P is "Paula is Canadian... Read more
Some people say that "safety" is a very important thing and that the main function of the state is to promote (e.g., liberty and) safety. I think this makes no sense because one can only be safe from something, and one is never completely safe, only some of our goods are safe. So the important thing is not "safety", but whatever else is important. And it is not "safety" that the state should promote, but the keeping of our most important goods.
Charles Taliaferro
April 4, 2015
(changed April 4, 2015)
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Great observations. "Safety" itself, in the abstract, does seem an odd goal or ideal for a state or person. You suggest the focus should be on "our most important goods" and suggest that the safety of those good (which might include personal integrity, opportunities to flourish in ways tha... Read more
Does the idea of "conflict of interest" figure into any contemporary discussion of ethics in philosophy? For example, few would argue that a professor having a sexual relationship with a student in his class is immoral in itself, but why would that necessarily be a conflict of interest? Banning such relationships is what is immoral because it reduces people's humanity by presupposing that humans are totally unable to separate their private lives from their professional ones. Are we to ban family businesses too? Even if empirical studies DO show that a majority of these kinds of relationships result in preferential grading, universities can always discipline such professors--disciplining the student would certainly be excessive. Banning relationships are the worst kinds of bans as without relationships we are dehumanized; it seems to me that if a person personally wishes to jeopardize his career for the sake of a relationship, then we should acknowledge and accept that.
Charles Taliaferro
March 31, 2015
(changed March 31, 2015)
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Philosophers have given significant attention to identifying conflicts of interest in the course of developing theories of justice, accounts of fairness, business ethics, philosophy of law, and even museum ethics. Your focus seems to be on sex and the academy, so I will go right to that t... Read more
I came across a webpage which makes this claim."Skeptics of homeopathy insist that homeopathic medicines do not work, but have difficulty explaining how so many people use and rely upon this system of medicine to treat themselves for so many acute and chronic diseases." Is there a name for the kind of fallacy this person is making or particular way to describe it? I feel like that even if I couldn't explain why so many people "rely" on Homeopathy that doesn't mean that it is a valid form of medicine.
Eddy Nahmias
March 26, 2015
(changed March 26, 2015)
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You are probably thinking of the informal fallacy, Argument ad Populum or Appeal to the Masses, in which someone suggests a conclusion is true because many people believe it to be true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
While large-scale belief might provide inductive evidence... Read more
Can historical value judgements be objective? Because questions presuppose other questions having been answered, it seems crucial to figure out what prior questions it assumes, and philosophy of history often boils down to the psychological motives of people and individuals which must involve interpretations and not just a listing of facts.
Charles Taliaferro
March 21, 2015
(changed March 21, 2015)
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To begin with some of your observations and then move to your question: I believe you are quite right that history involves more than the listing of facts that might be more true of a chronicle than a history and the practice of history involves interpretation. While for some historians a... Read more
I'm still puzzled by the answers to question 5792, on whether it is true that Mary won all the games of chess she played, when Mary never played any game of chess. Both respondents said that it is true. But is it meaningful to say "I won all the games I played, and I never played any game."? It seems to me that someone saying this would be contradicting himself.
Allen Stairs
March 19, 2015
(changed March 19, 2015)
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I think you're right to at least this extent. If I say to someone "I won all the games of chess I played," the normal rules of conversation (in particular, the "pragmatics" of speech) make it reasonable for the other person to infer that I have actually played at least one game. Whether my state... Read more
Why is so little phenomenology taught and researched in North American philosophy departments? Because it studies the essence of consciousness is it too continental for your analytic minds? Why must philosophy be categorized so strictly?
Jonathan Westphal
March 19, 2015
(changed March 19, 2015)
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I think the answer may be that phenomenology has produced so disappointingly little. In a non-philosophical sense phenomenology is defined as the preliminary classification of phenomena in an enquiry. So one might for example regard it as a piece of phenomenology in this non-philosophical s... Read more
why is the free will debate of interest to philosophers? i need to know why philosophers explore this question in the first place.
Eddy Nahmias
March 19, 2015
(changed March 19, 2015)
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I think there are three primary reasons philosophers are interested in questions about free will, at least they are the ones that motivate me to spend most of my time on them.
1. Free will is often used (by philosophers and non-philosophers) to pick out the sort of control over decisions and act... Read more
A question about art for you. If consensus could be reached on a theoretical definition of art, stating the necessary and sufficient conditions for anything to be called a work of art, would that imply a closing off of art, similar to art in say a former socialist country or a tight religious community that prescribes how art has to be? And if not, what use would the definition be? Would it have any effect on the production of art at all? Or was is the point of a theoretical definition of art? Thanks in advance.
Charles Taliaferro
March 15, 2015
(changed March 15, 2015)
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Great questions. Today, standard reference works e.g. the Blackwell Companion to Aesthetics will offer a dozen variations of definitions of art that are of historical and contemporary interest. In my view, none of them are highly restrictive. The idea that works of art are mimetic or im... Read more