Philosophy

Can you give me a clear example of a problem that philosphers are generally acknowledged to have solved? Thanks.

Comments

I'm not sure whether this is "generally acknowledged" (or whether it counts as "solving a problem") but I think the following might be an example: In explaining human action, many people are quite tempted by what has come to be called 'psychological egoism': the view that each person has but one ultimate aim in acting, namely her own welfare (or self-interest). On this view, there is no such thing as genuinely altruistic action--action aiming ultimately at another's welfare--but only ever action that, at best, appears altruistic but is really ultimately self-interested. But in his Fifteen Sermons (1st ed., 1726), Joseph Butler (a philosopher and Anglican bishop) showed fairly decisively that this sort of view cannot be right.

For more, see Part 1 of the the Stanford Encyclopedia article "Egoism": http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/

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