I don't think that using profanity tends to be wrong. (Maybe if, "Damn it!!!" were the vocal trigger for some terrible weapon that could destroy the Earth...) It can’t be the sound of the profane expression that makes it wrong—else "c**k" would be a sin to say even if used to refer to a certain aviary kind. And it can’t be the meaning: to say "sex" is not in itself unethical. What about a combination of a given sound and a given meaning, an emergent (supervenient) property of this combination? It could be argued that to use a certain word as slang for something aggressive or sexual is wrong. But how? If I said "door" to mean the same as "damn" (as in, “Damn it!”), would this be transgression? Here we run into a problem of differentiating between the supposed permissibility of saying, say, “What the heck…” instead of, “What the hell…” or, “What the f**k…” Why is the first generally regarded as acceptable yet the next two are taken to be increasingly unethical (in some circumstances)? It doesn't make sense...

Thanks for your nice question(s). One issue here is whether there are in fact any words that it is morally improper to utter, at least in a given language. Another question is whether, if there are any such words, the impropriety of uttering them is justifiable in some way. I separate these two questions because the impropriety of something might have no basis, or at least no justification: some aspects of morals might just be "brute". You're right that two words might refer to the same thing and yet only one of them be considered improper. Many philosophers of language would try to explain that difference in the following terms. Two such words might refer to the same thing and yet one of them express an attitude that the other does not. Some racial epithets, for instance, might not only refer to a racial group, but also express contempt toward that group. Note also that some expressions of contempt might be considered demeaning to their target. If I explicitly tell you that you're inferior...

My husband critised me for holding on to my opinion despite persuasive opposing views from others in our discussion group; his point being that, as a general rule, the opinion held by the majority is more likely to be right than the opinion held by the minority. He continued to say that if he was in similar circumstances he would begin to doubt his own certainty and concede that the majority must be right. Although I see some merit in his point in some situations I would never concede on something on which I was certain, regardless of pressure, unless I was convinced by facts I hadn't originally considered, etc. Two questions: Am I just being stubborn and how does one determine when we are simply being stubborn as opposed to being justifiably strong-willed?

Thanks for your question. It contains two very different sub-questions: 1. Is the opinion held by the majority more likely to be right than that held by the minority? 2. Is one justified in holding onto an opinion in spite of persuasive counter-arguments to the contrary. I should note also that you suggest that you are *certain* of your opinion on the issue in question. That is a relevant factor also. Now, concerning 1: It is perhaps too high-handed simply to *dismiss* the opinion of the majority, though in some cases, that may well be justified. (Just imagine a naive or in some way very confused group of people.) On the other hand, there's no good inference from that fact that most people agree on something, to the conclusion that they must be right. To be safe, perhaps the best route is to reexamine your reasons for your contrary opinion, and so long as they still seem solid, then you're entitled to hold onto it in spite of what others think. Concerning 2: What if the...

My question concerns analyticity. I'm a Danish undergraduate student of classics, so I don't have any formal education in philosophy. Anyway, here goes: How do you determine whether or not a proposition is analytic? I believe that the traditional definition is something like this: for a proposition to be analytic the predicate has to be contained in the subject (in the sense that the truth of the proposition can be determined purely on the basis of the semantics of the concepts used and of an understanding of the logical form of the proposition). But this does not seem to be enough. Consider this example: "Wolves live in packs". This would normally qualify as a synthetic proposition, but why exactly? Imagine that a person sitting in her favourite armchair uses her semantic mastery of the concept of wolves and determines the truth of the proposition without lifting a finger. Would that make the proposition "analytic". There seems to be something wrong here. One could say that every proposition that is...

Thanks for your excellent question. You're right to be dissatisfied with the "containment" characterization of analyticity. The reason is that containment is a topological or set-theoretic idea, and it's hard to know how to cash it out for the case of language. After all, subjects and predicates don't take up space, and it takes some doing to explain them in terms of sets also. Your suggested definition in terms of 'sufficient to identify unequivocally the subject in question,' is a good idea, but I also think it won't work without a lot of modification: After all, 'containing interior angles' is true analytically of triangles (triangles have interior angles' is plausibly analytic), but that predicate doesn't identify unequivocally the concept of a triangle, since lots of other things have that feature as well. A perhaps better characterization of analyticity is 'true by definition'. It's true by definition that triangles have three interior angles, and that bachelors are unarried. ...

Many claims about what is possible or logical seem to rest on what is conceivable to the human mind. But what reason do we have to believe that there's any link between the way our minds work and the way things actually are?

Thank you for your question. For a long while in the history of philosophy it was thought that what was conceivable was a good indication of what was possible. Descartes is a good example of this way of thinking, though he was careful to require that not any old conceiving of a thing showed it to be possible. Rather he required that the conceiving had to be "clear and distinct", meaning roughly that it had to pass the most stringent standards we can muster to make sure the conceiving is coherent (i.e., not subtly self-contradictory). In the middle of the 20th century this methodology began to break down. For instance, in the Sixties Hilary Putnam distinguished between concepts and properties, making clear that our concepts of things like gold may not reveal its true properties. Similarly, Kripke's notion a decade later of "natural kinds" made room for the possibility that what is "metaphysically possible" may not correspond to that is conceivable. This issue is still a topic of intense...

I think apples are great. Why is it that they fit into my hand so easily? I don't even need to climb a tree to get one as they eventually fall to the ground (by the way I work in the building trade and I also think trees are great, timber is just sooo useful). Take a biro - I know some guy somewhere designed it and then made it and it works perfectly. I just can't help thinking that with an open mind I would be foolish not to think that a lot of nature's produce is far too perfectly designed to be a coincidence -- am I being naive?

Thank you for your question. I'm smitten by things like apples and trees also. However, implicit in your remark may be a thought about which I'm doubtful: It's the thought that if things like apples can't come into being by pure coincidence, there must be some divine cause to these things. I can't be sure whether this is what you have in mind, based on your question, but if it is what you're aiming at, I'd suggest the following: The theory of Evolution by Natural Selection does not try to explain biological phenomena in nature by appeal to nothing more than sheer coincidence. Rather, apparent design and complexity in nature are in general due to differential rates at which different organisms are able to pass along their genes, and that's not a chance process. (This point is eloquently spelled out in Dawkin's book, _Climbing Mount Improbable_.) Also, I should point out that there lots of biological entities that are not convenient for human beings at all: weeds, poison ivy, noxious fruit...

I seen a question that went, "Can there be an event that is entirely random?" I put a little bit of thought into this and concluded that the "Big Bang" theory, about the fact that the singularity became the universe (which is explained in the opening chapters of Bill Bryson's _A Short History Of Nearly Everything_) must be the only ever event that was random because no one can say why it happened and why it did not simply stay as a singularity forever. I still don't know if that is right because it wouldn't be classed as staying in that state "forever" as time did not exist. But it can be argued that it was not an event as it was the thing (if it can be referred to as a thing) that created time, on which events are obviously based. Also, if this is true wouldn't that be detrimental to the belief of free will? So this may be an answer, I'm not sure but I just wanted to know an expert's opinion on it as I am just a 17 year old student. Also I don't know if it was ok to post the title of a book on this so...

Thank you for your very good question. You have nothing to apologize for, and we're grateful to you for asking. I don't think I'll be able to respond to everything in what you ask, but here are a few thoughts: Concerning the big bang, you write, " no one can say why it happened and why it did not simply stay as a singularity forever. " I should point out that even if it is true that no one can explain why it occurred, that doesn't mean there is no answer to be found. Perhaps no one can answer this question *now*, but someone (maybe you!) will someday find an answer. If that's right, then the only "randomness" here is due to our own ignorance. Please let me mention also that contemporary physics holds that there is a very common form of indeterminacy, that is, of randomness. I mean what quantum theory has to say about the decay of an atom such as (some forms of) uranium. Whether such an atom decays at a given moment is, according to contemporary qm, entirely random. The most we can...

Recently, my stepsons' mother told my husband and me that her husband has been hurting her children (my stepsons). The last incident (the worst, she said) involved him "spanking" the youngest hard enough to leave a long bruise and picking them both up by the head, shaking them and screaming into their faces. He has a long history with CPS and I have spoken with his ex-wife who believes he has been molesting her daughter, as well as abusing her daughter and son (the reason she divorced him). The boys' mother seemed very concerned at first, using terms like "It's a deal-breaker. He can't beat my kids," but has changed her tune to "God made marriage first and children second, so I have to stand by my husband. Children leave you, a spouse is forever." My husband and I have contacted CPS and all have been interviewed. CPS said that they have determined abuse has taken place, but it doesn't look like they are going to do much about it. All that has been done so far is the boys' mother and stepfather have...

Thank you for your message. I respect your courage in facing this difficult situation and in sharing your concerns. I should make clear that although, as a professional philosopher, I don't have expertise with the problems that you mention, my wife is a CPS social worker, and so I have indirect familiarity with cases like this. If you honestly believe that the boys in question are in danger, or that the dogs you mention are, then I suggest that you do have an obligation to do all you can to get them out of that danger. It is very unlikely that a 45 year old man is going to learn new anger-management skills unless he makes a conscious effort to do so, and it does not appear from your description that he is making such an effort. I would urge you to contact CPS again to raise your honest concerns as to whether their intervention so far is really sufficient. It might also be a good idea to contact your local SPCA to raise concerns about the safety of the dogs. I hope all goes well. Please...

What kind of questions did philosophers ask in Ancient Greece?

Thank you for your question. I can't hope to answer it at all comprehensively. Instead I'll try to give a smattering of highlights, and some pointers as to where you might look to learn more. Among the questions that philosophers tried to answer at this time were: ' What is it to be virtuous, and can virtue be taught? What is the soul, and does it survive the destruction of the body? What is the best organization for a society to follow in order to be just? What, at the most fundamental level, is the physical world made of? (Proffered answers included fire, water, and atoms.) In what sense, if any, might the future be "real"? There are lots of others. For a rewarding discussion that puts philosophical inquiry into a broader social and historical context, I would strongly suggest the classic _The Greeks_ by H.D. Kitto. Once you've gone through that, you can't go wrong by looking at some dialogues by Plato, in which the author purports to report various discussions his...
Art

Is there a difference of aesthetic value between a genuine piece of art and an indistinguishable fake of it? Erez B., Israel

Thanks for your message. Most aestheticians today would, I think, say that there is usually not an aesthetic difference between these two things, but that there may well be other important differences. For instance, a genuine and a fake Vermeer will, by your hypothesis, look exactly the same, and if that is the case then (on the more common definition of "the aesthetic" as having primarily to do with primarily how an object appears to the senses) they will have the same aesthetic properties. On the other hand, the two works will differ drastically in other dimensions, such as historical interest, monetary value, originality, and so on. Above I said 'usually', and here's why: In some cases the aesthetic value of a work does seem to depend on its actual provenance. Imagine a work that literally contains a piece of the artist's flesh, and that was intended to be known to do so. (Supppose he cut off his hand, and preserved it in fluid of some kind in an installation for all to see.) Most...

When parents take measures to select for beneficial genetic traits in their children (e.g., by selecting MENSA members as sperm donors), who benefits? I take it that the intuition is that the children benefit. There's something weird about this idea, however. It's not as though we are conferring intelligence or good looks on a child who would otherwise be ordinary; rather, we're trying to ensure that the ordinary child never comes into existence in the first place.

Your last sentence is right: It's not true that in the case you have in mind the parents confer a benefit on child that would otherwise lack it. You're right also that it is a bit strange to suppose that children benefit from this. On the other hand, one might argue that this practice benefits society at large by increasing the overall representation of intelligence. (Whether increasing the overall level of intelligence in the population will benefit it, is an empirical question to which I doubt we have an answer.) Or one might hold that it benefits the parent or parents by increasing their chances of having high-achieving children. (Whether having smarter children in general makes parents happier is also an empirical question, and I also doubt that we know how to answer it at this point.) You might enjoy pursuing these issues a bit further with Jonathan Glover's new book, _Choosing Children: Genes, Disability and Design_, forthcoming in early 2008 with Oxford University Press. Glover is an...

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