Recent Responses
Suppose some celebrity has made him or herself more loved and well-received partly by establishing an him or herself as faithful, compassionate husband or wife. If it’s later found out that this celebrity actually leads a messy private life far from the established image, does he or she owe an apology to the public? What if the celebrity never revealed anything about his or her private life or used it to establish some image? Does the public or the media have any right to expose, examine or criticize his or her private life? Some say it’s an inevitable price to pay for the publicity, since they also reaped benefit from it. Is it true?
In cases where the celebrity
Peter S. Fosl
October 29, 2020
(changed October 29, 2020)
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In cases where the celebrity has intentionally established a false perception that was consciously used to leverage considerable benefits, especially financial benefits, the celebrity owes an apology, at least, to the public (perhaps also resigning from a positio... Read more
Are there many philosophers who seriously try to argue that there are no objective moral truths? If so, how would they refute the proposition that "it is always wrong to torture people purely for pleasure." ? Thank you for your consideration!
According to a recent survey
Allen Stairs
October 23, 2020
(changed October 23, 2020)
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According to a recent survey of philosophers, a majority —but not a large majority—would tend to agree that there are objective moral truths. But the minority who don't is not small. So yes: there are "many" philosophers who don't believe in objective moral truths... Read more
Keep in mind I'm a complete novice in philosophy, especially when it comes to the literature. I might misrepresent some positions completely. Please call me out. In short: The determinist states: Our decisions are bound to causation, and thus we are not truly free. This statement implies that the only way for free will to exist would be to detach an agent from causation; as long as some factors affect out motivation to do something, we are not truly free. The determinist thus claims that the only way for a choice to be free is that there would be some force acting above the physical reality, especially when it comes to cognition and decisionmaking. Thus only in a dualistic reality is free will possible. I have a few problems with this: 1. This method of defining free will seems to consequentally destroy the agent. If we were to be able to decide what we want, we'd, at least apparently, fundamentally be nothing. How would it be possible to even assign a different "want" to ourselves without that want coming from another, fundamental source? 2. This method of defining free will seems to also bind itself to the same constraints it tries to release itself from. To clarify: this sort of causation free agent would just bind itself to wants momentarily, thus polluting the "pure free will" that determinists define it as. 3. This method of defining free will is completely detached from practice. This is only a personal constraint, as the point might not be to be practical, but to be accurate and correct. Still, by determinist logic we seem to be unable to assign personal responsibility to any extent. If free will is absolutely non-existent, then it should be a non-factor in moral dilemmas. I'd like commentary and insight to my opening question as is, and further ideas relating to the body of the text if you're interested. Thank you for reading this!
You wrote: "The determinist
Stephen Maitzen
October 22, 2020
(changed October 22, 2020)
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You wrote, "The determinist states: Our decisions are bound to causation, and thus we are not truly free." In the context of free will, what you say describes not determinists in general but only hard determinists, i.e., those determinists who also say that... Read more
Hi, While reading aristotle and aquinas on part whole relationship i often read the phrase "something qua itself and qua something else" as in man qua headed or qua an animal, what do they mean by that ? and how can something be qua itself and at the same time be as something else ? Isnt that a contardiction ? Thanks in advance
In this context, it sounds as
Stephen Maitzen
October 22, 2020
(changed October 22, 2020)
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In this context, it sounds as though "qua" is being used to mean "considered as." So, for example, qua sentient being (i.e., considered as a sentient being) you have particular rights, while qua adult citizen (i.e., considered as an adult citizen) you have tho... Read more
Postmodernists seem to hold that (a) it is impossible to absolutely understand reality and (b) objective truth does not exist. It seems that these two assertions are conflated but distinct. (a) is reasonable but mundane, whereas (b) is quite extreme. It is almost as if we assert that, because it is impossible to absolutely understand reality, then it makes little sense to do so. Do postmodernists give much thought to this distinction, or is it simply a type of Motte-and-Bailey fallacy? Thank you very much.
To tell the truth, this
Nickolas Pappas
October 15, 2020
(changed October 15, 2020)
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To tell the truth, this summary of the postmodernists' position sounds to me more like someone's claim about what people are saying than a synopsis of a philosopher's actual view. For many years, for instance, I heard claims about Derrida's denial of the existence o... Read more
If we assume that relativism isn't true, how can we explain the fact that people behave differently?
First, let's ask what
Allen Stairs
October 1, 2020
(changed January 2, 2022)
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First, let's ask what relativism means. The usual understanding is that it says what's right and wrong is not universal, but relative to some non-universal reference point—the predominant opinions in one's culture, typically.
Your question appears to assume that rela... Read more
What are some questions that we might be reasonably tempted to believe are answerable by psychology but that are actually only answerable by philosophy? Thank you very much.
Someone might reasonably
Jonathan Westphal
August 27, 2020
(changed August 27, 2020)
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Someone might reasonably think that the question what personal identity consists of is to be answered by psychology. So we can imagine looking at the formation of individuality over time, through childhood and on, and think we were answering the philosophical quest... Read more
Is there a specific label or name for the rhetorical tool of using a little bit of truth to try and disprove another claim. For example, if Person A says something like "philanthropy is less effective as a means to maximize well-being than if we just taxed everyone more" and in response Person B says "but philanthropy does some good". Even assuming Person B's response is truthful, it seems they are avoiding addressing the true question. I know this is similar to a red herring fallacy, but I was wondering if there is a more precise name (or set of work) looking at the use of a nugget of truth to try and distract from or disprove a larger issue. Thank you.
Philosophers are usually not
Allen Stairs
August 20, 2020
(changed August 20, 2020)
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Philosophers are usually not the right people to ask for fallacy names. Most of us don't remember many of them, and aside from a handful (begging the question, for instance) seldom mention them by name. You mention the red herring fallacy here. That's probably good... Read more
Is landlording—understood as “fulfilling on one’s own property the housing needs of, and receiving rent from, another person/party”—a fundamentally unethical practice? I ask because it seems to me, at this point, that a landlord puts at risk the most inelastic needs of human beings, placing them behind more-or-less arbitrary paywalls. Sure, there is no shortage of “ethical landlording” articles/podcasts, and I am willing to do research (look for disconfirmation of the above hunch) myself. But asking philosophers never hurts! Thank you.
If your question was whether
Allen Stairs
August 13, 2020
(changed August 13, 2020)
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If your question was whether there are some unethical landlords, the answer would surely be yes. But you asked if renting living space is a "fundamentally unethical practice." Your implicit argument that it might be is that "at this point" (at which point?) a landlo... Read more
Do philosophers generally reject that philosophical reasoning relies on axioms? The way I've always thought that philosophy worked is that philosophers have a certain set of tools (deduction, laws of thought, [basic sources of knowledge](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#SourKnowJust)) which they use to come to reasoned answers to questions. Most importantly, these tools are taken as axiomatic. That is, they are seen as starting points from which all reasoning must proceed. To question these axioms wouldn't be possible. However, I've recently seen an attitude that has puzzled me. Many philosophers state that very rarely does reasoning in philosophy rely on axioms. Axioms are things to be avoided and go against the spirit of philosophy. What am I misunderstanding here? If philosophers don't take their tools of reasoning as axiomatic, how do they go about doing philosophy? More importantly, if philosophical reasoning is so pervasive that it questions its own tools, from what framework does the questioning occur? What tools does the philosopher use to question their own tools? When this question was posed to a philosophy student, they responded that: "Philosophers don't tend to think of human thought or reasoning in terms of strict "axioms". Axioms are part of a formal logical system and it's not clear that a lot of our reasoning is like that. We hold *many* beliefs that we might typically think of as taken for granted. Philosophy is really about trying to understand what those are, whether they really fit together properly, and what properties of those beliefs we might want to look at to determine whether we can trust them or we ought to abandon them . . . [philosphers] generally share the idea that we take seriously our basic intuitions about cases of reasoning and we determine general rules and principles from them". Is this the case? Is this how professional philosophers typically go about doing philosophy I've simply held a naive view?
I'm a bit puzzled about where
Allen Stairs
July 9, 2020
(changed July 9, 2020)
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I'm a bit puzzled about where you got the impression that philosophy works this way, Looking at the work of Spinoza, perhaps, might give this impression, but who else? Certainly not Plato. Certainly not Aristotle. Not Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Russell, not a sin... Read more