Recent Responses
If my friend is on a street corner with a life-like model of a dog and I drive past in my car so fast that I can't tell the difference between the fake dog and a real dog is there any point in me saying I saw a real or fake dog since, to me, the two are indistinguishable? The classes real dog and fake dog seem to combine to form the class dog-like object. If this same analysis were applied to Searle's Chinese room then it seems pointless to say the room does or doesn't understand. If a person who is unaware of the room's setup (sort of like me in my car) goes up to the room and asks it questions then it provides answers that are consistent with the room understanding Chinese so from that persons point of view the room is just as understanding as any chinese person on the street. If we miniaturised the room and put it in someone's head and put a real Chinese speaker behind the Chinese room slot then the questioner will not be able to tell that any change has occurred.
Mitch Green
November 25, 2006
(changed November 25, 2006)
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Thank you for your question. No doubt there are many situations in which it doesn't matter much whether you make a distinction between a situation in which you are fooled by something and one in which you are not. However, there are plenty of situations in which it does matter even if,... Read more
Hello, My question is about definitions and I would like to know what it means to define something. From I what can tell, definitions seem to describe relations between processes, objects and other type of relationships. If I were to ask, "Define yourself", What am I really asking here? Can an answer be provided without referring to something else? Because I would at least not associate "define yourself" with physical attributes, the person´s job, career, family situation, personality attributes or any other sort of descriptions...or am I just way off? Hopefully you can sort out some of my confusion. Thanks in advance. M.
Elisabeth Camp
November 24, 2006
(changed November 24, 2006)
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A definition of something specifies what it takes to be that sort of thing. (A definition of a word specifies the meaning of the word, which in turn specifies what it takes for something to fall in that word's extension: for the word to apply truly to it.) We usually assume that specif... Read more
Is art all about context? Is it possible to have a viewpoint on a piece of art that does not involve the influences of culture, belief, upbringing and so on? Why is it that different genres of art require contextual referencing more than others - e.g. personally, I find that I either 'like' or 'dislike' novels without needing to think about why but when it comes to a contemporary art installation my opinion is based almost entirely based on what I know about the artist, their background, the precedents for the work, the political context in which it was made, etc.
Elisabeth Camp
November 24, 2006
(changed November 24, 2006)
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As your examples suggest, different works of art and even different artistic media can require different kinds and amounts of knowledge about the world, and about the specific context in which the work of art was created. Some works are highly accessible -- a wide variety of audiences c... Read more
What is the current take on Chomsky's 'language acquisition is hard-wired into the brain' theory? I remember reading ten years or so ago that a scientist had isolated a gene that led to kids having trouble learning to speak normally (I have no citation, unfortunately). Would this be proof that Chomsky was right?
Gabriel Segal
December 3, 2006
(changed December 3, 2006)
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On my website there is a draft of a paper, labelled ''Poverty of Stimulus arguments', which provides a reasonably comprehensive review of the evidence that favours the hypothesis that humans have some innate special-purpose machinery dedicated to language acquisition.... Read more
I opened up your website and encountered a philosophical discussion of a bent spoon in a glass of water. Which prompts my question: Why hasn’t there been a scientific revolution in philosophy as there has been in physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, historiography, astronomy, music, political science, the social sciences, medicine, er... well just about everything else? Here's my point. When a college student studies ANY of those other subjects, there is scant attention paid to what people thought before the Enlightenment or at best before the Renaissance (except as a historical curiosity). And that's a good thing, BECAUSE =phlogiston has no place in modern physics; =Air, Fire, Water and Earth in Chemistry =the Great Chain of Being in Biology =Bodily Humors in physiology =the Great Man Theory in historiography =Astrology in astronomy =Celestial number sequences in Music theory =belief in the Divine Right of Kings in Poly Sci =belief in possession by demons, the caste system, or the Noble Savage in the social sciences (not to mention the more recent debunking of Freud, Durkheim, Mead and Galton) =blood-letting, mercury treatments, and garlic cloves in medicine (ok ok- please don't point out that leeches are used in surgery, heavy metals in chemo, and the Mediterranean diet touted ad nauseam -- you know what I mean...), But Philosophy is still counting angels on the head of a pin, repeating platitudes from Plato, being startled by Aristotle, getting the skinny on Augustinian, spinning Spinoza, decanting Kant, exhuming Hume, unlocking Locke, thinking Nietzsche is neat and Wittgenstein a wit. Wondering what a bent spoon is. Has academic Philosophy missed the boat? Has modern thinking (i.e., the scientific method) passed it by? Are today’s Philosophy profs the equivalent of antiquarians, Lamarckians, homeopaths, and creative design advocates? Where’s the rigor? The methodology? The accountability? The math? Is Philosophy just a subcategory of postmodernist literary criticism ? That is, dredge up some outdated top-down Great Thought from The Masters, and babble on about semantics, ontology, and reification as if Darwin, Mendel, Chomsky, Dawkins, Demasio, and Nash (to name a few) never existed? (Just reciting these names is reminiscent of the shortcomings of Philosophy. The names don’t matter; it’s way they go about things. Darwin didn’t dream up a Great Theory of How We Got Here, nor Mendel concoct the Epistemology of Peas. Modern thinking is humble, not about the thinker but the thought, defensible, empirical, bottom up. So that’s my question. Can philosophy deal with the 21st Century? When there is so much to master on the physics of light, the physiology of the eye, the neurology of the visual cortex, the evolution of the mammalian perception system --- how do you have time to engage in omphaloscepsis about bent spoons?
Richard Heck
November 24, 2006
(changed November 24, 2006)
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I hate to be overly defensive but, frankly, for someone asking this kind of question, and making these kinds of accusations, the questioner displays quite astonishing ignorance. Rigor? Methodology? Math? I would have thought that twentieth century analytic philosophy was almost defined by... Read more
Could you tell me, what are the main problems in modern ethics of sex?
Alan Soble
November 23, 2006
(changed November 23, 2006)
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One thing you can do is to scroll down the list of panelists, and when you come to a dude named "Alan Soble," click on the arrow to the left of his name (not on the name itself, since all hell will break loose if you do that). Almost all the questions answered by this panelist have to do wit... Read more
What is the principle underpinning logic's rules aimed at avoiding contradiction? We know that contradiction is "bad", e.g. if a line of argument can be reduced to the statement A & ~A, (or if such an assertion can be extracted from an argument) the argument may be invalid. Where does this principle that contradiction leads to invalidity come from? Is it a "just because" axiom? Is it from overwhelming empirical observation? (I've certainly never seen something that both is and isn't at the same time.) More broadly (if this isn't too much) what is the relationship between basic concepts in epistemology (non-contradiction and cause/effect) and axioms of logic? What metaphysical connections or bindings exist between axioms of logic, epistemology, and objective reality? Thanks
David Papineau
November 23, 2006
(changed November 23, 2006)
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A simple answer is that sentences of the form 'A and not-A' cannot be true. So if you're aiming at truth, such sentences should not be endorsed. (And if other claims led you 'A and not-A' by valid reasoning (reasoning that never goes from truths to falsehood) they cannot all be true ei... Read more
Is it possible to 'see' existence (the world) without any bias? Can a lack of bias be considered a bias or just another perpective? Is there a 'true' way to see the world?
Douglas Burnham
November 23, 2006
(changed November 23, 2006)
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'Bias' here might mean 'a distortion of thought caused by the nature of thought being something essentially different from what is thought about'. This notion of bias is discussed in Professor Lipton's answer above. However, a related but not identical definition of 'bias' is 'preconcep... Read more
Can your belief affect the outcome of an event? Such as if you believe that the future will happen a certain way, will the outcome be what you believe?
Karen Jones
November 23, 2006
(changed November 23, 2006)
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Yes, though only in those limited circumstances where the believing itself brings about the truth of that which is believed. This mostly happens indirectly and the outcome is typically only partly explained by the belief (so it won't always work!). Consumer confidence, studied by economists... Read more
Is it possible that belief in determinism and rejection of free will could affect a person's behavior? I can't see how. Is it just academic? A related question I have is how is solipsism even possible? Has anyone ever believed in it seriously and if so how did (or would) it affect their behavior? Presumably they wouldn't bother to publish papers on the subject for obvious reasons! I can see how there can be very serious and edifying debate about the former. Because the word "solipsism" exists, there must at some point have been the same about the latter though I can't see how. Your thoughts would be very welcome!
Nicholas D. Smith
November 22, 2006
(changed November 22, 2006)
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There are forms of determinism (called "compatibilism" or "soft determinism") in which determinism and things like choice or personal responsibility are regarded as compatible. But the more traditional versions of determinism ("hard determinism") and solipsism seem to be philosophical... Read more