Recent Responses
Do you think that the answers you offer here, not so much to questions that resolve themselves into issues of terminology or disciplinary orhtodoxy, but to questions that address the allegedly larger issues of life, death, truth, ethical behavior, etc., have any more value, practical or otherwise, than answers provided by, say, priests, prostitutes, or politicians? If so, why? If not, what is your motivation for participating in this forum?
Richard Heck
August 28, 2006
(changed August 28, 2006)
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I'm not sure that any of us really pretend to have answers to the difficult questions of life. We claim to have thought about them, perhaps more deeply than your average prostitue or politician, and perhaps from a different perspective than your average priest (or minister, or what have you).... Read more
OK. What I have to ask is a little strange, but I have been looking for studies based on language being converted to mathematics, or another way of putting it is a model of language which is strictly math based. The reason I am asking is because I have found a lot on the subject of logic and math or logic and language but nothing on math modeling language specifically, thank you for you time. Jeremy K.
Richard Heck
August 28, 2006
(changed August 28, 2006)
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I'm not sure I understand what it is that you really want. Certainly in logic, there are well-established techniques for discussing the language of logic itself. See any good textbook on Goedel's Theorem (say, Boolos, Burgess, and Jeffrey, Computability and Logic) for more on this. If it's nat... Read more
The argument that the universe is so organized that it needed a creator to make it confuses me because isn't god so organized/sensible/well designed that something would have been needed to build him? Or did he just come around out of random chance, and if he has always just been around why is this ok for god but not the universe, meaning why is it ok for god to have just been around but not the universe?
Alexander George
August 28, 2006
(changed August 28, 2006)
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You might look at Questions 241 and 266.
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Considering our world in a deterministic way, saying everything is declared by our determinate physical laws, we are tending to presume that there is no space for free will since even the electrochemical reactions within our brains underlie those laws. Now one could say: "That's not true. What about the chaos theory and/or quantum mechanics?" In fact the behaviour of quantums can not be predicted which leads to the assumption that they behave completely incidentally. Otherwise they would be predictable. Here is my question: Am I right in saying that even the quantum mechanics/chaos theory do not affect the issue that we have no influence on our actions and thoughts? I mean, there are two possibilities: Either our actions and thoughts underlie the physical laws and are definite OR they underlie the "laws" of coincidence. Both possibilities do not leave any room for free will.
Alexander George
August 28, 2006
(changed August 28, 2006)
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You might look at Questions 391 and 517.
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I have a moral question concerning the following scenario: At a party you talk to another guest who you haven't met before. He is drinking several glasses of beer and intends to drive himself home later. Are you morally obliged to tell him he should not drink and drive even though that would be impolite and he presumably knows he shouldn't anyway? Thanks.
Oliver Leaman
August 26, 2006
(changed August 26, 2006)
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I don't think so. It would be like warning someone who is smoking that it is bad for him, or someone who is not taking much exercise that this is not a good idea. It might be said that these activities are not illegal (at present) and only affect the individual concerned. As for the latter, b... Read more
Is it possible for one to be wrong about one's own happiness? In other words, could one think (and feel that) they're happy without actually being so?
Douglas Burnham
August 25, 2006
(changed August 25, 2006)
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"I call no man happy until he is dead," said Solon, which is a bit longer than most of us are willing to wait. The point, though, is that we tend to use 'happiness' in two quite different senses. The first ('I feel happy now') is an immediate feeling of satisfaction and well-being. The seco... Read more
Today I had a big fight with my sister. We were both sulking, upset and angry. I told my father that I was really hurt and he said that it is not worth being hurt when there are people right now in Israel, Lebanon, Sudan, the Congo and elsewhere who have lost their homes, family members and futures in the blink of an eye. And that if you told those people that there were two girls in New Jersey who got to go to school every day, who had a comfortable house, an intact family and never had to worry about food or money or safety, they would think it was ridiculous how sad and hurt and angry we were being. I understand my dad's point. He is saying firstly that we should be grateful for what we have and not bitter about the small things that are not going well. And secondly that we should think of our problems in perspective in terms of what the rest of humanity may suffer. But can the above idea ever really act as consolation, or should it? It seems that you can't put emotions in perspective - does the fact that something worse exists somewhere else make a bad thing less bad?
Miranda Fricker
August 25, 2006
(changed August 25, 2006)
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What is it to keep one's emotional reactions in proportion? There is a philosophical issue here that seems worth raising: emotional reactions are not simply sensational reactions to the world, they can be cognitive reactions too. Emotions can sometimes tell you things about the world that o... Read more
I have recently heared the following expression: "If someone tells you at dinner that he is a radical relativist, then you must count your cutlery after he has left." What is the basis for mistrust of people holding relativistic views?
Matthew Silverstein
August 24, 2006
(changed August 24, 2006)
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I suppose it all depends on precisely what radical relativism is supposed to be. Let's assume that there is such a view, and that it is a coherent and consistent view at that. (I suspect that this assumption is entirely unfounded, but that's besides the point of your question.)
Now, giv... Read more
What should be the purpose of an education system as a whole? By this I mean particularly the direction given to it by its national curriculum. Is it to produce the next generation of plumbers and bank tellers, in effect to ensure that society continues to be productive? Or is it to develop society as a whole, to raise the average level of intelligence and enlightenment within it and, at the heights, push back the boundaries of human understanding? Because it seems to me that whilst these two aims are not mutually exclusive, only the former is being carried out within the UK. Joe H.
Nicholas D. Smith
August 24, 2006
(changed August 24, 2006)
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Didn't I just respond to another of your questions on a related subject? I think so...
I think the best answer to this question is "all of the above, and a great deal more." As I said, a great deal is asked of public education--constructively, it is suppose to advance knowledge and also... Read more
In the UK (and perhaps in other countries) children with “special educational needs” receive a much greater proportion of an education authority’s resources compared to the average child. For example, the pupil-teacher ratio in special schools is 6.5 : 1 compared to 18.6 : 1 in mainstream state schools. Is it right for the government to allocate more of its resources to those children least likely to contribute to the society which is paying for this education? Does every child have an equal right to an education in terms of quality, or should this equality be measured by the resources allocated to them? If resources are to be distributed unevenly to children based upon their circumstances, would it not be more sensible to spend the extra on gifted children, those more likely to contribute to society both economically and in terms of passing on education to the next generation? Joe H.
Nicholas D. Smith
August 24, 2006
(changed August 24, 2006)
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I won't dare try to answer this question, because the issues involved are more complicated than I can handle. I will say, however, that your question presupposes that the only (or main, or most valuable) reason for public education is to enable and encourage contributions to society. I... Read more