Recent Responses
Are there any good, contemporary arguments against materialism?
Peter S. Fosl
July 7, 2006
(changed July 7, 2006)
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It depends, of course, upon what you regard as "materialism"--not to mention what you regard as a "good argument." For myself, I think that you might consider that things like relations, sets, patterns, numbers, the self, space and time are not material. You'll also find that much of the controve... Read more
What arguments are there to support a statement 'the goal of life is to be able to express yourself as entirely and truthfully as possible'?
Peter S. Fosl
July 7, 2006
(changed July 7, 2006)
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I'm not familiar with arguments concerned with such a goal, per se. But many philosophers have argued for the importance of something you might regard as related to truthful and complete expression--namely "authenticity." Authenticity might be defined as taking responsibility for what one is and... Read more
Is it possible for science to come to a conclusion regarding the origin of the universe?
Peter S. Fosl
July 7, 2006
(changed July 7, 2006)
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It's possible for empirical science to come to conclusions regarding "what" the origin of the universe was like and "when" it occurred. For example, it's possible to determine the age of the universe, it's approximate initial mass, whether or not there was a "big bang," the rate of initial inflati... Read more
Often, people who claim to be psychic also claim that they have an ability to perceive or to have verification of the existence of things that other people do not have (but could possibly obtain). How is this different from the mathematician who discovers, or claims to have discovered, a proof? Certainly, many mathematical proofs are not for the layman to approve of or dispute, because of a certain lack of ability. Both claim to see or to have proof (although different types of proof) of something, but in both cases one can imagine at least one person that cannot verify that the proof really is (a) proof.
Mark Crimmins
July 6, 2006
(changed July 6, 2006)
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If you claim to have gotten evidence for something using a method that I cannot employ, should I rely on your testimony? If I assume that you are sincere, then the key question is whether I should believe that you really do have a reliable evidence-producing method. I must rely on experience.... Read more
I recently read an article where a lawyer referred to something called "Role Morality" in defending his behaviour (which was not especially moral). What is "Role Morality" and what school or body of philosophy does it belong to? How is it supposed to work? It seemed somewhat bogus when presented as an excuse for behaviour that would otherwise be called immoral. Maybe there's a different moral system for lawyers? Thanks.
Thomas Pogge
July 6, 2006
(changed July 6, 2006)
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We sometimes play certain social roles in which it is morally appropriate to disregard certain otherwise weighty considerations and to give great weight to others than one could otherwise disregard.
Examples. A trustee should try to find the best possible investments for her ward without regard to h... Read more
I don’t know if I’m right about this, but I often have the impression that philosophers have traditionally regarded the means of knowledge as some kind of obstacle to getting at ‘reality in itself’, as if the aim of scientific inquiry should be to somehow strip away the interferences of our own minds, bodies, perceptual capacities, language, etc., in order to unveil the world ‘in itself’, free of all ‘anthropomorphic colouring’. Whenever in my life I have occasionally found time to give myself over to speculative musings (and I’m not sure if it’s been too often, or not nearly enough!), I have often been tempted by a different idea, only then to drop it again as scientifically suspect, if not straightforwardly mythical or mystical. However, I’ve often wanted to put it to a professional philosopher to see what he or she would make of it. I’m sure it’s not at all original, and perhaps you can tell me which historical philosophers have held a similar view, but I’m mainly interested in whether or not anyone would regard it (or something like it) as philosophical respectable nowadays, and what that would mean. Basically, the idea would be that, instead of regarding the manifest, phenomenal world which we all experience as a lesser reality (as, e.g. ‘mere appearance’, ‘mere phenomena’ etc.), as a kind of subjective shadow-world in comparison with the objective reality of the world ‘in itself’ (say, the colourless, odourless, silent world as described by physics), instead we reverse things and say that things attain their fullest degree of reality when they come to disclose themselves, with all their manifest properties, to human beings (or otherly-minded creatures). In other words, instead of setting up the external world ‘in itself’ as the (more or less unobtainable) goal of perception and knowledge, why should we not view the manifest world of colour and light and tone and fragrance as itself a kind of goal on the part of nature, and our perceptual abilities, senses, language etc. as in some sense a means of bringing it to realization? Like I say, I’m sure that such a view would be disregarded by most scientists and philosophers as being naively ‘anthropocentric’ and ‘teleological’ and thus as mythological at best, but I can’t help finding something compelling about it, and I wonder on what grounds one can really claim that this picture is any less arbitrary than the more conventional one. Why, for example, should we regard sensation, language, knowledge, art etc. as means of more of less accurately representing or copying a self-complete ‘reality in itself’ rather than as a means of disclosing it or of bringing it to realization in some sense? My suspicion is that philosophers nowadays would regard these sorts of ideas as belonging to an obsolete ‘Idealism’ or ‘Romanticism’, and perhaps it’s even the case that philosophers just don’t address such large ‘metaphysical’ matters nowadays (limiting themselves to ‘conceptual analysis’ and such), but I’d be very grateful for any responses.
Thomas Pogge
July 6, 2006
(changed July 6, 2006)
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Immanuel Kant comes pretty close to articulating the points you make here.
In one of his last writings, Kant tells the story of a man who stands in front of the mirror with his eyes closed (or almost closed). Asked what he is doing there, the man responds that he wants to see what he looks like whe... Read more
A friend and I were discussing our philosophy class a while ago, and somehow we got onto the subject of the properties of things and the definition of a place. We began to argue about whether you can be in an object or in a place. I said that you can only be in an object and to be in a place is impossible. But you can be at a place. Example: you are in the building, but you are at the DMV. She said the opposite. That it is possible to be in a place. Who is correct?
Thomas Pogge
July 6, 2006
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The in/at variation is a convention of the English language and has no equivalent in many other languages. It seems to mark no significant underlying distinction, and your question is then one about proper English.
Understood in this spirit, I would say that you are both right. With some places we u... Read more
(ill)Logical question: One formulation of the law of Identity states that a thing is equal to itself (e.g., "A=A"). The "thing" must always be represented (with a letter, a word, a number, a picture, etc.) in order to be communicated. These representations will have physical, measurable properties, and no two of them -- for instance, two spoken or written "A"s -- will have exactly identical physical properties. If you attempt to circumvent this mirror image comparison with, for example, an "A" with an arrow doing a U-turn back upon itself, you still must make a mental comparison, and that comparison takes time, and as Heraclitus famously puts it, you can't step in exactly the same river twice (in other words, the first thought "A" is gone by the time you think of its twin). So, without sprawling this out further with more examples, why doesn't it make more sense to assume that "a thing is NOT equal to itself"? I am probably just talking around some hackneyed epistemological issue. Can anyone sort out my fuzzy thinking a little (with a minimum of truth tables)?
Thomas Pogge
July 6, 2006
(changed July 6, 2006)
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You need here the distinction between a thing and its name(s) or representation(s).
When someone says or writes "Mozart = Mozart," the two sound tokens or ink tokens are indeed subtly different. And even if somehow they were not, they would still be different in that one spoken "Mozart" precedes the... Read more
Does (and should) philosophy influence other disciplines? For example, does the philosophy of science have any real impact on the work of physicists or aesthetics on artists today? Did they ever? Does (and should) the philosophy of X do more than comment on and document X?
Peter Lipton
July 8, 2006
(changed July 8, 2006)
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Astronomers study the stars; philosophers of science study the astronomers. And just as astronomy is worthwhile even though it does not improve stellar behaviour, so philosophy of science may be worthwhile even if it does not improve the behaviour of astronomers.
Some scientists have nevertheless b... Read more
What is the difference between analytical and continental philosophy? Is one better than the other? Is analytical philosophy more scientific than continental philosophy?
Douglas Burnham
June 30, 2006
(changed June 30, 2006)
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I agree that the two designations do not have much geographical significance, or significance in the nature of problems pursued or methods employed. I also don't think style is a very consistent indicator. Finally, the differences between philosophers within one of these very loose groups might... Read more