Recent Responses
Why would the golden ratio be aesthetically pleasing to humans?
Aaron Meskin
October 17, 2005
(changed October 17, 2005)
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I'm not convinced that the golden ratio really is aesthetically pleasing to humans. See a special issue of Empirical Studies of the Arts (Volume Fifteen, Issue Two), 1997, which has a number of articles in it that challenge the idea that the Golden Ratio (or Golden Section) is really pleas... Read more
What is not art?
Aaron Meskin
October 17, 2005
(changed October 17, 2005)
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Lots of things: the orange in front of me, the bus outside my window, George Bush, the number four, Palo Duro Canyon, and so on. I suspect you want to know what makes something not art, and that might seem like it calls for supplying a definition of art. Once we knew what the defintion was... Read more
Would/could pleasure be possible without pain, or pain without pleasure?
Peter Lipton
October 17, 2005
(changed October 17, 2005)
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Consider an intense (e.g. sexual) pleasure. I see no reason why some lucky person who had never experiences pain couldn't experience such a pleasure. Even if a person can only enjoy a pleasure by means of some contrast (itself a debatable point), mundane 'neutral' experience is enough of a... Read more
If the saying "nothing is impossible" were correct, then wouldn't it be impossible for something to be impossible?
Joseph G. Moore
October 16, 2005
(changed October 16, 2005)
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I also find that saying suspicious, though I'm not sure I accept your suggested argument against it (more on that in a moment). I disagree with the saying because there seem lots of clearly impossible states of afffairs: that 2 and 2 could equal 5; that I could both win and not win the te... Read more
If enough people believe in something, will it be true? For example, does reality conform to the laws that we, as a group, choose to believe in?
Joseph G. Moore
October 16, 2005
(changed October 16, 2005)
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It might be worth adding, nevertheless, that there are some facts that obtain in virtue of enough of the right people believing that they do. You and I are "going out" if and only if we each believe that we are--or so it seems. It also seems that the market will go up if and only if enoug... Read more
I've been away from academia since I dropped out of philosophy grad school in 1997, so I'm out of touch with recent developments in philosophy. What are the most significant philosophical books or papers of the past eight or so years? (My main areas of interest in grad school were metaphysics and philosophy of language, but I'd be interested in your answer whatever your specialty.)
Richard Heck
October 23, 2005
(changed October 23, 2005)
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Philosophy tends not to move terribly quickly, and it's always difficult to tell, from "up close", what will prove to have been important. That said, however, there have been some important developments in philosophy of language (one area you mentioned over the last decade). It's less a matt... Read more
Are women philosophers more insightful than their male counterparts?
Amy Kind
October 16, 2005
(changed October 16, 2005)
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I don't think that there's any special reason to think that female philosophers are more insightful than male philosophers -- or vice versa, for that matter.
Nonetheless, it may be true that female philosophers on occasion have different insights from their male counterparts. For example, femin... Read more
Question 156 asked about thought with the absence of the common human stimuli, and the consensus seemed to be that someone deprived of their senses does not develop to a “normal” mental state. However, this brings up the question of what a “normal” mental state actually is. Isn’t it possible that there are beings, even within the examples you cited of those deprived of their senses in early life, who do not share our senses and stimuli but nevertheless have complex thoughts and even a possibly firmer grasp on the existential questions we discuss here? Isn’t it possible that these beings are simply unable to communicate these thoughts with us because we do not share a “common ground” of communication or a common interpretation of reality?
Amy Kind
October 16, 2005
(changed October 16, 2005)
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Let's separate two questions. One is the question of whether there could be beings with mental lives far different from our own, who process the world far differently from the way we do, and with whom we can't presently communicate. I am inclined to answer that question "yes." Perhaps we are... Read more
Is it possible to travel back into time?
Amy Kind
October 16, 2005
(changed October 16, 2005)
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I don't think that we know the answer to this one yet.
Leaving aside the question of whether travel back in time violates any physical laws, there are some reasons to think that it is conceptually incoherent. For one thing, there is the well-known "Grandfather Paradox." Suppose you were to trav... Read more
Is it possible to actually be psychic, in that you know what will happen, when it will happen, how it will happen, and possibly even why it will happen?
Peter Lipton
October 16, 2005
(changed October 16, 2005)
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There seems to be nothing incoherent in the idea that there might be certain people who are much more reliable about the future than the rest of us, though neither we nor they can account for the source of this extraordinary talent. I don't think it is likely that there are any such people... Read more