It depends on what one means by the 'thing' in question. According to the principles of geometry, a line is infinitely divisible, although of course it has basic components, points. But what of ordinary, middle-sized objects, such as tables and chairs? Certain early modern philosophers, such as Leibniz, believed that material things were not only infinitely divisible, but that they were also actually divided. (Hence, Leibniz concluded, material things weren't real things, because they lacked what he called a 'true principle of unity', and the only 'real' things were souls, which, being immaterial, could not be infinitely divided.) In a recent article, "Van Inwagen and the Possibility of Gunk," the metaphysician Ted Sider argues that it is possible that objects in the world are infinitely divisible and even lack basic constituents, like the points of a line. According to Sider, it is logically possible that the world consists only of 'atomless gunk', that is, "that it divides further into smaller and...

You raise a fascinating issue: Menand's thought experiment grabbed my attention when the article was published, and I've since discussed it with friends and family. For what it's worth, while I myself would have no hesitation in taking the pill, when I've discussed this case, I've found that most people are, disinclined to take the pill, and even find something troubling about the very idea of doing so. Sometimes they claim that feeling the pain of grief is essential to being human. To which I've responded that it's not clear to me that feelings are essential to emotions, and so while the capacity to experience grief may be part and parcel of the human condition, it's not clear that it is the pain of grief that is important; moreover, I've asked those who resist taking the pill how the pain of grief is different from the pain of a headache (which is natural for us in certain states). If one takes aspirin in the latter case, then it would seem that one should be willing to take Menand's pill. In what...

An argument like the one that you presented, which has the form: (1) P; (2) P-->Q (i.e., If P, then Q); Therefore, (3) Q, if introduced in order to explain a simple deductive argument, is meant only to illustrate the concept of soundness. An argument is sound if the conclusion follows logically from the premises. But a sound argument need not be valid, or yield a true conclusion. An argument is only valid if it is sound, its premises are true, and the conclusion follows non-circularly from the premises. Although the argument that you present is--at least to the best of my knowledge--not only sound, but valid, the two can of course come apart. So, for example, the following argument: (1) The sun always shines in Southern California; (2) Los Angeles is in Southern California; (3) Therefore the sun is always shining in Los Angles is valid, it's not--_mirabile dictu_ sound.

This is a deep and interesting question, which goes to the heart of the topic of personal identity, and reflects a tradition that stretches back to John Locke's treatment of the topic in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding . A preliminary note is in order, however: most contemporary treatments of personal identity--and that of Locke as well--do not turn on whether personal identity is determined by the body (one's 'physical appearance') or the soul, but in terms of whether personal identity is determined by the identity of the body or the mind. (By framing the question in this way, philosophers who are agnostic about the existence of the soul, or thinking substance--like Locke--or who deny its existence--like many participants in recent philosophical debates on the topic, can engage it without having to take up the issue of whether there is such thing as a soul.) Interestingly enough, the kind of 'thought experiment' that you propose to illustrate your question is one that Locke himself...

Just on the basis of my own experience, it does indeed seem to be the case that a disproportionate number of undergraduate philosophy majors in coed institutions of higher education are male. (The same disproportion is to be found in the profession itself.) I'm not sure whether the data has been collected, although you might just do a simple Google search to see if anything comes up. I can only speculate why such a disproportion exists. It may in part have to do with the fact, noted above, that the overwhelming majority of faculty members in philosophy departments are male; it may have something to do with the nature of philosophy itself, which, on account of its focus on arguments, can often be seen as combative--although, of course, it need not be, and at its best, probably should not be--and such intellectual combat seems to be coded male. Philosophy courses may be seen as part of an 'argument culture' that puts off certain female students while attracting male students, therefore accounting for...

The idea that there is a distinctively 'feminine' approach to ethics was articulated forcefully in the pioneering work of Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice : Gilligan argued that there are certain distinctive virtues and traits--such as care, empathy, forgiveness, etc.--that are coded 'feminine' that had gone underemphasized in more traditional, 'masculine', approaches to ethics and character development, which stressed the primacy of the development of an impartial, more 'rational' standpoint in ethics. The basic idea, that there are differences in the way that men and women make moral judgments, that reflect the way that they are socialized, makes good sense to me, and has been championed by a number of philosophers and developed in various ways, particularly by those interested in the 'ethics of care'. However, it seems to me to be incorrect to think that these differences are somehow 'fixed', or that men cannot come to look at the world from a more 'feminine' perspective (and vice versa ,...

This is a deep and important question, that goes to the heart of both our understanding of emotions and of responsibility. There seem to be conflicting intuitions about this question. On the one hand, it seems natural to think that an agent is only responsible for what she does, or for what is under her control, yet emotions--often also known as passions--seem to be events that happen to us, and therefore are not under our control, and so it would seem that we are not responsible for our emotions. On the other hand, we often do hold ourselves and other responsible for their emotions: one might worry about the fact that one is happy about a friend's failure, or that one laughs at a sexist joke, and we often expect others to feel certain ways. In this respect, emotions are very different from sensations, such as pain or hunger. Although one can cause oneself to feel pain--say, by deliberately striking one's hand with a hammer--normally, pain is a natural response to damage to one's body. ...

The idea of the self that is called into question when it is claimed that the self is an illusion is the idea of a substantial, persisting, intellectual substance, such as the self of which Descartes, in the second of the Meditations on First Philosophy , claimed to have knowledge, and which the later Rationalist, G. W. Leibniz, took as one of the foundations of his philosophy. One of the most famous Western challenges to such an idea is raised by David Hume, in A Treatise of Human Nature . In Book 1, Part 4, Chapter 6 of the Treatise , "Of Personal Identity," Hume characterizes the belief in a persisting self: "There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF, that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity." To this view, Hume responds: "For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself , I...

Russell's History of Western Philosophy , while consistently entertaining, and worth reading on that score, is not a reliable source for knowledge about the philosophers it treats. The work may be not altogether unfairly described as one of the several 'shilling shockers' that Russell, who always needed money, wrote: sales of the History of Western Philosophy guaranteed Russell's financial security for the rest of his life. I myself don't know of a good single-volume history of Western philosophy. Anthony Kenny has written multiple volumes on the history of Western philosophy; there is also a very fine series, published by Oxford University Press, with volumes covering various periods in the history of Western philosophy, including Terence Irwin on Classical Thought, John Cottingham on the Rationalists, and Roger Woolhouse on the Empiricists, but I can't vouch for the quality of the other volumes. Perhaps other respondents know of a good single-volume treatment of the history of Western...

In Book 3, Part 1, Section 1 of A Treatise of Human Nature , Hume argues that "morals...cannot be deriv'd from reason; and that because reason alone...can never have any such influence. Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason." Hume himself went on to argue that moral judgments are akin to judgments of pleasure and pain, and, therefore, are akin to aesthetic judgments. The problem to which you point--how can moral judgments be verified--may rest on too narrow a conception of reason. (Surely the judgment that some work of art is beautiful is a cognitive judgment, not merely an expression of one's response to a work. Perhaps it is not the same sort of judgment as when one judges that 'Water is H2O', but maybe that only goes to show that there are different kinds of 'objective' judgments, which shouldn't be assimilated.) Be that as it may, Hume's own...