It has been noted--for example, by Thomas Nagel, in the preface to his collection of reviews, Other Minds --that many professional philosophers tend to have been interested in math or theoretical physics before turning to philosophy. However, I myself don't think that there is a necessary connection between one's ability in math and one's suitability for philosophy. There are certain areas of philosophy--such as the philosophy of mathematics, or logic, or philosophy of language--in which mathemetical/logical ability is necessary, but there are others, such as the history of philosophy, ethics, and even epistemology, in which they aren't so necessary. (For what it's worth, I myself wasn't especially good at math in school.) I don't, however, know of any philosophy programs that require one to pass mathematics exams. Logic, by contrast, is important in philosophy, at least insofar as it forces a certain kind of rigor on one and leads one to be attentive to arguments, which are at the heart of...

Here's one way to respond. If one were to suppose, with Kant, that human dignity is intinsically valuable, and that lying to another--even if that lie would promote the other's happiness, say by sparing that person a harsh and painful truth--does not respect that person' dignity, by failing to--in Kant' terminology--treat that person as an end-in-itself worthy of respect--then one might therefore conclude that one has a duty to tell others the truth, and, since, again according to Kant, duty does not admit of exceptions, one cannot compromise that duty in any cae whatsoever, regardless of the consequences of so doing. Of course, this response presupposes some very strong claims about the nature of human beings and the significance of duty. Implicit, too, is the assumption that morality is more intrinsically valuable than happiness. This is not to say that Kant, or a Kantian, wouldn't recognize the significance of promoting the happiness of others--if I remember correctly, Kant does so, explicitly,...

I think that there is both considerable clinical evidence--that is, evidence from psychoanalytic sessions--and evidence from everyday life in support of the postulation of unconscious mental states in order to explain certain behavior, including slips of the tongue, forgettings, etc. There are, however, certain philosophers--in particular, Adolf Grünbaum--who do not recognize what I have called 'clinical evidence' as evidence, and who have argued that there is no empirical basis for psychoanalysis. (There have been a number of rejoinders to Grünbaum, including a paper by David Sachs originally published in The Philosophical Review , and an essay by Thomas Nagel in The New York Review of Books . Partisans of Grünbaum's position, however, have found those rejoinders completely unconvincing. Janet Malcolm's Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession is a very interesting treatment of psychoanalysis in general, and also of how one might go about finding evidence for certain psychoanalytic claims,...

This is a very interesting question indeed. It does seem that today, the words are often used interchangeably. However, there are etymological differences between the words which suggest that at least originally, they were used in different senses. Very roughly, liberty seems to have been originally used to characterize an absence of external constraint, what, following Isaiah Berlin's seminal essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty," one might call 'negative', whereas freedom seems to have been originally used to characterize a capacity for self-control or self-government, what, following Berlin again, one might might 'positive'. The latter, then, seems to have an individual, moral sense, whereas the former has more of a political connotation. There is considerable discussion of this topic in the blogosophere: one helpful discussion that I found may be accessed by clicking on the following link . There is also a relatively recent book, Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas ...

You're absolutely right that aesthetic terms are sometimes used to characterize action. Whether, however, there is an internal or conceptual or fundamental connection between judging an action in such aesthetic terms and judging it morally is a difficult question. In the early modern period, writers on ethics often divided between seeing morality in aesthetic terms and seeing it strictly in terms of moral relations. (David Gill has written on this issue in Philosophy Compass , starting from the historical question and then moving on to the more general question of whether morality is more like math or beauty--in other words, whether moral judgments are supposed to reflect eternal, immutable standards, or rather whether they are supposed to reflect one's 'taste'.) It's not clear to me, however, that there need be an opposition between characterizing an action as right or wrong and characterizing it as cruel or repulsive, for aesthetic judgments, like moral judgments, rest on reasons, and it is the...

This is a fascinating nest of issues!! It has been claimed that reasons are fundamentally different from causes, but it has also been claimed that reasons are causes--maybe a different kind of cause from the cause that makes it the case that putting a weight on a balance moves its arm downwards, but maybe not. (Even if reason is a indeed a cause of one's choice, it may not be the case that acting for reasons is therefore involuntary.) Regardless of whether reasons are or aren't causes, however, the question of whether reason alone can motivate action (or choice or decision), is a distinct, albeit related, matter. If reasons were causes, then it would seem that the mere recognition of a reason would be sufficient to move an agent to action. But of course it is often the case that one recognizes reasons and nevertheless does not act on them. Even knowing that smoking is bad for one's health, one may nevertheless continue to smoke. So, one might conclude, reasons aren't causes. However, perhaps...

It seems to me that in order for an agent to act rightly or wrongly, morally or immorally, s/he must be capable of having the concepts of right and wrong, moral and immoral: consequently, it seems to me that if certain animals were discovered to have the ability to have such concepts, then and only then could it be said that those animals were capable of right or wrong, moral or immoral actions. This is, it seems to me, an empirical question--albeit one that we may be unable to answer. But the mere behavior of animals does not, it seems to me, manifest the possession of such concepts.

The significance of options, or, as they are sometimes called in contemporary philosophical work on freedom, alternative possibilities, has received considerable attention. However, most of the attention has focused on the question of whether an agent needs to have options in order to be free. The reason for this focus is due to the fact that, intuitively, it seems that an agent must have options in order to be free, yet if determinism--the view that every event, including choices, is caused by some preceding event--is true, then it might seem that agents do not have options available to them. In the context of this debate, philosophers have sought to determine whether alternative possibilities are indeed necessary for freedom, and, if so, whether the commitment to alternative possibilities may be reconciled with determinism. This sort of attention to alternatives derives from their relation to the metaphysical question of free will; the question, however, in which you are interested, is distinct from...

This is a great question!! It would be wonderful if as many panelists as possible could respond, not only because I'm as curious as Jasper as to what people think, but also because I think that the responses would reveal much about the respondent's own philosophical temperament and priorities. (In this respect, the question is akin to the philosophical version of Desert Island Discs: which books would you bring to a desert island (excluding, of course, say, any collected works that fit into one volume, such as Plato's dialogues)?) Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals effectively ended centuries of philosophical approaches to morality and ever since its publication has been the subject of attacks and defenses. To this day, introductory ethics courses include consideration of the Groundwork --not bad for a book that Kant himself thought was merely a groundwork , a preliminary to a proper metaphysics of morals. (Kant of course not only wrote a metaphysics of morals; he also wrote a...

The remarks on the topic at the Philosophical Gourmet website seem to me to be generally on target. (For those remarks, click here .) Generally, I think that liberal arts colleges (such as Amherst, Williams, Oberlin, or the Claremont Colleges), or universities that do not have graduate students (e.g., Dartmouth), are better places not only for undergraduates interested in studying philosophy, but for undergraduates generally. (Full disclosure: I attended Amherst College as an undergraduate, and did my graduate work at Harvard, before moving on to Johns Hopkins and am now at UC Irvine.) I have been associated with a number of different kinds of institutions, from a small college, to a largish research university, to a small research university, to a very large research university. While I think that in principle, it is possible for an undergraduate to get a good education in philosophy--or any subject, for that matter--at any school. However, at a large research university, the student may...