Scholars have been deeply divided over how we are supposed to understand Plato's writings in general, and the Republic in particular. Some have gone so far as to suggest that Plato intended the Republic as a kind of comedy--poking fun at utopian thought by showing how outrageous and contrary to common sense it inevitably ends up. But I think most scholars are inclined to take what Plato says more seriously, and this more sober approach seems to be supported by the way Aristotle seems to have read and understood the Republic : Aristotle plainly took it seriously enough to criticise it carefully and searchingly. But I personally think there is something like a middle ground here--Plato intends his dialogues to work as "thought-experiments," in which hypotheses and ways of conceiving of problems are posed for discussion, criticism, and possible amendment. And I am convinced the Republic is like this--a thought-experiment. And yes, in this particular thought-experiment, Plato is...

There is yet another way to doubt what Descartes supposed we could know with certainty. It seems that one might also wonder if we might be fallible even in the ways in which we categorize our own experiences. Descartes imagines a very powerful malin genie (an evil demon) who would delight in confusing us about anything and everything. Couldn't such a being even confuse us about how to categorize experiences as thoughts (rather than, say, headaches or tickles). To identify something as a thought (and not a headache or a tickle), we have to be able to rely on the conceptual apparatus by which we make such distinctions. It is not obvious that our conceptual apparatus on this or any other subject is invulnerable to error or confusion--especially given the best efforts of some evil divinity!

Yours is a tough question and I doubt that you will find much to reassure you in my reply. I think that if there is any lesson to learn from the history of philosophy, it is that fully adequate conceptions of such things as justice--and for that matter everything else that philosophers have worried about for eons--are not likely to be forthcoming any time soon. That most certainly does not mean that there can be no fully adequate analyses of such things. But time has proven these things to be fabulously complex, and even as we make progress in the answers we supply to such questions--and I think we have made enormous progress--that progress has not yet (and does not promise any time soon) to bear the fruit of knowledge , to answer once and for all the questions we have asked for so long now. I think that if anything is likely to help us to do a better job in such areas (outside our profession as within it) it is to take very seriously and to be acutely aware of our own relative and...

Philosophy can offer a little hope--but only to those who manage to listen or read philosophy, and those are probably not the ones who need the help the most. As with so many things, the only real hope for education is that people will become more willing to make the sacrifices necessary to make improvements to what we are doing now. In society, that eventually becomes a matter of our willingness to spend money on education--through taxes for public education, though tuition for private education, to pay for higher salaries and better working conditions, so the best and brightest will find teaching an attractive option, and to diminish class sizes to make sure that students get the kinds of access they need to more personalized instruction. As long as our society (and others) are bent on trying to make as much money as possible, while spending as little as possible on education (or worse, spending so much on other things that--even if we wanted to--we wouldn't have an adequate amount left for...

Where's Fred Dretske when we need him? Seriously, for a very well worked-out answer to this question, go find Fred Dretske's book, Knowledge and the Flow of Information (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981).

I just responded to two other questions that are really related to this one, so please have a look at my replies to those others. But to focus briefly on your question, I would say that it really depends upon what you mean by "self-improvement." This can come in loads of forms, of course, and some of them look pretty trivial to me. Consider the following forms of "self-improvement": Getting richer Cosmetic surgery Coloring one's hair Getting a tattoo Learning how to use a new computer program Lifting weights to get more "buff" I don't mean to suggest that none of these can bring real improvement to a life--but I do tend to doubt that such improvements are really the most significant kinds. But if one bcomes dedicated to such self-improvements as, for example, becoming better educated, or becoming more effectively involved in one's community, or becoming a kinder or more understanding person, then I really do think that the pursuit of self-improvement can itself be valuable,...

Hello Nick from another Nick. In a sense, your question is more one of psychology than philosophy. We philosophers do not so much ask and answer questions about why people actually do things or act the way they do, so much as to inquire about how, perhaps, we should do things, or how we might do them better than we do them now. Valuing material goods even more than life itself, I think most (if not all) philosophers would agree, is a very serious and ultimately self-defeating ethical error. It is, very simply, to assign greater value to what is in fact far less valuable. But there may be another error here, as well--if we think that life has intrinsic value (as many but not all philosophers do), then valuing wealth over life itself is to mistake something that has only instrumental value--value, that is, only for the pursuit or acquisition of something else that is valuable--for something that is intrinsically valuable (valuable, that is, just in and of itself and not only...

It really depends upon what you mean by "happiness." If you mean the somewhat fleeting and temporary experience (like the "happy" in "happy hour"), I think a life aimed at happiness would turn out to be fairly meaningless and empty. But if by "happiness" you mean something like "flourishing as a human being" or "having a complete and full life" or something like this, then it does seem like a reasonable overall aim in life. Philosophers who think that this aim can be one's guiding aim in life (and the aim from which all value in a human life flows) are called "eudaimonists," from the ancient Greek word, eudaimonia . Most ancient Greek philosophers thought that eudaimonia (which is generally translated as "happiness") was and should be the guiding principle and the ultimate aim of human life. If you would like to see a fine example of how a serious ethical work takes this position, I would enthusiastically recommend Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics , especially when he lays out his...

I agree with Peter, but would mention a famous debate on just this subject--the debate between William James (in his famous essay, "The Will to Believe"), who contends that there can be non-evidential reasons for certain kinds of belief of the sort you seem to be talking about, and W. K. Clifford in "The Ethics of Belief."

Different general approaches to ethics may provide different answers to this question. Speaking very broadly, there have been three basic approaches to ethical theory. Kant (and others like him, called "deontologists") will argue that the correct way to view ethics is by formulating rules that may be applied universally. In this approach, dishonest will always be bad--though in some cases it might be the lesser of two evils. J. S. Mill (and others like him, called "consequentialists" or more narrowly "utilitarians") will approach ethical questions with a view to what consequences will flow from the act in question (or else from the rules they formulate that will tell us how to act). In this approach, lying can sometimes be good because it will have consequences that have greater utility, all things considered, than telling the truth. Aristotle (and others like him, called virtue theorists) will say that the primary bearer of value is the character of the agent, and not the actions the agent performs...