Human beings have evolved similar physical attributes over time. Though there is some genetic variation among individuals, we share many traits. But isn't it also possible that, as a result of our common evolutionary heritage, we share similar emotional and moral traits as well? If we all have basically similar emotional machinery, why couldn't we appeal to the general constellation of desires that most of us share, and use them to construct a universal ethics? If the good is what makes us happy, and happiness is the fulfillment of various desires, and if humans have similar desires because we share evolved mental traits, then why couldn't an appeal to those traits in the search for moral agreement? Just as medical experts can give general advice about physical health because most humans share similar physical bodies, why can't psychologists and ethicists give general advice about morality based upon our shared mental traits?

We do have a lot in common psychologically, and all of that matters when we're trying to decide what's right and wrong. And the more we know about the psychological effects of how we treat people, the more information we'll have to feed into our ethical decisions. Psychologists have relevant things to say, as do doctors and, for that matter, economists, massage therapists, and various other specialists. Whether or not knowing everything about what makes people happy would settle all ethical questions, however, is another matter. (Not sure if you were suggesting it would.) For example: suppose that there are things that would make me happy at your expense. Most of us don't think it's just a matter of comparing the sum of my potential pleasure to the sum of your potential pain. Questions about fairness, for example, will also matter, and psychologists have no special expertise in sorting out what's fair. (Neither do most philosophers, for that matter.) There's also room to argue about...

As a young philosophy fanatic attempting to get to grips with the incumbent philosophical zeitgeist's obsession with logic as the source and answer to all its 'problems', I am having trouble finding any substantial reason for the unwavering authority and importance with which this analytic and logical character is treated within the whole of philosophical academia. Where is the incontestible evidence for such an incontestible reverence of such fundamental logical principles as the law of non-contradiction, other than within human intuition and common sense?

Before getting to your question, just an observation: all the philosophers I know believe that they should reason well and steer clear of contradiction, but I don't know any who think that logic is either the source of or the answer to all our philosophical problems. In any case, I'm not sure what would do the trick here. If I'm going to give you "evidence" for the law of non-contradiction, then presumably I'm going to have to reason from the evidence. And I don't know how to reason to the conclusion that one thing is so rather than another unless I take it for granted that contradictions can't be true. Unless you already assume the law of non-contradiction, you could reply to any argument I give for it by saying "I agree it's also true that sometimes a statement and its denial both hold. And in particular, even though the law of contradiction is true, it's also false." I don't really know what would count as "evidence" that the law of non-contradiction is true -- especially if I'm not allowed...

Recently, I have reached the conclusion that I no longer 'believe in science'. Many people have found this hard to understand, and I myself am struggling with the concept. Is it even possible to disregard something which so many hold in such high esteem? I feel that the basis for my beliefs, or lack thereof, lies with the question of infallibility. Upon broaching the topic with friends from my philosophy class, I was told that not believing in science was simply not an option. I had to believe in it, because it was all around me. My counter argument was that science was elitist, something for the select few, in that there are very few people who actually 'know the truth'. One friend in particular pointed out that I had to believe in gravity, as it was acting on me all the time, and that the clothes I was wearing and the dye I use in my hair were all products of science. I remain unconvinced though, as neither my friend, nor anyone I know, can actually prove these beliefs they regard so highly. Has no one...

My brief reply would be that I don't "believe in science" either. But I do believe that for many questions, science provides our best way of getting at the likely answers. And I also believe that in any number of cases, the most reasonable belief by far is that science has gotten it right. Are some illnesses caused by viruses? The evidence seems pretty overwhelming. Are there electrons? As some people like to point out, we've even learned how to manipulate them. Are water molecules made of hydrogen and oxygen? What reason is there to think not? The list could go on and on. Not everything that science says or has had to say is true. But then, I'm not aware of any infallible sources of knowledge, and science doesn't claim to be infallible. On the contrary, science takes much more seriously than people are usually inclined to that we are indeed fallible, and so we need to be careful when it comes to settling difficult empirical issues. But for a lareg range of questions, I can't even begin to...

If we imagine an intelligent alien race, could we also imagine philosophical questions they have come up with that have eluded us and vice versa? Or are all philosophical debates necessarily universal? My understanding of our application of philosophical analysis is that it is all-encompassing and would even have to apply to any god or advanced alien civilization (I mean the method not the conclusions). Or can something else be conceived? NB I write this as an arch-skeptic and atheist.

Hi, I'm not entirely sure what the "arch-skeptic and atheist" bit is about, since I'm not sure how it bears on your question. But here are a couple of thoughts. First, just what counts as philosophy and what sorts of questions belong to philosophy is a matter of dispute. Tjough meta-philosophy isn't a hot topic in my neck of the woods, it's still true that philosophers don't entirely agree about the nature of their discipline. That means that they don't entirely agree about method. Further, method and content may not be easily separated in all cases. (For example: someone doing phil of math may need to draw on methods that have to do with the particular nature of math, and that wouldn't be likely to come up in philosophy of art, for example.) Philosophy seems to me to be like most disciplines. It doesn't have an "essence," and it's not likely that there will be a useful "sufficient and necessary condition"-style account of what it is. It's another of the many cases of what gets called a ...

My friend and I were having a discussion about racism. He made a claim to me that he would never date a black woman, but that he wasn't racist. Now, to me, that seems like a racist comment. But he says that I am misunderstanding him. These are his arguments: "I do not find black women attractive, and so I would not date one. You might call me racist then, but if I said I didn't like women with brown hair, or women with gray eyes, does that necessarily mean that I am discriminating against women with those attributes? It would just mean that I wouldn't consider a woman with gray eyes or brown hair a prospect for a sexual relationship. Furthermore, I could say that you don't wish to have sex with men, and by your logic, that would make you sexist against men." His arguments are persuasive, but I find something very wrong with them. It seems to me that if someone is otherwise compatible with you, it shouldn't matter what race they are (or, in fact, if they had freckles or blond hair, et cetera). ...

Your friend represents you as offering a bad argument: people who saythey're unattracted to people with characteristic X are prejudiced;your friend says he's unattracted to black women; hence, your friendsays, you conclude that he's prejudiced. But that doesn't strike me asa plausible diagnosis of what's going on. The problem isn't that you are relying on the bad argument your friend accuses you of. The problem is that yourfriend's supposed preferences are awfully hard to credit. The obvious question to put to your friend is this: does he find all women with dark complexions sexually unattractive? If he says yes, then he might be telling the truth, but it's not easy to believe. If he says no, then things are equally puzzling: among people conventionally labeled "black," there is a wide, vast variety. Could it really be that there's something that all black women have in common that makes them unattractive to your friend? What could it possibly be? And so we have a puzzle. Your friend...

Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Would my life be less valuable if I chose not to examine it? If I simply did everything according to the conventions and mores of my society, would my life be less valuable than someone who questioned these things deeply?

A good question! In the most important sense, the answer is no. But theterritory is a bit complicated. Start with the famous quote from Socrates. If we think about it, we'rebound to say that many unexamined lives are unquestionably worth living.Socrates' comment is hyperbole at best and perhaps something much worse. Somepeople just don't have the temperament for reflection. But that doesn't meanthey can't be kind, generous and decent, it doesn't mean that they can't leadsatisfying lives, it doesn't mean that the world would have been better withoutthem, and it certainly doesn't mean that they might as well not have lived atall. Of course, we're all obliged -- insofar as we're able -- to do some localthinking. At the least, we're sometimes obliged to think about the consequencesof our actions for others. We're sometimes obliged to ask whether our motiveswould stand up to scrutiny. More generally, we're obliged to do what's right,and that sometimes calls for a certain amount of self...

What, precisely, is requested when the question "What is X" is asked?

It depends, doesn't it? If the question is "What is that funny-looking gizmo?" it's likely that the person simply doesn't recognize the sort of thing s/he's seeing. The answer might be "It's a pressure cooker weight" or "it's a memory chip." Sometimes "What is X?" is a way of asking for an explanation of the meaning or reference of a word, as in "What is a basilisk?" (Answer, as any Harry Potter reader knows: it's a giant lizardly sort of beast that can kill you simply by staring into your eyes.) Perhaps what you have in mind is a question about the "essential properties" of something -- about the nature of some kind of thing or stuff. A sample question might be "What is water?" and the candidate answer might be "Water is H 2 O." The idea would be that this is the nature of water -- the kind of stuff it is. If this really is the nature or water, then nothing could count as water unless it was H 2 O, and for reasons that aren't simply linguistic. However, philosophers won't all agree about...

Is religion based around God or can people have a religion without believing in God?

Religion seems to be what is sometimes called a "family resemblance" concept. If we try to tie it up in a neat definition that draws sharp lines between religions and non-religions, we're likely to fail. Instead, what we find is that there are various things we refer to as religions that resemble one another in a variety of ways. For example: although it would be a mistake to say that Buddhism avoids all notions of the supernatural, the idea of a creator God simply isn't part of any form of Buddhism that I've ever heard of. But Buddhism in its various forms is usually counted as a religion. There are many Unitarians who don't believe in God, but think of themselves as religious and as belonging to a religion. Even within familiar theistic traditions there are some interesting variations. The Christian theologian Paul Tillich wasn't a theist by any conventional accounting; his notion of the "Ground of Being" is not much like what most people thinnk of when they think of God. So the answer seems to be...

The Times reports that Martin Tankleff was just granted a second trial after spending 17 years in prison for a crime that he very likely didn't commit. If he's found not guilty, or, more to the point, if he's in fact not guilty, why doesn't he have the right to commit 17 years' worth of crimes "free of charge"? OK, maybe not 17 full years' worth, but you'd admit, I hope, that at least some of the jurisprudence of punishment is based on retribution, so can you discuss the role of his time served in future punishment deliberations? For instance, say he happens to commit a crime later in life, not out of some sense of entitlement, but for any of the other "normal" reasons (like passion!): how relevant should his time served be?

My impulse is to say that we're mixing apples and eggnog. It's true that retribution is part of the way we thinkabout punishment. But however we understand retribution, it's hard tosee how the State's wrong against you would make it okay for you to rob me or beat me up. After all, even though I'm part of the body politic, qua private citizen, I don't represent the state. And in any case, robbery, embezzlement, assault and various sorts of mayhem are the kinds of things we should shy away from. Giving someone a free pass on future misdeeds because of past mistreatment by the State seems to miss that point. If Mr. Tankleff is indeed found not guilty, then it's not unreasonable to think that he should receive some sort of compensation. But 17 years (or even 17 days) of punishment-free crime doesn't seem like the right way to go. Things being what they are (no time machines, no guaranteed life-extending potions...) monetary compensation sounds like a much better idea, even though it...

I thought that modern philosophy tended towards the tentative, the open-ended, and the permanent possibility of error, yet some philosophers on this site answer questions, usually on moral issues, with an almost dogmatic certainty worthy of Pope Ratzinger. How come?

Without discussing specific posts (though I dare say I'm one of the people who fit your bill), it might be something like this: just as some things are pretty clearly true or false, some things are pretty clearly right or wrong. And if the question posed is "first-level" -- i.e., one that asks about the rightness of wrongness of some particular act or policy, rather than raises the question of whether there's really any difference between right and wrong -- then there's not much point in pretending that something is unclear or up for grabs when it doesn't really seem to be. Suppose the question was whether it's okay for Robert Mugabe to run Zimbabwe the way he does, because after all, he has the power to do it, and perhaps might makes right. (Far as I know, no one has ever said that on this board...) I may not know what the best meta-ethical theory is, but if I have any moral knowledge at all, I know that what Mugabe is up to is wrong. So why shilly-shally? Indeed, it's tempting to to say that anyone...

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