Just adding one point. A case could be built, I imagine, for saying that doing wrong in the present makes it more likely that one will do wrong in the future. Or, similarly, one will be less able to resist the temptatation to do wrong in the future. (It might even be the case that suffering a wrong in the present makes it less likely that one will commit a wrong in the future.) These claims will be very similar to Socrates' harm argument: here, doing wrong harms one's character. So, a consequentialist would reason that not only the present act, but the increased or decreased likelihood of future acts, should be taken into account. Therefore, from the point of view of my decision whether to suffer or commit a wrong, suffering would generally be preferable on the consequentialist analysis. I can see many possible holes in this argument, but it's a start.

The sentence you quote is the first step in the most fully-stated version of Gorgias’ skeptical argument, designed to demonstrate that nothing exists or, at least, that the concept of existence is nonsense. It has a logical form something like this: 'If it is the case that A is a meaningful concept, then we must be able to say one of the following: either something is A, is not-A, or is both A and not-A.' This isn’t that far away from ‘If Chelsea play a football match, then either they will win, lose or draw’. If it can be shown that Chelsea neither won, nor lost, nor drew, then it can be concluded that they did not actually play a game at all. As such, the argument is a pretty straight-forward reductio ad absurdum . The argument against each of the three possibilities is interesting, I think, mainly for the discussion of infinity and creation. These discussions were commonplace in Greek philosophy subsequently and, indeed, they are strikingly like the dialectical arguments Kant analyses...

When you say that a 'soul' caused the event, I guess you are referring to (i) something distinctively mental (like a decision, a belief, a judgement), rather than something physical; (ii) something that belongs to or is inside that soul, rather than something extrinsic to it.The first of these takes the decision out of the realm of physical causation. It happens to be the case that when we think of causation, we usually think of physical causation. But, of course, there can be causation between mental events too: if I say ‘Mary had a little’, you think ‘lamb’. (Let’s not worry about HOW mental causation happens.) So, the soul makes a decision, but what caused the decision are the set of beliefs and moral convictions the soul has about its world, and what caused those beliefs or convictions is … and so on. If this chain of causes leads back to evidence or principle, and if relations between the beliefs/ convictions and my decision is rational however, then we are saying something interesting. Namely, that...

I think there are actually two questions here. First, the question about the value of 'subtlety'; second, about the value of 'showing' rather than telling. In other words, I'm not convinced that the latter is a definition of 'subtlety'; it seems to me that one can tell with subtlety, and show crudely. So, with apologies, I’ll just look at the showing/telling distinction. We’ll define ‘telling’ as straight-forward, careful, factual (or apparently factual) description. Showing, by contrast, means somehow to make the subject-matter seem real to us, as well as to make it seem important, affecting, and interesting. Since the subject may not be real at all, this involves creating an illusion. Probably the two are not entirely distinct: it may be impossible to show without also telling something. Now, what you call 'telling' is valued in many areas: in journalism, science, history, documentary film-making, and so forth. I suggest that an answer to your question may also be the answer...

"I call no man happy until he is dead," said Solon, which is a bit longer than most of us are willing to wait. The point, though, is that we tend to use 'happiness' in two quite different senses. The first ('I feel happy now') is an immediate feeling of satisfaction and well-being. The second ('His years in Brazil were happy ones') is an over-all sense of achievement, purpose, peace, or again well-being. It is entirely possible for someone to have frequent sensations of happiness, over a long period of time, and yet in looking back think of themselves as broadly unhappy; likewise, a happy life doesn't necessarily require many moments of happiness in the first sense. I suppose it is also possible that the feeling of happiness even in the first sense could be mistaken, for example if 'artificially' induced by a drug. Similarly, the discomfort of indigestion might get mistaken for hunger. However, whereas indigestion and hunger are clearly physiological states that can be separately measured, whether...

A good question. Every human production seems to have criteria according to which it can be judged successful or unsuccessful. For example, the 'latest Ben Stiller' movie is intended by its makers to make people laugh (at the right times), feel good, and thus buy cinema tickets and DVDs. The consumers are by and large happy to agree with this set of criteria. A product that matches its criteria is 'successful'. A film that everyone agrees is a comedy, but at which no one laughs, is unsuccessful. One problem arises when there is disagreement about success: one critic finds a movie funny, another finds it boring. Another problem is when more than one set of criteria are in use: the director wants to make a film about an issue, but the studio wants to sell tickets. Ben Stiller wants to play a serious role, but his public just want him to be funny. A comedy is deemed funny by many, but is condemned by others as demeaning to some group (thus, it is ‘unsuccessful’ according to criteria that...

Yes! Even if we agreed that a 'real emotion' was a necessary feature of all art (and that's a big 'if'), it might not be the only feature. For example, the emotion would still need to be well expressed or communicated; the product might need to avoid being banal or commonplace; we might think it needs also to show or teach us something. I would like to add that, supposing art does have something to do with emotion, there is still much to recommend Wordsworth's notion that poetry at least should have its origin in 'emotion recollected in tranquility'.

An interesting question, and well-observed. Of course, it might be the case that the term 'elegant', despite appearances, is being used in a non-aesthetic sense. For example, it might mean something like clear, simple or self-contained. In which case the preference for elegance of which you speak would be something more like a preference for things that are easy to understand, in one way or another. Also, one should point out that there is not actually a category on this site for 'ontology' or 'epistemology' either, presumably because of the designers' desire to avoid jargon. So much for the easy way out! Historically, 'aesthetics' refers to the branch of philosophy that deals with experiences like beauty and phenomena like art. To take your question seriously would mean to ask whether there must be an ineradicably aesthetic element within reasoning or knowledge -- i.e. well outside the presumptive domain of beauty and art. One implication of such a claim would be that the nature of...

That's a hugely complex, and interesting, question. The answer to the ‘does’ part of the question is certainly ‘yes’, at least in the field of practicing artists with which I am much more familiar. However, the mode of influence is often unpredictable and surprising. First of all, a philosopher who sets out to influence the way artists work will almost certainly be ignored. Second, it is not necessarily the particular field of aesthetics that has influence: the philosophy of language has been taken up by poets, the philosophy of perception by painters, political thought or the metaphysics of freedom in the music of Beethoven or Wagner. Third, the influence is generally two-way: artistic achievements challenge philosophers to ‘keep up’, and again not always in the field of aesthetics. The ‘should’ is trickier. In general, because an artist should have the freedom to find inspiration in pretty much anything; and if a philosopher provides inspiration to a scientist, so much the better too. But I...

I agree that the two designations do not have much geographical significance, or significance in the nature of problems pursued or methods employed. I also don't think style is a very consistent indicator. Finally, the differences between philosophers within one of these very loose groups might be more important than any differences between groups. Perhaps, therefore, the distinction should be retired from the language. If there is a difference that is more than anecdotal, it is historical in character. Please see my answer to question 926. http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/question/926 However, for the moment, we're stuck with it. The distinction has been institutionalised in ways beyond your or my control -- for example, in publishers' catalogues, in journal readership and subscriptions, in the categories of work presented at national and international conferences, or for the British Research Assessment Exercise.