How do philosophers or even lay people deal with conflicts or direct contradictions in their beliefs and values? For example I would be against the principle of torture, yet I feel there is a conflict as in some cases it could be possible to save more lives by torturing an individual. Hypothetically, if intelligence led to the capture of one of the perpetrators of the London Bombings before they had occurred, would people condone the use of torture if it meant we could get information as to where the other bombers were and thus potentially save lives? Is there any moral or ethical stance that doesn’t in some way have a “difficult” side with the potential for conflict/contradiction of beliefs? Again as an example is it possible to justify a vegetarian belief, yet be pro-choice and in favour of allowing abortions? C Anders

The types of dilemma you mention are good starting points for a positive moral theory. Our pre-reflective moral practice contains elements (rules of thumb, behavioral inclinations, moral intuitions and so on) that pull us in different directions in such cases; and a considered moral theory must somehow resolve such tensions if it is to be consistent. But what type of resolution is required? Suppose that we've arrived at a theoretical resolution to one of your dilemmas. For example, we decide that, on reflection, it is impermissible to inflict unnecessary suffering on sentient beings. (A full moral theory will have to contain much more than just this one principle; and I'm not, in any case, advocating this one (though it seems right to me).) This principle would rule out the eating of factory farmed animals, but not all abortions--for example, the many abortions that (a) do not involve a sentient being (as opposed to a potentiallly sentient being) or (b) might greatly decrease overall suffering (on the...

Why do people who study language put so much attention on the speaker's intentions? Isn't it obvious that we often don't say what we want?

Rats are cuddly. I mean...cats are, but I typed an 'r' instead of a 'c'. Or was I temporarily misguided about the names of certain small mammals? In any case, I said something I didn't intend. Sorry. But why should we judge that I said that rats are cuddly instead of judging that I said that cats are cuddly in an idiolect which uses 'rats' to pick out cats? The answer arguably comes in two stages: first, 'rats' picks out rats in English because there is an established convention to use that squiggle and those sounds to pick out rats, and this 'rat'-rat convention originated in and is sustained by the intentions (most of them merely implicit) of a community of speakers to employ this convention. Second, my utterances are to be interpreted according to this convention because I have entered into a situation in which what I say is goverened by the English language (which contains the 'rat'-rat convention even if I don't realize it). This account of how we can say something we don't intend is certainly...

Why do people (especially philosophers) engage in arguments which cannot be resolved?

Some philosophical issues are resolved, but many aren't--often the deepest ones. Philosophers nevertheless pursue abstract and difficult issues in the hope of solving them. And this isn't clearly misguided: a low success rate might result from the difficulty of the problems instead of from their in-principle unsolvability. Still, even if some enduring problems--the mind-body problem, the nature of free will, our knowledge of the external world, and so on--are not, in fact, completely resolvable, a lot is to be learned about the nature of mind, freedom, knowledge and also rationality by pursuing them anyway. And the pursuit is independently enjoyable and edifying. Or so I have found.

Hello, I have long wondered of some of the questions I have seen on this website and I am glad to see them answered after discovering this website. But I too have a question, more personal though. This message was not written with intent to be posted but I just wanted to ask everyone this. I have been following this site for a couple of weeks now. I am a sophomore in high school. My Algebra teacher often tells me things that make me "freak out". He once got so deep in this conversation about reality and the universe he just said "It gets to the point where you have to ask yourself, Is any of this any real?". My mind have been permanently scarred by thoughts of reality and I find myself shaking at night, scared, thinking of all these things especially while reading questions on the website. I have recently been showing my friend this site and he has had the same experiences as me. Now to get to the question. Have any of you almost "Lost your mind"? I mean like has your life been changed forever after...

I agree fully with all that Alex has said, but would add that the dizzying, off-the-rails experience that philosophical speculation can induce even in those of us who are middle-aged is, in my experience, one of the great joys of philosophy--the very reason for engaging in it. That sense that even the most fundamental assumptions of our daily life are open to refinement, speculation and even doubt is what makes the practice so exciting...even if, like many exciting activities, it sometimes makes you ill.

If every distinct mental state has a distinct ("corresponding") physical state, how could we tell which was causing which at any given moment? I'm sure that in certain contexts it would be more practical to answer that the mental state was caused by the physical state (e.g., "P is just irritable because he hasn't eaten"), and that in certain other contexts it would be more practical to answer that the mental state caused the physical (e.g., "P moved his hand because he decided to")--but is there any context-free answer to this question, i.e., the question as to whether the mind controls the body or whether the body controls the mind at any given moment?

Any answer to the mind-body problem struggles to account plausibly for the causal relations that seem obviously to run in both directions between mind and body. For the dualist, who holds that mental states and physical states are distinct, your question is accute: how could a mental state really cause a physical state if physical states bring about one another comprehensively (or even deterministically). The effects of a given mental state seem pre-empted by the physical state that corresponds with it. Some dualists--"epiphenomenalists"--embrace this problem and hold that mental states, though caused, are themselves causally ineffective. But many have found this problematic: for one thing it's unclear how we could know about mental states (or any entities) that have no causal effects; more damaging, though, is just the sense that this does a deep injustice to the way our mental states present themseleves to us from the inside. You seem to experience mental causation consciously when you decide to...

Does water float? Since I came up with this question, it has created quite a lot of debate as it's not as simple as it at first appears. If water doesn't float, then what is the water on the surface moving on, surely it floats as one bit of water on the top can be moving in the opposite direction to the water lower down. However, maybe water is an entity in its own right - something can't float upon itself can it? Help! From Huw Roberts, Wales, UK.

Yes, some of it can, even in its liquid state--if it rises to the top of a volume of water and stays there, and if that's what you mean by "floating in water". Doesn't hotter water tend to do this? All bets are off if you require that at least part of a thing rise above the surface of the volume in order for it to "float in water". I'm not moved much by the "entity in its own right" worry: some molecules , bits , portions or regions of water can float in others; and maybe some kinds of water float in others, just as some gases sink in others. This answer is particularly compelling once someone reminds us of the obvious...

Beneficent person (-A-) brings two people (-B- and -C-) together for the sake of helping each of them. Years later, -A- discovers that -B- caused harm to -C- at the time when -A- initiated the help. Does -A- have any responsibility for -C-'s being harmed?

Dear C, Causal responsibility or moral responsibility? Causal: Yes, A's actions were crucial in the causal-chain that brought about C's harm; were it not for A's actions, C (probably) would not have been harmed by B in that way. Moral: No, at least not as you've described things. A didn't wish or intend any harm to C, and, indeed, reasonably thought that bringing B and C together would be mutually beneficial. Too bad B turned out to be a bad egg, but that's not A's (moral) fault. Upshot: Moral responsibility implies causal responsiblity, but not vice versa. (Well, this case establishes the "not vice versa" part.) No doubt some clever philosopher will try to refute all that I've just demonstrated, but don't believe her. I am off the hook. Beneficently yours, A

If someone has already been mistakenly punished for a crime they have not committed, are they then allowed to go and commit that crime (without punishment)? For example, supposing person A is charged with the murder of B but wrongly so as B was still alive. Does A then have the right, once he's finished his sentence in jail, to go and kill B? He has already been punished for it so you can't punish him twice for the same act!!

No, of course not! ...or so I first thought; but then your argument moved me; but now I again think... No, of course not! A's first punishment was probably unjust--certainly unfortunate. But if A now kills B, then A should be punished anew on any of the four halfway-plausible and at-least-sometimes-applicable justifications for punishment that I can think of. Deterrence: If we don't punish A anew, then we'll experience a crime-wave of similarly pardoned ex-cons (assuming certain ugly things about human nature). Rehabilitation: Well, incarceration didn't exactly work any criminal tendencies out of A, did it? (And it doesn't generally seem to accomplish much rehabilitation, at least in the U.S. .) But if incarceration would promote rehabilitation, which A surely needs, then A should be incarcerated. Public safety: Things didn't go so well when A was let out, so we're all better off keeping him in the slammer. Retribution: Here's where your...

If it turned out that colours had four dimensions instead of the perceived three, would that mean that colours we see now do not exist?

Suppose that colors have a fourth dimension to which we, humans, are not sensitive. As a matter of fact, I gather that this is true, and that certain birds are now thought to be sensitive to just such an additional dimension. I don't see why this would challenge the existence of the colors we now see. The colors are there, it's just that we're not sensitive to all their aspects. But this answer assumes a sort of "color objectivism"--that is, that colors are properties out there in the world (certain reflectance patterns perhaps) that obtain independently of our seeing them. Suppose instead that we think of colors more subjectively, as existing in our minds--perhaps as qualitative features of our color-experiences. (I don't think this is the correct way to think of colors, but others do, and certainly some of our color-talk seems to embody this view.) If we think of colors this way (call them "subjective-colors"), then the subjective-colors of the birds--what it's like to have their color-experiences-...

If you watch a car drive away from you down a straight road, it appears to get smaller as it gets farther away. We know that it doesn't *really* get smaller, it only *appears* to get smaller. So we distinguish between the real size of the car and the apparent size (at a particular distance). I have two problems with this. First, at what distance do we see the real size; or, at what distance does the apparent size equal the real size? Second, the real car is supposedly outside our heads and the apparent car is supposedly an image of the real car, and inside our heads. But the car we actually see is (a) outside our heads, so real, and (b) changing its size with distance, so an image inside our heads: but how can it be both?

There are tensions here, I agree, though I think they reside in the way that we talk about appearances rather than in the appearance/reality distinction itself--at least as it applies to cars. Size is an intrinsic property of a car if any property is--that is, a car's size, like its shape, depends entirely upon the way it alone is, and not upon what may or may not hold in the world around it. Apparent-size, by contrast, is a non-intrinsic or relational property of a car, and subtly so: a car's apparent-size depends not just upon the car's size, but also upon the relative location of the relevant viewer. Thus, the car's apparent-size (to Fred) can shrink if the car shrinks in size, but also (and using less magic) if Fred and the car move apart so that light from the car subtends a smaller angle in Fred's visual field (as they say). So, one and the same real car can consistently maintain its size and change its apparent-size through changes only in the relative position of the viewer. This is...

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