Recent Responses
Religions are frequently criticised for the bad conduct of their members or office bearers. And some go so far as to say that this behaviour renders religious belief untenable. I have always believed that since their tenets do not support or encourage this bad conduct such bad behaviour is not a valid criticism of religion. That it is simply the normal outcome of behavioural variation in the human population which says nothing about the validity of religious beliefs. Is this a valid line of reasoning? Peter S.
Peter Smith
May 26, 2010
(changed May 26, 2010)
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We surely need to distinguish between (a) bad conduct that happens despite the professed beliefs of the sinner (well, we are all human and our actions too often fall short of our own ideals, whether religiously framed or more secular), and (b) bad deeds that result from someone following through the... Read more
Hi, I just started grad school in philosophy, and I've found that nothing I've done in undergrad has truly prepared me for this; specifically, I had a lot of guidance when writing my papers. I was given specific questions that helped me to give the Prof. what he wanted. My philosophy 101 class was taught by a grad student (in the midst of defending his own dissertation) who gave us more material than we could reasonably digest while in our early 20s. When left largely to my own devices, I focused more on the application of the philosophy in politics rather than the semantics, and for the most part, I did well and was happy about it. Now I'm trying to write a paper with the instructions that I discuss the concept of being for 25 pages from Plato's Sophist. I'm not allowed to use outside sources or reference outside of the context of the text or the class. Everyone else in my program seems to know what they're doing. I've talked to my professor and some of my peers at some length (though I was too embarrassed to reveal the extent of my perplexity about doing this), but I still feel very much adrift. How do people write crazy long seminar papers about 2 pages worth of text? How to I crack open the brain of the philosopher and write substantively rather than b.s.? Is there a special rubric that I could follow, even if it's a loose one? Thanks!
Peter Smith
May 26, 2010
(changed May 26, 2010)
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It is rather difficult to believe that you have correctly describe your assigned task -- is it really to write at length about the notion of being in the Sophist without consulting any commentaries or interpretative essays? Well, not to beat about the bush, that project strikes me as simply ludicrous... Read more
Are there philosophers who maintain a distinction between what is "true" and what is "useful"? It seems that much of analytical philosophy and higher mathematics is true without being of much use, even to scientists. Scientists and engineers, on the other had, come up with many useful ideas whose truth values may be doubted by the abstract thinkers. In other words, does anyone in philosophy speak of useful untruths or useless truths?
Peter Smith
May 26, 2010
(changed May 26, 2010)
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Isn't it the other way about? Only a small number of philosophers would not maintain the distinction! For as you remark, lots of truths aren't useful in any ordinary sense (e.g. there is a fact of the matter about whether the number of grains in the rice jar yesterday was odd or even -- but the truth... Read more
When you find yourself fixated on an idea in philosophy--a better definition of justice, an error in Hume's logic, or the result of some paradigm shift between one philosophical era and another--do you become a moron? It would be pretentious to call myself a philosopher, but I spend quite a bit of time reading and trying to figure out whether or not my favorite philosophers made as much sense as they seem to at first glance; the more headway I make, the more often I stare blankly at the microwave trying to figure out what buttons to push to heat up my coffee. Do real philosophers go through this? Or do you function better in the world when you have been wrestling with brain puzzles?
Mitch Green
May 26, 2010
(changed May 26, 2010)
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Thanks for your good question! In answer to, "Do real philosophers go through this?", the answer is yes, definitely. Any intellectually challenging problem tends to make a person less able to get along practically. This has been observed as far back as in Ancient Greece with Aristophanes making f... Read more
Religions are frequently criticised for the bad conduct of their members or office bearers. And some go so far as to say that this behaviour renders religious belief untenable. I have always believed that since their tenets do not support or encourage this bad conduct such bad behaviour is not a valid criticism of religion. That it is simply the normal outcome of behavioural variation in the human population which says nothing about the validity of religious beliefs. Is this a valid line of reasoning? Peter S.
Peter Smith
May 26, 2010
(changed May 26, 2010)
Permalink
We surely need to distinguish between (a) bad conduct that happens despite the professed beliefs of the sinner (well, we are all human and our actions too often fall short of our own ideals, whether religiously framed or more secular), and (b) bad deeds that result from someone following through the... Read more
I just finished "Philosophical Investigations" and I found that Wittgenstein's writing, ironically, was difficult to understand. Perhaps this is because I am a neophyte to the discipline. I do feel he could have written better. My question is: Did Wittgenstein write in such a fashion in order to show the problems of language?
Andrew Pessin
May 26, 2010
(changed May 26, 2010)
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I'm not a Wittgenstein expert, but based on what I do know about his work and his life I would judge that the answer is no. Most of his published writings, including the Philosophical Investigations, were not quite written for publication in the ordinary way -- rather they consist of his posthumou... Read more
Is it possible to prove that something cannot be derived (considering only well-formed-formulas) in a natural derivation system? I mean a premise P cannot yield the conclusion Q since there isn't any logical rule that justifies the inference but how can someone prove this?
Peter Smith
May 24, 2010
(changed May 24, 2010)
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We can also sometimes prove non-derivability results by purely "combinatorial" arguments. Here's a well-known toy example, due to Douglas Hofstadter.
Consider a derivation system which uses just the symbols M, I, and U which can be combined to produce strings of symbols in any way you like, e.g. MI,... Read more
Why can’t science tell us what morality ‘is’? In the trivial sense, science can certainly catalog the diversity, commonalities, and contradictions of cultural moral standards and moral behaviors. But science is very good at teasing out underlying principles. What forbids determining such principles (if any exist) using the normal methods of science? For instance, we might propose an observation like “Almost all moral behaviors are strategies for increasing, on average, the synergistic benefits of cooperation and are unselfish at least in the short term” as an hypothesis about what moral behaviors ‘are’. Then we could evaluate its provisional ‘truth’ as a matter of science by how well this hypothesis meets criteria for 1) explanatory power for the diversity, commonalities, and contradictions of moral standards, 2) explanatory power for puzzles about moral behavior, 3) predictive power for moral intuitions, 4) universality, 5) no contradictions with known facts, and so forth. Of course, provisional ‘truth’ as a matter of science provides no source of justificatory force (‘oughts’ or ‘bindingness’) for an individual to accept the burdens of a definition of morality when the individual expects that to be against their best interest. But look at the special case of this hypothesis. It defines moral behaviors as, on average, producing benefits (for the individual as well as the group). What if for this sort of hypothesis, it would be normally a rational choice (that is expected to best meet needs and desires) if individuals ACCEPTED the burdens of acting morally even when based on their confused perceptions and poor prediction capability, they expected, in the moment, that doing so would be against their best interest? That is, they might rationally choose the moral wisdom of the ages as a basis for acting rather than their confused perceptions of the moment. I’d love for moral philosophy to tell us conclusively what moral behavior ‘ought’ to be. But in the meantime, couldn’t it be useful to see what science tells us the underlying principles of moral behavior ‘are’?
Richard Heck
May 21, 2010
(changed May 21, 2010)
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I think science can probably tell us lots of things about how people reason morally, that is, how they think about what they ought to do. And it might well be interesting to look at cross-cultural differences, and perhaps even more interesting to look for cross-cultural similarities, that is, "moral... Read more
Is it ok to kill ants for fun.
Oliver Leaman
June 4, 2010
(changed June 4, 2010)
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I think there is a difference between saying that all that matters is pleasure and pain, and thinking that pleasure and pain is a good place to start when looking at such issues. If it is an open question whether ants feel pain, then we should not kill them, if that might hurt them, it seems to me.... Read more
I think that most of us have had the experience of making a promise to ourselves. A person might promise herself that she will study harder next semester, for instance, or quit smoking. Is it immoral to break promises to oneself? Is it just less bad than breaking promises to other people, or equally as bad?
Eddy Nahmias
May 21, 2010
(changed May 21, 2010)
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That's a really fantastic question! It raises interesting questions about how to understand promises and the moral obligations they impose (a much-discussed topic in philosophy) and also about how to understand personal identity through time (when I promise myself I'll do X in the future, is the pr... Read more