Recent Responses
Is determinism rational? Since there is no evidence to prove/disprove the existence of 'fate', is it rational to have a determinist point of view? Or is there evidence and I am merely ignorant on the subject?
Eddy Nahmias
December 10, 2009
(changed December 10, 2009)
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Determinism is the thesis that a complete description of the universe at one time and the laws of nature logically entails a complete description of the universe at any later time. Though this definition does not talk about causation, determinism is also often understood to mean that ever... Read more
I understand that P2P software, such as limewire, is unethical when one downloads or shares files that are copyrighted, because it violates several ethical theories. But my question is when one downloads non-copyrighted material, then this is deemed ethical. But i need help to use an ethical theory such as Kant's deontological theory, utilitarianism, Rawls (Rights) Theory, or Virtue Theory. Can you please use one of these theories to support that downloading non-copyrighted music via P2P IS ethical?
Andrew N. Carpenter
December 8, 2009
(changed December 8, 2009)
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I'm not sure exactly what sort of help you need to be able to answer yourquestion and, because your query reads like a course assignment, I'm alsounsure what kind of help I ought to give to you. Assuming you are a philosophystudent completing a course assignment, here is some general... Read more
Recently a philosopher replied: "Many slaveholders didn't think that what they were doing was morally wrong, but it was." The implication is that the slaveholders had a merely "subjective", local standard of conduct, but the philosopher has an "objective", universal one that allows her to see the limits of the slaveholder's conscience. How does one achieve this objective standard and how can one test it to see if it isn't only a different form of subjectivism?
Jasper Reid
December 5, 2009
(changed December 5, 2009)
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First of all, a spot of jargon. Philosophers often draw a distinction between (i) the field of 'ethics' (or sometimes 'normative ethics'), which is basically concerned with the rightness and wrongness of various types of behaviour; and (ii) that of 'meta-ethics', which is not really concerned... Read more
I'm currently reading Plato's Republic, I'm about half way through the 4th book at the moment. My problem is that generally I find that it seems to be more of a historical relection of ancient Greece than a philosophical one. So my question is, are the dialogues of Plato still of philosophical relevance today? And if so should someone with no formal training in philosophy approach them, without discarding the vast majority of the content as irrelevant?
Jasper Reid
December 5, 2009
(changed December 5, 2009)
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Stick with it. When I first read the Republic, I initially shared your disappointment -- it just didn't seem to live up to its reputation. The first couple of books in particular struck me as deathly dull: but I found that it did gradually pick up as it went along. In the later books, althoug... Read more
Dear established philosophers, I would like to be an established, professional philosopher some day, by which I mean I want to teach philosophy in a university. I have studied history at degree level but realised in my last year that philosophy is for me. I have been accepted to study for an MA in History of Philosophy at King College London. I have heard that the road to being an academic philosopher can be a difficult one. This question may be unanswerable to any of you for any number of reasons, but what should my next step be? What should I being doing in the run up to, and during, my MA to improve my chances? Is a PhD the best, or only, thing to do after an MA? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Peter Smith
December 5, 2009
(changed December 5, 2009)
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It sounds as if you have relatively little background in philosophy. So I would suggest that, after doing an MA in the History of Philosophy, it would be wise to do another one in contemporary philosophy before doing a PhD, both for intellectual and for career purposes. Intellectually, becaus... Read more
Dear established philosophers, I would like to be an established, professional philosopher some day, by which I mean I want to teach philosophy in a university. I have studied history at degree level but realised in my last year that philosophy is for me. I have been accepted to study for an MA in History of Philosophy at King College London. I have heard that the road to being an academic philosopher can be a difficult one. This question may be unanswerable to any of you for any number of reasons, but what should my next step be? What should I being doing in the run up to, and during, my MA to improve my chances? Is a PhD the best, or only, thing to do after an MA? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Peter Smith
December 5, 2009
(changed December 5, 2009)
Permalink
It sounds as if you have relatively little background in philosophy. So I would suggest that, after doing an MA in the History of Philosophy, it would be wise to do another one in contemporary philosophy before doing a PhD, both for intellectual and for career purposes. Intellectually, becaus... Read more
In the later 1700's, many famous philosophers (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) held the 'transparency thesis', the view that all important mental contents could only be conscious. Is this position still defensible?
Amy Kind
December 10, 2009
(changed December 10, 2009)
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You might want to take a look at some of the recent work of John Searle, such as The Rediscovery of the Mind. Searle argues there that "The notion of an unconscious mental states implies accessibility to consciousness. We have no notion of the unconscious except as that which is potentially... Read more
Is it logically possible to have a dream within a dream? Or is there, as it were, only one "level" of dreaming?
Jonathan Westphal
December 4, 2009
(changed December 4, 2009)
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If I dream that I am in Lisbon, it does not follow that I am, and I may not be. Nor does it follow that I am not, of course. But if I say that I dreamed that I was in Lisbon last night, this may be one way of saying that I was not in Lisbon. If then I say that I dreamed (in a "ground-fl... Read more
Hello there, I have a question about why exactly there's a problem or a paradox with the concept of Bleen and Grue from N. Goodman's writings on the New Riddle of Induction. I understand that at time T, the color is Bleen (or Grue) and that any prediction we make about a color of some object (for example) can be green or blue- and it will be right. Is that the essence of the paradox? Can I claim that it is similar to Schrodinger's cat paradox? If we examine an object after time T, and it's green then its original color should be named Bleen, but I have hard time understanding why it is so?
Marc Lange
December 3, 2009
(changed December 3, 2009)
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The paradox concerns the logic by which we are justified in forming our expectations about the future. Suppose we observe a bunch of emeralds and at the time that we observe them, each is green. This evidence is generally thought to support our expectation that on the first occasion on which w... Read more
Is sadism immoral?
Eddy Nahmias
November 30, 2009
(changed November 30, 2009)
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Yes, especially if it involves the actual infliction of pain on someone else, not just getting pleasure from watching real or fake depictions of people in pain. On every theory of morality, gratuitous or unnecessary pain is wrong and should be avoided. Some theories try to ground that mo... Read more