One can perhaps say a similar thing re all attempts to gain knowledge: "what we judge to be true of the world is ultimately a product of our (current) standards for gaining knowledge, the theories/procedures we currently judge to be best. Those standards may be relative between cultures, and almost certainly are relative between different times/eras." But here we typically DO say "so what?", in effect: we believe whatever our current best theories tell us to believe, recognizing that later theories may tell us to believe something else. And if that's good enough for knowledge in general, why shouldn't it be good enough in ethics as well? (I take your phrasing of your question to suggest you don't think the 'so what?' answer is quite good enough; my response is meant to shore it up a bit by noting that it's all we ever have, in general, so it better be good enough or else!) hope that's useful. ap

Why mention the Holocaust example specifically? Any worries about the "certainty" of historical knowledge would equally apply to every single piece of historical knowledge. Of course, what makes the Holocaust example stand out is that it does get challenged -- by people who have typically deeper agendas -- so perhaps what you should be asking is this: whenever you read about any historical event, and whenever you find people challenging conventional historical events, can you distinguish what is driven by "agenda" and what is driven by actual consideration of the available "facts"? (An excellent general book on the subject is the recent book "Voodoo Histories", which is a study of various conspiracy theories (including Holocaust denial and others), trying to articulate how/when people with agendas choose to selectively apply ordinary standards of reason and evidence ......) best, Andrew

wow, great and deep question(s). I don't have time for an appropriately thoughtful reply right now, but I would mention C. S. Lewis's book on "miracles" at least to raise a question (from a religious perspective) about the assumptions in the first part of your message. Lewis thinks the laws of nature specify how things 'naturally' work when nothing supernatural intervenes, but that a supernatural being might well intervene without employing any (natural) mechanism .... So, basically, God might override whatever the laws of physics dictate at a given moment but not by use of any natural mechanism .... As for the second part of your message, i think the really deep thing you're getting at is whether the world must be 'intelligible', ie capable of being understood -- perhaps the necessity of a 'mechanism' is just a way of saying 'if there were no mechanism there would be no way of explaining/understanding the phenomenon' -- but that raises the question of why we should assume things are intelligible in...

Interesting question! We might distinguish between the 'general public' and the 'experts.' Don't you think there will always be 'experts' driving the technological process? Always innovating, always working, always moving 'forward' (or at least moving)? Such folks will always "know how to do things" etc. -- but then maybe you're right about the general public -- ie the more passive consumers of technology -- perhaps with advancement eventually people won't need to do anything, machines and technology will do everything -- (I'm reminded of the movie Wall-E, where the humans on the space ship just floated around on chaises longues getting fatter and fatter ....) --I suppose one could imagine a scenario in which humans create machines which not only do everything but ultimately control everything and thus leave humans behind .... Hm. But would that necessarily be a bad thing, Hollywood movie ideas excepted?

A classic question, which has been MUCH discussed over the centuries -- especially with the rise of early modern philosophy and science (16th-18th centuries) -- rather than give 'the' answer let me mention some historical resources -- beginning at least wiht Galileo but especially prominent with figures like Descartes and Locke, it was recognized that colors don't fit easily/naturally into what were understood to be the genuine physical properties of things -- in Descartes's day it was thought that size, shape, and motion essentially were the only genuine physical properties, and if so, then colors -- which do not seem identifiable with those -- must be said to exist at best only in the mind, as perceivers' responses to those physical properties in objects. John Locke in particular offers numerous arguments in support of this view, you can find them easily by looking him up in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or elsewhere. But now while our conception of the physical properties of bodies has...

A fascinating issue. I'm not familiar with the specifics of MacKinnon and Dworkin, but I'm not sure that the considerations you mention would necessarily undermine their thesis, as you stated it. For whatever the history, it may well be that right now, these days, pornography plays that role (assuming that's what they argue for, of course), even if other factors played more significant roles prior to relatively recent technologies. Or it might be that ultimately their status as sexual objects has reflected and/or caused their secondary status all throughout history, and the contemporary technologies serving pornography merely continue (and exacerbate etc) that same trait. No doubt anyone concerned about the status of women in western society will begin their investigation historically and find plenty of explanations for the oppression of women; at the same time, any attempt to emphasize one, or give it central prominence, risks undervaluing the others .... best, Andrew

You say that as if it's implausible -- but it strikes me as very plausible. The "majority of humans who have ever lived" have rarely been very careful about what they believe, have generally been illiterate, uneducated, deeply superstitious, etc. -- and given how painful the human condition is, and how unbearable it might be to acknowledge that there's simply no point to the existence of this condition, it strikes me as perfectly intelligible how many people would accept religious stories at face value -- even when (as has been amply demonstrated) the face value rendition of those stories (eg in scriptures) invariably contain numerous contradictions .... If you want some really good analysis of these issues you might check out the history of philosophical theology -- thinkers such as Aquinas, Maimonides, and Avicenna, to name representatives of the three major western religions -- who clearly understood (eg) that scriptures cannot be understood/interpreted literally, at face values, that they are...

great question, and much ink has been spilled in addressing it! ... I can't speak for hte 'many people who believe that ...', but it does seem to me that you must argue rather vigorously to support the claim that without God everything is permissible -- indeed it seems more obvious to me that whatever insights we DO have into morality we glean pretty much w/o reference to God whatsoever, and so the burden of proof is on those who think morality requires some grounding in God ... (for excellent thinkers on that question, see of course Kant and more recently George Mavrodes and also Robert Adams -- I summarize some of their ideas in my recent book "The God Question") -- Moreover, sadly, I'm not sure I accept the second premise of your question either -- there have been many cultures which not only accept but have actively supported pedophilia in its various forms (and there is a vibrant subculture alive in the US to this very day), so what you're calling "raping a child" they would indeed defend as...

nice question; but obviously answering it depends on many things ... for example I assume we're talking about an adult (though of course there's no clear cut-off age for adulthood), and you'd certainly want to clarify the mental state of the person (depressed? crazy?) as well as the physical state (ill? suffering from terminal disease?) as well as whether, most abstractly, the person has good reasons ... (financial distress? about to be murdered by Nazis? etc.) .... Since you chosen to spell out the word 'G-d' I assume you've got a religious background, so of course you may want to consult your religion -- but then again it's rare that there's absolute consensus even within a religion about specific cases -- generally major western religions at least frown upon suicide, but that fact leaves open whether others have obligations to stop a suicide in progress ... Finally, we might also distinguish the case where suicide is predictable v. suicide IS in progress -- ie it's easy to argue we may have...

Yeah -- I don't think you need to go so far as the future to raise these sorts of questions. To believe in fine-tuning is to believe in being tuned to some end or purpose -- and it's strange to imagine that it's tuned to the purpose of some part or subsection of the universe: it should be all or none, the whole package, and every element of the package should be part fo the design. Well there are already plenty of places in the cosmos that are inhospitable to life, to intelligent life (most of empty space, say), and there are plenty of places on earth that are --such a tiny tiny proponent of the current cosmos seems a candidate for 'design', which ought ,you'd imagine, lessen the inclination to see the cosmos as a whole designed .... (what's all that empty space for anyway?) ap