Ashley asked:

Which came first: The chicken or the egg?

This is a factual, rather than a philosophical question. However, it is a legitimate task for philosophy to analyse the conditions under which it would be correct to say that the chicken came first, as well as the conditions under which it would be correct to say that the egg came first.

If the theory of Creationism is true, then God could have created the first chicken, which hatched the first egg, or He could have created the first egg, from which the first chicken hatched. Either task would have been equally easy (or difficult). Unfortunately, the information which would enable us to answer this question is missing from the Book of Genesis.

If Darwin's theory of evolution is true, then we can say that the 'trick' of producing a soup of proteins and fats enclosed in a hard casing, inside which an embryo is protected and nourished, was developed by the prehistoric creatures from which chickens evolved. We know that dinosaurs laid eggs. Dinosaurs are reptiles. The accepted view is that birds evolved from reptiles. So in that sense it would be true to say that the egg came before the chicken.

But what about that first chicken? What kind of egg did it hatch from?

If we had the power to go back in time to follow every line back of each one of the millions of generations that led up to the chicken that supplied your breakfast egg this morning, it would be impossible to identify the first chicken. There is no single characteristic, so far as I understand it, which separates a real chicken from a bird which is ever so much like a chicken, but is not a real chicken. However, supposing there is some unique, new feature, a crucial genetic mutation which separates chickens from non-chickens, it logically follows that the first bird to possess that new feature was hatched from an egg which was laid by a bird which did not possess that feature.

Geoffrey Klempner

Andy asked:

Farhad asked:

I've been studying Phillipa Foot's article on euthanasia, but I am not able to understand her views very well. Could you tell me when Foot thinks euthanasia is morally permissible? What are her arguments for her views on morality?

Foot's conclusion is that active non-voluntary euthanasia is impermissible, but that other forms of euthanasia, namely passive non-voluntary, active voluntary and passive voluntary are sometimes justified.

Her paper is divided into two parts, the first is concerned with the issue of what it means to say that life is a good. She argues that it is not just the fact that a person is in the state of being merely alive that constitutes a good. But rather that the life must reflect some standards of normality and that when these standards are absent life is no longer a good.

She then asks in the second part of the paper whether it is ever justified to choose the death of another on the grounds that life is not a good and that death will be a benefit to that person. imagine a case where killing someone would be a benefit to that person, then killing them would be more humane than to let then live or striving to keep them alive. On the grounds that it would be more humane, you may think that we would be justified in killing them. Foot disagrees at least in one kind of case. Foot argues that an act which is more humane or charitable can be morally objectionable on other grounds. These other grounds are the persons right to life or more generally the demands of justice.

Her argument can be represented like this: 1. each person has rights, including the right to life. 2. for each right a person has there are corresponding duties others have. 3. The right to life has the corresponding duty of non-interference 4. Therefore killing someone against there will is unjustified.

According to Foot, if a person wishes to be kept alive even when they are in distress and agony then others must not interfere with this wish, even if all things considered it would be best for them to die, because life is no longer a good tor them. And so active non-voluntary euthanasia is prohibited. Passive non-voluntary euthanasia is also prohibited if (i) the person expresses the desire to live, and (ii) the person and the doctor have entered into some kind of contract specifying that every thing possible will be done in order to keep that person alive (although Foot admits it is difficult to identify any such contract or even specify what the content of such a contract would be).

Foot also argues, on the grounds of the right to life, that voluntary euthanasia is justified. Foot see nothing wrong in foregoing ones right to life, just as one can give up other rights. So if a person expresses the genuine wish to die, and that this would be a benefit to him, we would be justified in actively helping him.

As I have presented it Foot's position can be objected to on various grounds. Foot would need to give an account of what counts as a person, who has a right to life? She does discuss severely mentally retarded children toward the end of the paper, and she puts forward the possibility that in extreme cases the basic existence such children share may not be the life for which the right to life refers. many people I suspect would disagree with Foot. There is also the problem of identifying a person's "genuine wish for death" as opposed to a depressive exhaustion with life, or an in genuine wish for death because that person does not want to burden others for example.

Another point of debate is Foot's claim that one can give up ones right to life. Perhaps we can't, but even if we can would this mean that others would be justified in actively helping someone die, or is this too close to actual murder to count as morally permissible? These issues would trade on a conception of what morality consists in, which would need to be agreed upon by Foot and her objectors. And on these meta-ethical issues Foot has some interesting things to say. For more you should take a look at her paper, "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives".

Brian Tee
Dept of Philosophy
University of Sheffield

Valerie asked:

I have to write a paper on Emmanuel Levinas. I am reading his book Entre Nous and I am having a hard time with it. I have been searching the net for a review of this book in order to get a better understanding of it and I have yet to find a site that has one. If you could possibly tell me a little about the book so I can understand it better it would be greatly appreciated.

Entre Nous is a late collection of essays by Levinas and some interviews with him. It is not a book of which one can say, "it is about this." The essays have various themes and topics (suffering, love, religion, culture, justice, human rights) — all driven, of course, by Levinasian themes.

The best thing to do would be to look into an introduction to Levinas in order to get a handle on his questions and their contexts. Terry Veling, a professor with a good knowledge of Levinas, has recently written a straight-forward and authoritative article entitled "Facing Me" for the Melbourne Age. Here is an extract:

According to Levinas, we experience the transcendence of life primarily in the face of the human person. Every face we encounter is a face of otherness. Every face says, "I am other to you." Every face says, "I am not you." Every face says: "Don't kill me, don't absorb me into your world, don't obliterate me by making me the same as you. I am other. I am different. I am not you."

The face of the other breaks into my world and calls out to me. I am not an I unto myself, but an I standing before the other. The other calls forth my response, commands my attention, refuses to be ignored, makes a claim on my existence, tells me I am responsible. And this always. I will never be freed from the face of the other. So much so, that we are never released from the other's speaking to us and calling forth our response. As the haunting phrase of Matthew's gospel says, "the poor you will always have with you" (26:11). And as Levinas says, "it is impossible to evade the appeal of the neighbour, to move away." The human person "faces" me, and this "toward me" is both a profound appeal against my indifference to your naked vulnerability, and an accusation that prohibits my violence toward you.

"Being faced" means finding ourselves faced by a continual requirement of responsibility to and for the other. Even a casual reflection on our lives will reveal how bound we are to others, how constantly we are beset by the demands of obligation and the requirements of love — to family and friends, to those we work with, to neighbours and strangers, to those in our society whom we do not know yet whose claim on our lives we feel nevertheless.

This is a simple and yet increasingly stunning thought for me. The face of the human person, those that I encounter every single waking day of my life — on buses and trains, in the streets, at work, on television — everywhere, everyday, the "other" is before me, facing me. Perhaps this is what is meant when the biblical tradition says that humanity is made in the "image of God"...

Erin asked:

While reading Gulliver's Travels, I found myself questioning the theories of perception and aesthetics. In particular, could you explain Thomas Aquinas' theories of aesthetics?

I haven't read Gulliver's Travels and so don't know what connection Aquinas on aesthetics might have. The following is a basic summary. There is book called About Beauty by Armand A. Maurer which will provide you with more detail.

For Aquinas, beauty is essentially related to existence. What we perceive to exist is what is given to experience and then conceptualised as a determinate form. When a form i.e. a thing perceived as something, such as a flower has perfection, harmony and radiance, we perceive it as beautiful. The Thomist view is a realist, objective account of beauty since it is not by means of evaluation that we hold something to be beautiful, but because of a thing's actual radiance and harmony, that we do perceive it as beautiful.

Kant has held that an aesthetic judgement is subjective and he laid down the conditions he believed necessary for making a true judgement of beauty, so an aesthetic judgement for Kant bears essential reference to the subject. For Aquinas, such a judgement is essentially related to the way the world is. Beauty is not conceptual where bringing something under a concept is a means of understanding as when we recognise something as a flower as opposed to a weed. But it is cognitive in the sense of being a true judgement about something which exists. The way in which things exist is beautiful, so when the judgement is made the mind has perceived the actuality of existence.

So there are three ways in which existence, as well as perception, is relevant to something's being beautiful, or aesthetically appreciated. In its existence as the form of a flower there is intrinsic perfection, firstly, in terms of its proportion, and secondly in terms of its harmony which are real features of the flower, as perceived. Thirdly, it is not because of our appreciative response that we say something is beautiful, but because it has a radiance which we perceive. Everything that exists is beautiful when it exists fully in these ways. Ugliness, by contrast, is a falling short in terms of the fullness of being. There is no modern day distinction here between primary and secondary qualities and evaluative qualities.

The beauty of the object provides the mind with an aesthetic experience. To perceive aesthetically requires the adoption of an aesthetic attitude which, is to gaze at something beautiful with pleasure. But according to Aquinas we don't say something is beautiful because of this response, which is more of a Kantian or Humean subjectivist approach.

Natural beauty is distinguished from created art in terms of different cause and end but art is also found beautiful in terms of how it exists.

Rachel Browne

Leonard asked:

I am a student in my second philosophy class, which is ethical theory. We are now debating whether morals come from religion or if not were do they come from. I am in the clouds and would appreciate your guidance.

If your question is does morality issue from the word of God, then the answer is no.

Religion claims that one should X because God wills that one should X (where X is a moral action). But from statements of fact e.g. God wills that X, we cannot derive statements of value e.g. One should X.

Therefore just because God wills something this does not mean that we should must or ought do it.

What is needed is some prior reason to do what God wills. But what could this reason be?

It cannot be that God wills that we should do what God wills because this only pushes the question back. So it must be a reason independent of God's will. There could still be a role for God and religion once we have this reason, but now God would be merely a reporter of morality rather than the author. Then the reason we do what God wills is that we see that what God wills is the right thing to do and this is the reason why he wills it.

If morality does not come from God and religion is the vehicle of God's will then religion cannot come from religion either. So where does it come from? Perhaps morality is a natural feature of the world. Aristotle for example thought that humans have a final end, or 'telos' in nature towards which we strive toward. This end is live 'the good life' as a virtuous person. under this conception morality just is a product of our being a part of the world and having a certain constitution. Or take Hume, he thought that acts were right when they evoked a sentiment of approval in most people. Some philosophers have thought that morality could be established by the faculty of reason, that morality is a rational requirement.

The point is that not a great deal rests on whether God can tell us which actions are moral, because we would need some independent reason to believe what God said anyway. The status of morality is not undermined because it cannot issue from God's will.

Brian Tee
Dept of Philosophy
University of Sheffield

Glouisel asked:

Could you explain the difference between the right and the good to me, please?

In particular,

1. does it have anything to do with the public/private distinction?
2. liberals claim to advance a theory of the right, but can there be non-liberal theories of the right?
3. is the distinction used differently in ethics and political theory?
4. how does the distinction bear upon the force of moral statements?
5. how does it bear upon the possibility of pluralism of values?
6. does it relate to the difference between imperfect and perfect duties?

I can answer part. The distinction seems to have been most strongly made (as far as I know, first made in this way) by Kant, and the right/good distinction is strong in the Kantian tradition. The right is that which Reason, through the Categorical Imperative, can tell us that a perfect being (the Holy Will) must do. The good is that which we seek in response to a Hypothetic Imperative. In other words, it is not morally incumbent on everyone to seek the good — just those for whom it aligns with their goals. The right is universal in its demands.

Jurgen Habermas (following Kant) claims that there can be a sharp cut between the right and the good. On his account, the right encompasses all those moral rules which would be agreed to by all, if they were to sit down and discuss the issues fully in the (impossible in practice) Ideal Speech Situation. The good covers all those things that everyone could not agree to, because they depend on individual preferences. The right is aligned with Justice.

1. So, it does have to do with the public/private distinction — the right can be enforced in public policy, the good is a matter for individuals to seek, because it is not the same for everyone (public policy may attempt to create the conditions that allow individuals to do so).

2. Pass. I would guess there could be if there was a Kantian non-liberal theory — but is there such a thing?

3. I'm no expert here, but I think it is used in broadly the same way in both.

4. Only statements about the right are moral — statements about the good are prudential. This follows from the equation of morality with justice (see Rawls A Theory of Justice).

5. Pluralism of values is possible in matters of the good, but not in matters of the right.

6. Pass. I can never remember what the difference is!

Tim Sprod

Glouisel also asked:

I am struggling rather with Davidson's paper "Mental Events". I wonder if you could suggest a chapter/article I could read that give a simplified exposition and summarise the central criticisms of it?

My problem is understanding what more there is to the argument for anomalism of the mental than an indeterminacy thesis. Davidson's indeterminacy goes further than Quine's, beyond translation of another's utterances into the mental states — beliefs etc. — behind them. So there is no single set of mental predicates true of me, but rather several equally eligible ones. Although this indeterminacy does not condemn psychological laws, it makes psychophysical ones look impossible. For, how can we hope for laws when its unclear even what events they are supposed to hold between? Indeed, why doesn't indeterminacy similarly jeopardise identity between token mental and physical events? There must be something I have misunderstood.

Also why does Davidson need to show there are no psychological laws too? Davidson is arguing that there are no such laws and not that we could never know them because there is an infinite amount of information to adjust for, isn't he?

Davidson's argument is that the mind causally interacts with the body, and where there is causal interaction there are strict causal laws. Davidson claims that there can be no strict psycho-physical laws (describing causal relations between the mental and physical), and no strict psychological laws. These claims are based on Davidson's assumption that laws must be exceptionless like the laws of physics rather than generalisations of psychology. So if there is a strict law governing causal relations it must be a physical law which governs both the mental and the physical. So if the mental is involved in causal interactions, any mental event must also be a physical event. However, mental description cannot be reduced to the physical description.

There is indeterminacy in the generalisations of psychology because of the possibility of misinterpretation. In "Mental Events" Davidson's examples of the mental are propositional attitudes or the intentional states which constitute 'folk psychology', which is our way of explaining behaviour and understanding others. This form of psychological explanation is not lawlike but is a form of generalisation bearing essential reference to the notion of rationality. For instance, I desire a drink, I believe there is something to drink in the fridge, so I form the intention to go to look in the fridge. The contents of the desire, belief and intention are logically related, rational and are dispositional rather than causal. There is no necessity that I form the intention to look in the fridge however thirsty I am. Should I do so there will be a strict causal explanation at the physical level. This psychological explanation of behaviour uses the mental predicates of propositional attitudes, i.e. desire, belief and intention and these may be true of you because there will be a fact about you which makes it true that you have particular desires and beliefs when someone interprets your behaviour.

The reason for claiming there are no psychological laws is that Davidson takes laws as strict, causal and exceptionless and holds that this sort of a law is a physical law. He understands the mental as dispositional. The dispositional is not strictly causal and so there can be no psychological laws. There can be no psychophysical laws either because of this difference in the nature of the physical and the mental. Davidson claims the mental is not reducible through "law or definition". The mental cannot be defined in terms of the physical, or we would not be talking about what we take ourselves to be talking when we describe and understand behaviour by reference to propositional attitudes. We would, as Davidson says, be "changing the subject". Patterns of belief are essentially understood by in terms of rationality and consistency.

As to your questions, basically, mental predicates can be true of you when an interpretation of your beliefs is born out by your actually having those beliefs. You know what your beliefs are and can predicate them of yourself without indeterminacy. Indeterminacy of interpretative psychology doesn't jeopardise the identity of a mental and physical event. There is simply one event with a mental description, where the true description will be determinate, and a description in physical terms. Psychological laws are not rejected on the basis that we could never know them, because we do indeed understand folk psychology. If we give up this form of normative description we are not explaining the mental.

Jaegwon Kim has argued that Davidson cannot maintain that the mental is dependent on the physical and deny psycho-physical laws in his paper "Supervenience and Nomological Incommensurables" (in American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol 15, 2, April 1978). Before getting on to this, it is probably a good idea to read more of Davidson's Essays. There is an article on Davidson by McLaughlin in McLaughlin and Lapore's Philosophy of Psychology which be of some help.

Rachel Browne

Neil asked:

Does a Jehovah's witness have the right to refuse a blood transfusion for his/her sick baby?

Many physicians would be prepared to concede to the parent's refusal to allow their child a blood transfusion, provided that the life of the infant was not in imminent danger. This implies recognition of the principle that in virtue of a religious objection which the parent holds, but the infant is too young to hold, one may withhold treatment from the infant which would, were it to be applied, be of positive benefit. In other words, the infant does not have the absolute moral right to the best treatment on offer, irrespective of the religious views of the parent.

However, the line would be drawn in cases where the infant would almost certainly perish if the treatment was not given. The parent does not have the right to let their child die for the sake of his or her religious beliefs.

This is the default position, the common sense view. It acknowledges that a person's religious views are something to be respected, and in that sense valued, even if we do not hold those views ourselves. It also acknowledges that human life is a pre-eminent value. I believe that the onus of proof is firmly on the person who rejects this default position, for example, by asserting the Jehovah's Witnesses right to allow their child to die.

How would the argument go? One might raise the question whether absolutely anything would be permitted, that did not itself involve harming another human being, in order to save a child's life. Those of us who are not Jehovah's Witnesses do not see what is wrong with giving a blood transfusion. However, there may be other things which would arouse our moral repugnance — for example, putting a human heart or brain in the liquidiser and feeding it to the infant in a bottle — to the point where we would be prepared to prohibit such a form of treatment being given, even to save a life. Anyone who is convinced by this example owes the Jehovah's Witness an explanation of why the repugnance against cannibalism has any more right to respect than the Jehovah's Witnesses repugnance against 'partaking of blood'.

On the other hand, if we bite the bullet and accept that, under certain circumstances, cannibalism would be justified on medical grounds, that makes the Jehovah's Witnesses position look rather stronger. We started off defending blood transfusions, and ended up defending cannibalism! As one who is prepared to bite the bullet, however, I am not embarrassed by having to make this admission.

Geoffrey Klempner

Stephen asked:

Critically discuss non-cognitivism/ subjectivism.

The first thing to make clear is that non-cognitivism and subjectivism are not synonymous. They are not the same, they say two different things.

In our lives we come across various beliefs or assertions and statements people make. We can ask of these beliefs, 'are they truth-evaluable?', can we say whether the belief 'that X is Y' is true or false? Non-cognitivism would say no in the case of ethical beliefs because they think that when we say for example that 'stealing is wrong', we are not really asserting or stating anything at all. Therefore there can be no question of whether the statement is true or false.

The non-cognitivist has two reasons for saying this, one positive and the other negative.

The basis of the negative reason is a rejection of cognitivism. This involves an account of the workings of human psychology: Usually philosophers (following David Hume) have distinguished between two main kinds of psychological state; beliefs and desires. Actions are produced by a combination of the two. Roughly our beliefs tell us what the world is like and what we need to do in order to change it into what our desires say the world should be like. So it seems to follow that when a person has a certain belief, it is always a separate issue whether they have any desire to generate action.

Desires have no rational content and so cannot be rationally criticised: in other words they have no truth value. Let me give an example to show what this means. Our moral language tells us how the world should be, it expresses our desires. And since beliefs and desires are logically separate we have the desire independent of any belief about what the world is actually like. Therefore, our moral judgements must be generated by desire. So when I say that stealing is wrong, I am not reporting some fact about the world, but rather my desire that people should not steal. For non-cognitivists, moral language does not express any fact about right and wrong, though it may express our desires emotions or commands (depending on which version of non-cognitivism you subscribe to).

The positive argument, follows on from this. Non-cognitivists say that the reason there is no question of truth or falsity about many of our assertions is that these assertions do not contain any kind of predicate which could be truth evaluable. For example the (pseudo-) assertion 'stealing is wrong' looks like it contains the predicate 'is wrong' but according to the non-cognitivist it really doesn't. There is no such property of wrongness that states of affairs can have (the reason they say this is a bit to detailed to go into here, but it mainly consists of a rejection of naturalism).

Non-cognitivists are often criticised on this second argument. For example, as I said earlier, non-cognitivism holds that there are no moral facts, but they also think that we do not need moral facts to make sense of moral language and practices, because our moral judgements simply express our desires about what we think people should and should not be doing. Ayer says that when we engage in ethical debate we attempt to get the other person to adopt the same moral attitude as we do. The problem for the non-cognitivist is to explain why we should want to persuade others to change their attitudes. Why would we do this unless we think that other people actually have the wrong desire? But this is just to reintroduce cognitivism, the view that there is some matter of fact about what is right or wrong.

There are other problems for the non-cognitivist. C. Wellman in an article "Emotivism and Ethical Objectivity" lists about a dozen, but all these are concerned with hitting back against the non-cognitivist's claims. If we can show that the non-cognitivist doesn't even have a corner to fight from because they cannot discard cognitivism, then the rest of the objections are superfluous. If the above objection works, then non-cognitivism never even gets of the ground.

But suppose everyone agreed that our moral beliefs are truth-evaluable. We have to ask, "Are they in fact true?" Error theorists answer, No (e.g. J.L. Mackie in Ethics. Inventing Right and Wrong). According to the error theorist, all our moral beliefs are false! Other philosophers would accept that our moral beliefs are true. But now we have to ask, What is it that makes them true? Here we come at last to subjectivism, which says that what makes the assertion 'stealing is wrong' true is merely some mind-dependent fact, which highlights my relation to stealing, such as my taking a certain attitude (disagreement) to stealing.

There are many common objections to subjectivism e.g. it cannot explain why people engage in debate, or disagree, since really there is nothing to disagree about. That it leads to intolerable permissibility.

Then there are the objectivists who say that there are mind-independent facts and this is what makes some thing wrong regardless of some one's opinion of the matter. However, one would first have to give some account of these mind-independent facts. Another way to argue against subjectivism would be to employ the strategy we used against non-cognitivism. If it can be shown that there is no way to avoid claims of objectivity, in the same way that non-cognitivists cannot avoid ultimately appealing to actual facts, then subjectivism is undermined. For such a line of argument see Nagel's "The Last word".

Brian Tee
Dept of Philosophy
University of Sheffield

Alexa asked:

Hello, I came upon your site looking for information that I could use in a philosophy research paper. Maybe you can help me. My topic is the psychological foundations of religion. My idea is that I would be looking for the psychological reasons for religion. At this point in time I have some thoughts from Freud and Nietzsche. Any suggestions? Thank you.

A most interesting question, Alexa. Now, I'm not going to write up your paper for you, but you might care to look up these chaps:

You really must include Karl Jung. I can heartily recommend his Man and his Symbols as one of the best written works there is (and very nicely illustrated too). Broadly, his thesis is that people can only interact to form society, through interchange facilitated by shared symbolism, and that this collectivity of symbols forms what is, in effect, a 'collective unconscious' which permeates all our thoughts. This symbolic system is the basis of religion.

As an interesting contrast, you might like to include Lucien Febvre, the French historian; he also developed an idea of 'collective mentality' that went beyond individual thinkers, but, whereas Jung largely argues that religion grows out of our need for symbolism, Febvre (in The Problem of Unbelief in the 16th Century) argues that for writers like Rabelais, it was rather that atheism was impossible, because the mentality required (which Jung would see as the system of symbolism) for disbelief simply didn't exist then. He's closely associated with the philosopher Levy-Bruhl, whose (thoroughly non-PC) How Natives Think rather suggests that unbelief is impossible before people have developed a system of logic.

Another must is probably William James, the American pioneer of experimental psychology. His The Varieties of Religious Experience is one of the most-quoted texts on the subject, and has the added bonus of being almost readable.

There are two recent developments which you'll probably find very interesting. One is the work of Richard Dawkins, whose book The Selfish Gene is a disturbingly persuasive essay arguing that living things are just corporal vessels impelled to heed the primal dictates of selfish genes hellbent on their own replication, rather like the philosopher Samuel Butler observing that a chicken is just the egg's way to make another egg. Taking that idea even further, Dawkins proposed that ideas can be looked on as competing, self-replicating, entities he called 'memes.' Religion just happens to be a particularly efficient 'meme'. This has sparked extraordinary controversy, and at least one book about its implications for faith; Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine.

Finally, you can hardly consider yourself up-to-date with psychology without throwing in a bit of neuroscience, and the neuroscience of God is specially interesting. This is the discovery that religious experience seems to be associated with a part of the brain's temporal lobes, and that, astonishingly, mystical experiences can be induced by stimulation of that area. This has opened up a fascinating debate as to whether this 'god-spot' proves that God doesn't exist, but is created out of our own minds or that God must exist, or why would we be built with a special religious area of our brains? There's a good overview of this at:

Lynda asked:

A recent discussion on the death penalty proffered the argument that such a penalty had no place in a civilized nation, yet many different opinions were offered as to what constitutes a civilized nation or society. My own opinion is that "civilized" denotes a process completed, which in my mind is false. Rather, it should be viewed as a continual process, that we are always striving to be civilized. So I am interested in knowing what is the definition or the criterion used to determine a "civilized society".

From the dictionary I see that a society is civilised when it has moved from barbarism to become a lawful state. Having become a lawful state is a "process completed" but this still allows for change and progress. Sometimes this may mean going back to the way things were in the past, which may constitute progress, if it results from seeing how we have gone wrong. For instance, we may be about to give up intensive farming!

Each civilised state will have different laws because nationalities differ in beliefs, attitudes and religions. This is also within society, which is one reason why change occurs.

Rachel Browne

Gloria asked:

I have to write a term paper on assisted suicide being permissible under certain given conditions. From the following philosophies, which one(s)would support the proposition and which one(s) would not support the proposition: Social Contract Theory; Kantianism; Utilitarianism; or Virtue Theory? Why?

You should write your own essay or you won't come to understand philosophy, because writing forces you to think things out.

But since you ask, briefly, social contract theory is social and political rather than moral — at least, on my view — so that if assisted suicide is regarded as wrong socially and legally, it is not permissible. The question, however, is whether it is morally permissible.

Kant would hold that assisted suicide is always wrong because you should always treat people with respect as rational beings and it is not rational to want to die nor is respectful to help someone die. This is highly disputable. Why is it not rational not to want to die, especially if you are in pain? Why is it disrespectful to help a person in such a condition die? Perhaps this action is more like killing than assisted suicide, and killing is not a universalisable action./P>

On a utilitarian view, the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number may condone assisted suicide. The person wants to die and I will only help if I think it is a good thing, so this is good for us both. But whether this is right depends on others and how upset they may be by the assisted suicide. How do we know what their being upset consists in? Are they upset as an immediate reaction to the death and its means and will feel it is acceptable later, or not?

On virtue theory, it may be a kindness to help someone to die. But a person who does this will have his conscience to reckon with and so it is questionable whether this is a permissible moral action if it leads to remorse and guilt.

Think about these things for yourself and how you feel.

Rachel Browne

Michael asked:

I am taking a introductory philosophy course. I have to write a essay on "What is philosophy" explaining it to someone who has never studied it. The essay is to be 500 words or less. I would like to start the essay with the Greek meaning "philo and sophia" and then lead into history applying Socrates. I'm having difficulties starting the paper. Any suggestions?

Although you could start by mentioning that the term "philosophy" does derive from the Greek terms for "love of wisdom," I don't think that you can base much on this. After all, this is only about word derivation, and doesn't tell you much about what philosophy is. Any way, once you mention "love" and "wisdom" you will still be faced with the very same problem about "wisdom" you had with "philosophy." (Furthermore, everyone else who writes on the topic, will start that way!) Another thing is the question is "What is Philosophy?" This isn't an historical question, so I don't support your plan to answer it by "starting with Socrates." If you do "start with Socrates," where will you end. The history of philosophy is more that two thousand years old.

"What is philosophy?" is a philosophical question. So it is unlike "What is history?" or "What is music?" which are not historical questions. Philosophers ask questions like, "What is knowledge?" "What is morality?" "What is a scientific explanation?" These are often called "conceptual questions" because they are about concepts or ideas. That is one important thing to note. Although the scientist attempts to find explanations for what happens in the world, for instance, explain why objects fall (gravity); philosophers, as I have just mentioned, try to understand what scientific explanation is; they try to understand and analyse the concept of "scientific explanation." Or to take another example: although you and I and philosophers too (philosophers are people!) make moral judgements about what is right or wrong ("Don't lie, lying is wrong!") philosophers will ask the question, "What makes an action wrong?" That is, the philosopher will, just as in the case of "scientific explanation" will try to analyse and understand the concept of "right" or of "wrong."

So, what am I saying? I am saying that philosophy consists in trying to understand and analyse the fundamental concepts in terms of which human beings think and understand the world. People use these basic concepts like "knowledge" ("I know that London is the capital of the U.K.".) Philosophers investigate the meanings of these concepts that are so fundamental to human thought. So, philosophy can be understood as an investigation of fundamental concepts, or a "conceptual investigation."

I hope I have given you enough to go on. By the way, this site has a lot of information on the concept of "philosophy," which is, of course, another conceptual investigation into the concept of "philosophy."

Kenneth Stern

Christelle asked:

How honest can I be?

"Honesty is the best policy"! This means absolute honesty but honest comment should never extend to personal criticism of others which is always unwanted and unnecessary.

There are grades of honesty. You can hint at or imply something which can easily be withdrawn. This is better than outright honesty in cases of doubt!

What you can be honest about is to an extent socially determined. If someone asks if you think they're too fat it is not acceptable to honestly say they are because that's not the answer they want. No-one would dare to say "Goodness, aren't you fat!" Socially, this doesn't apply to thinness but it should do — it is an unwanted and unnecessary comment.

Rachel Browne

Jennifer asked:

I'm writing a paper agreeing with A.J. Ayer. I need to show why statements that can't be proven true or false are nonsensical. Please help!

You are, I think, talking about the "verifiability principle of meaning." That is the theory that a non-tautologous statement is meaningful if and only if it is verifiable in principle. This is the theory that Ayer advances, and you should notice that it is not about proving a statement true or false, but about the statement's verifiability. That's different and important. A statement can be "verifiable" and not be "verified" or proved. For instance, the statement that Julius Caesar sneezed before he crossed the Rubicon cannot be verified (proved) because we have no records or other information that would tell us whether it was, in fact, true, and besides, it may be actually false. But true or false, it is "verifiable in principle," in that we can certainly think of ways in which we might be able to verify (or falsify) it. For instance, we might find a diary written by a Roman soldier which has the entry, "We are just about to cross the Rubicon and Caesar sneezed!" So, even if it is impossible — in fact — to verify or prove that statement, it is verifiable in principle, and therefore, by the verifiability principle of meaning, meaningful or not nonsense.

But now we have cleared that up, your question arises. Your question really is, why should we accept the verifiability principle of meaning(fulness)? Consider the statement, "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." Do you know what it means? To anyone who does not know much biology, it looks like meaningless nonsense. It isn't. Biologists know what it means. (I won't tell you here, though.) The verifiability theory tries to explain why that statement (despite appearances to the contrary) is meaningful. It is meaningful because biologists, at any rate, know what kind of sense experiences it would take to confirm that statement, or alternatively, disconfirm it. It is, in other words, testable in terms of experience.

But now consider a famous example make up by the philosopher, Bertrand Russell: "Quadruplicity drinks Procrastination." Notice that statement is made up of English words each of which is meaningful (we can find their meanings in a dictionary) But that whole statement is meaningless nonsense. Why? Ayer's explanation is that it is unverifiable even in principle because we cannot think of any sense experiences which would give us reason to believe that statement is true or false. The reason is, of course, that the "statement" made up by Russell is not really a statement at all. It is neither true nor false. It is a meaningless collection of meaningful terms which only appears to be meaningful. It is very different from the biological statement I mentioned before. That statement may look meaningless, and may be "meaningless to you," just because you don't know what it would take to decide whether it was true or false, or even likely to be true or likely to be false. But biologists know, and therefore that statement is meaningful.

We might summarize all this by saying that Ayer believes that the meaning of a (non-tautologous) sentence is, or consists in the method of its verification; the way we would try to determine whether or not it was true or false. So, if it is impossible to verify or falsify such a sentence, even in theory or principle, that sentence is meaningless nonsense.

Let me end by noting three things:

First: The terms "meaningless" and "nonsense" are technical terms. They strictly mean unverifiable in experience. They do not mean, "unimportant" or "insignificant." To take one example: on the verifiability principle, the sentence "Please close the door," is unverifiable in principle because it is a request, and not meant to be a statement at all. It is not nonsense in the ordinary sense of the word "nonsense." But it is unverifiable, and so, "meaningless" in that sense. Ayer would also say that the sentence, "God exists," is unverifiable and nonsense. Clearly, that sentence is importantly meaningful in many ways to many people, although it is, unverifiable in principle, and therefore, by the verifiability principle of meaning, nonsense. Important nonsense, but nonsense all the same.

Second, we should really talk about sentences and not statement as meaningless or not. A statement is a sentence that is true or false, and so, when we call say that a sentence is a statement we have already decided it is meaningful. There can be no nonsensical statements, but there can be nonsensical sentences.

Third: As I indicated in the beginning, the verifiability principle of meaning does not apply to "tautologies" like "All dogs are dogs," or "All husbands are males." Those are not verifiable or unverifiable, since they are true or false because of the meanings of their constituent terms.

Kenneth Stern

Kimricky asked:

I am writing a paper about what knowledge is of most worth and I was wondering if you had any ideas on the topic.

The most fundamental form of knowledge is empirical knowledge, or experience and understanding of things in the world. It is when we come to distinguish objects and then come to use them that we become intelligent people. The other fundamental form of knowledge is psychological understanding of oneself and other people. This enables us to function in society. Because these forms of knowledge are essential for survival in the world and society, they are of the most worth.

The third most important form of knowledge is vegetable growing. Anything might happen, but if you can grow your own vegetables you'll be OK!

Beyond these three fundamentals you can choose between practical knowledge and skills that enable societies to advance to civilisation, and knowledge of arts (it has been argued that a full appreciation of the arts requires background knowledge), philosophy and religion (being religious is a matter of faith, but you have to know the doctrines) which are for the benefit of the soul.

Rachel Browne

The most valuable kind of knowledge may not be knowledge at all. We must always be prepared to admit to ourselves that we do not know. Knowing when to say this is most valuable. Admitting ignorance is better than arrogantly feigning knowledge.

Once we get to this stage then we can agree with Rachel Browne's first two items on her list of most valuable kinds of knowledge. I personally would replace knowledge of vegetable growing with a good grasp of the fundamentals of fishing (though I guess you could take your pick of these). And I would also add that it is always good to know someone who knows.

Brian Tee
Dept of Philosophy
University of Sheffield

Fishing cannot be an essential kind of knowledge. It will not provide food for vegetarians, and, furthermore, the seas are poisoned and the supply of fish may dry up or not provide a good nutritional source of food. With vegetables you start from the beginning and I suggest that you keep with you a good supply of seeds.

Rachel Browne

Maral asked:

I want to know where is the start of the world! and when will it end? ...How can I find the truth?! Where is it? :(  I got confused with lots of questions and answers, can you help me??!

Socrates once said, that the unexamined life is not worth leading; he might also have said, and he acted that way, that the unexamined question is not worth asking.

What has a start and what has an end is an event. Question, is the world an event? Is it something that happened? The world is something that can be said to consist of events. But just because it consists of events, that doesn't mean that it itself is an event that had a beginning and will have an end. (I suppose you are talking about what the philosopher Kant called, "the totality." and not just Earth or even the Solar System, but the Universe.) So unless we have a reason to think the Universe is an event in time and in space, your question, which supposes that, makes no literal sense.

Einstein's theory of Special Relativity implies that both time and space are a part of the universe, the world. If that is true, then there was (literally) no time "before" the world existed, because there was no "before," and the world is literally in no place, since there was literally no place before the world existed. Einstein's theory of Special Relativity has replaced Sir Isaac Newton's "empty bucket" theory of space and time. Newton understood both space and time as absolute, and the picture of creation is rather like the picture presented in the Book of Genesis in the Bible. Empty space, empty time, and the world suddenly appears at a particular time and particular place. But,if you come to think about it, in empty space there is not particular place: where would that be? And in empty time there is no particular moment: when would that be?

That "empty bucket" picture, and that is what it is, a picture, has now been superseded by Relativity theory, but most people have not caught up with it yet, since it is comparatively recent. Think of the old idea that the Earth is flat and that people might fall off the Earth in case they went too far. They would ask the question, why don't people who go beyond the horizon fall off the earth? After science discarded that view, many people still held on to that view for a long time. But now, no educated person asks why people do not fall off the Earth when they go beyond the horizon. That question assumed something that was false, so the question itself was wrong. Now most people have caught up to the round Earth view and discarded the flat Earth view. I am pretty sure that people will catch up to Relativity too, although it may take a little longer.

To summarize: your question supposes a certain view of things: empty space and empty time. But, science has now replaced that view. Therefore, your question is wrong, and that's the only answer to it. Re-examine your question.

Kenneth Stern

Lisa asked:

Is there such a thing as a standard of acceptable treatment, one human to another?

Treat others as you would have them treat you is a good principle, but it needs to be fleshed out with further standards of what is correct and proper. One person may want to be treated with great delicacy, another may be a masochist.

Given Kant's theory that we should treat others with respect as rational beings, we can argue that the masochist cannot use the "treat others' principle". It is not rational to treat others cruelly and if a being is rational he won't want to be treated so. You cannot be rational and demand more respect than you are entitled to. You should not desire to be treated with great delicacy because this will be on account of sensitivity which is a feeling. The rational person should be in control of their feelings and should not act upon emotion and impulse, nor should he desire to be treated with great delicacy because this will be on account of sensitivity which is a feeling.

Whilst we don't act rationally much of the time, and a lot of treatment of others is based on sympathy, which is a feeling, the rational standard can be seen as an ideal to aim for.

You might want to look at Cicero's On Law Book 1 for a theory of natural law which bases morality in similarities between persons and their values.

Rachel Browne

Maral asked:

How can I answer my question? I have no religion. I'm absolutely confused with lots of questions in my mind, what do I do with them? And I'm looking for a teacher. Can you help me with that?

It is a positive step to admit that you are confused, that there are questions which grip you but which you cannot answer.

For someone who has no religion, the sustenance offered by philosophy is harder, harsher, because we have burned our boats and put all our hope in our capacity for reason. Unfortunately, human beings are fallible creatures, and reason can sometimes let us down. Philosophy is an unsuitable substitute for religion. Better to have no god at all, than to make a god out of philosophy.

Philosophy as a raison d'être has its limitations. As a potential student of philosophy, you would have additional limitations to contend with. It is possible that the best that you could hope for would be to be an average student. In that case, I believe philosophy would still be something worth striving for. But can you accept that? Would you be prepared to trade your present state of fuzzy and ill-defined confusion for not only greater uncertainty, but also a keener sense of your limitations?

Zachary asked:

A friend of mine claimed to have the proof that God cannot be omnipotent. I said fine. Lay it on me.

He asked the question, "Can God create a stone he himself cannot lift?"

That was several years ago. I've thought about it. I think the question plays not on omnipotence, but rather our inability to physically comprehend infinity (i.e. picture a universe without end). I know you've had this question before. But what I'm interested in is the answers given in the past. At the time the question was posed, this friend of mine expounded upon several answers given by the Vatican, and if you could dig up a bit of history on this, I would be grateful.

The supposition that there is such a stone so heavy God cannot lift it, implies a contradiction, since it implies both that God can and cannot make such a stone.

St. Thomas Aquinas gave the standard answer to this ancient conundrum: It is that God's omnipotence does not imply that God can do what is logically impossible to do because the "action" of doing what is logically impossible is really not an action at all, since it describes nothing in just the way the phrase "four-sided triangle" describes nothing. Mortals are not omnipotent because they cannot do whatever can be done, such as, for instance, moving a star from one galaxy to another. God is omnipotent because he can do whatever can be done. even (supposedly) shifting a star, since doing that does not imply a logical contradiction. But that God cannot do what cannot be done, namely a logical contradiction, "does not detract from his omnipotence," as Aquinas put it.

Kenneth Stern

Rick asked:

I was reading Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, as there was something in it that had me in a fog for a week. Mr. Philosopher, please, could you tell me about the existence of time travel?

It seems to me that there is one very strong argument against time travel. It is that if there were such a thing we would have had tourists both from the past and from the future by this time. But we know of no such tourists. So, it seems to me that time travel is unlikely.

Kenneth Stern

Jose asked:

I get a little frustrated at times because in philosophy there are so many words I don't understand. The worst part is that I lack discipline when it comes to studying. Sometimes I think that maybe philosophy is not for me. Can you give me some advice?

I have sympathy with you because I used to be a lousy student. Lazy and undisciplined, it took a final essay deadline, or the imminent threat of exams to get me off my back-side. Even now, I have to psych myself up to read an article or a book. I don't find academic study a 'natural' thing to do.

Your impatience and frustration seems to indicate that you are trying to tackle too much, too quickly. Scale down the task. If your teacher gives you a book to read, read one chapter. If they give you a chapter, read a section. If they give you a section, read a page. And if your teacher gives you one page to read — well, you can read a page, can't you?

Lynn asked:

Why do they call a shoe, a shoe, and not a refrigerator?

There is a story of some woman who once asked an astronomer, "How did astronomers know that the planet Jupiter was called "Jupiter?" What is the answer to that question? It is, I think, that they didn't know. They just called Jupiter by the name "Jupiter."

Of course, there were historical reasons. For example, Jupiter was the chief of the Roman Gods, and Jupiter was the largest of the planets. (One of Mozart's symphonies was called "Jupiter" for a similar reason.)

What is important is to distinguish between language and what language is about, the world. Language is conventional. That is to say it is a (tacit) agreement among the users of the language to call things by certain terms. We call a shoe by the term "shoe." But the French call shoes, "soliers" (male shoes) and "chaussures" (female shoes) (And, if you are really interested, the French word for refrigerator is "re'frigerateur.") But there is nothing about shoes that call for their being called "shoes," although there are causes which are discovered by etymologists who trace the history of words. A very interesting subject.

Important question.

Kenneth Stern

We could have called a refrigerator a shoe because names are arbitrary, although a lot of our language is based upon or derived from Latin, and to this extent it is shaped historically.

A name is arbitrary because it is simply a symbol which acquires cultural currency. Most names stand for things and concepts. Names for things can change. For instance, we used to use the word refrigerator but now we tend to shorten it to fridge and there is no reason why this might not change completely to something such as "cooler". We often adopt American terms for objects and give up the English ones. Names for things can change and this is, in part, because they refer to objects so they stand for something with a determinate description. But when we think of concepts, which are abstract, such as red or good, it is difficult to imagine this sort of change. When we describe something as "good" in a non-moral sense, we might use the Americanism "ace" but we don't give up "good" and "ace" is already dropping out of usage. Refrigerator is a descriptive name, as is cooler, so it might be that we can change the name by using a term with a like meaning and there is no like meaning for "red" and "good".

Alternatively, this could be explained by means of reference and determinacy. A name picks out objects of a particular sort so we can use more than one name to refer to an object because what the object is like provides a determinate definition. If I adopt the term "cooler" for a fridge, I can explain what I'm doing without using the word "fridge" by describing the object. It is explanatory to say that I'm now using the word "cooler" for the thing we use to keep our food cool. We don't have determinate definitions of concepts. If I use different terms for red or good, the only way to explain this is by saying that by "rue", for instance, I mean red. Theories of meaning aim to explain what we mean when we use a word. In the light of your question, it seems to me to be a good starting point to sort out types of word rather than focusing on the meaning of "meaning" or what it is to mean something by a whole proposition. This is what Aristotle was doing in the Categories.

Rachel Browne

Nathan asked:

What is a person? That is the bottom line of my question. For most people use the term "person" and yet can not necessarily define what they mean.

In the same line of thought as John Macmurray (The Self as Agent, Persons in Relation) it appears that personhood must be defined in relation to others, and simply not autonomous. What then are the implications of such an approach? Who and what then are persons? Animals, people, God, non-living objects? (try not to address the peripheral issue of what is non-living or has not life.) I have given away a few of my presuppositions, but the bottom line question is, "What is the definition of a person?"

Person is a complicated and ancient notion. It is a concept which definition kills, because it has an axis of meaning, as I shall endeavour to explain.

Our word person comes from the Latin persona. We use the word 'persona' in English in the sense of someone playing a part, or putting on an act. We distinguish the persona from the real person. In Latin persona is related to other concepts we have in English such as personal (personalis) and personality (personalitas), both of which refer to what we would ordinarily think of as the real person, rather than as an act they are putting on. Already in the Latin word from which we gain our word there is an ambiguity between the real person and the 'persona' we wear. The ambiguity about the meaning of person in English harks back to the ambiguity that was already there in Latin.

Of course we can see a person as a thing, as merely an object, but we tend not to. There seems to be more to a person than object behaviour. Today we talk about the dignity of a person and their fundamental human rights. To speak of a person like this is to recognize that a person is not just a thing. Heidegger summed it like this: "Man (a person) is the being for whom being is an issue." The legacy of understanding which our language carries says that a person is different from an animal, even different from some people's zoological description of him or her as a "primate". We call ourselves "primate animals" because our being is an issue for us and we are trying to understand it. "Know Thyself", the Socratic dictum, shows that our being is an issue, that although we are, we don't know what we are. Your question, asks about the same thing, "What is a person?" The ambiguity and difficulty of knowing what a person is, is compounded by the task of being one.

This ambiguity and difficulty was first thought by Greek speaking Christian philosophers in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era and we are still in the sway of that thought. The Latin persona was a translation of the Greek prosopon. The Greek word means 'face'. But to designate what a person is these Greek Christian philosophers used the word hypostasis, which means both 'existence' and 'existent' depending upon the usage, a bit like 'man' in English may refer equivocally to particular man and to mankind. The concept of hypostasis was synonymous in Greek with ousia or in English, 'essence'. Our modern understanding of the concept 'person' still carries the influence of these Christian philosophers. A person is an essence, a universal, but also and at the same time absolutely particular. In other words, a person is different from every other, but also of the same nature. The modern notion of the dignity of each person goes right back to this definitive thinking in the fifth century, although the seeds are of course much more ancient. What a person is belongs to this universality of the self, rather than to the 'individualism' of the self, which is the other pole.

Peter asked:

I have been doing some reading in scientific thought. I would greatly appreciate some direction and or thoughts on the following two points:

1. If a science such as physics tries to base its conclusions on the "truths" of the universe, even though scientists try hold to the ideal that their conclusions are not a naive view of what is really true by not depending directly on their perceptions via the senses, are not all of their theories derived at some point and founded on the percepts derived from the very senses from which they do not trust?

2. Since science operates empirically on induction is it not much more than a leap of faith that even a million experiments is too small a sample to conclude within a reasonable confidence limit, since all the possible experiments that could be done far exceeds those that ever will be done...so much so that those that are done add up to a number approaching zero as those that could be done approach infinity?

1. Your first question reminded me of Bertrand Russell. A quick internet search unearthed the following famous, or infamous quote:

Physics assures us that the occurrences which we call "perceiving" objects, are not likely to resemble the objects except, at best, in certain very abstract ways. We all start from "naive realism", i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that the grass is green, that stones are hard, that the snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow, are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we know in our own experience, but something very different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of a stone upon himself. Thus science seems to be at war with itself: when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its will...

And now the famous bit:

...Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true is false; therefore it is false".

Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth p. 15, 1950. Unwin Paperbacks, London.

Do we have to accept that physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false? And if we do, does it matter? I used to think that physics does show that naive realism is false, but that it doesn't matter. That's what Russell seems to be saying. Physics can still be true, so to hell with our common sense beliefs about the world of our sense perception.

I now think that Russell is far too quick to concede the sceptical argument against the common sense or naive view of perception. Just because a chain of physical causes and effects is involved in human perception, it doesn't follow that when I seem to perceive a chair, what I really 'perceive' is Russellian sense data, or the product of processes going on in my own brain.

However, so far as your question is concerned, what I think isn't important. Either way, physics is still true.

2. Your worry about induction seems at first sight very plausible. Once again I am reminded of Russell. (I won't quote him this time.) Picture this. Each day, as the sun goes down, the farmyard chicken says, 'I wasn't slaughtered today.' So, each day, the inductive evidence in favour of the proposition, 'I won't be slaughtered tomorrow' increases. — Are we really in a better position than Russell's chicken?

The chicken's problem is that it lacks the bigger picture. That is always a worry. You thought all swans were white, but you have never visited New Zealand. There is always a doubt whether or not we have selected a representative sample. Even if we put aside that worry, however, there still seems to be a huge discrepancy between the small number of cases examined, and the number of cases that have not been examined, so small, in fact as to make the number of examined cases diminish to an infinitesimal fraction as we increase the angle of view to take in the whole universe.

The worry is groundless. To see this, imagine the following case. There is a large barrel in the cupboard with boiled sweets. The barrel is too big to move, and there is no light in the cupboard. So you fish around, right to the bottom, grab several handfulls of sweets, and examine them in the light of day. Every single one of the sweets is red. Provided the sweets are picked at random so that you have a representative sample, that is excellent evidence that the large majority of sweets in the barrel are red, even if your sample is only a small fraction of the whole. This is what common sense tells us, and what the mathematics of probability theory confirms.

Of course, you can't use this method to prove that every single sweet in the barrel is red. You can't prove that there isn't one blue sweet down there somewhere. The point to make here is that the example of the jam barrel differs in one crucial respect from gathering evidence for scientific theories: the generalizations we seek to gather inductive evidence for in science are lawlike. If there is a contrary instance somewhere, then we shall look for, and can expect to find a relevant difference that explains it.

Geoffrey Klempner

Edward asked:

Is the very nature of philosophy influenced by the fact that we are clothed in material bodies?

I think it is incorrect to say that we are clothed in material bodies, or at the very least it is highly misleading. It seems to imply that what we are is not the material bodies at all but something else entirely; that the material body is inessential to what we really are. And i think that this is certainly not true. Although it is perfectly normal to talk about 'my body' and 'your body' in the same way as we talk about 'my car' and 'your car', we shouldn't be mislead by the similarity in surface form. It is correct to say 'I have a body', but we should not take this as implying that a body is something I own or possess. It is also correct to say 'I have a bus to catch', and this doesn't imply that I own anything.

And also, without a material body it would be difficult to write things down.

Will Greenwood

Ziomara asked:

I have been given the following essay question: "Explain the relation of Art and Virtue in the Platonic Philosophy. Does this relation explain Socrates' attitude towards Ion?"

Plato disapproved of art because he saw it as appealing to the emotions rather than to reason. You can read his views on this in the Republic Book X. Plato thought that all artists imitate reality and what we understand "reality" to be is, for Plato, simply the empirical world which is the world of appearances. So the artist, by imitating what is only appearance is very far removed from Platonic reality which is the intellectual realm of reasoning and understanding. Virtue lies in the opposite direction to art because it is a Form which relates to the Form Good. We only know what it is by understanding, which we achieve by trying to clarify the concept. In pursuit of an understanding of virtue, we use our intellectual faculties.

In Plato's dialogue Ion, Ion is not using his intellectual faculties but attempting to arouse emotions, which Plato held to be the enemies of reason because emotions are irrational. Because Ion can only talk about Homer, Socrates claims that he is not even skilled, but caught up in the frenzy created by the inspiration and possession of one poet. Whilst Socrates is highly critical of the poet who is possessed by a divine inspiration, he is even more critical of the rhapsode who is possessed by the poet. The rhapsode is one step beyond the irrationality of the poet himself.

Socrates attitude to Ion reflects Plato's respect for rationality and the value of the search for knowledge such as the nature of virtue. Plato does have some respect for skills. Rational knowledge and skills are both valuable since in the acquisition of these, there are no irrational emotional elements.

Rachel Browne

Matt asked:

There's things I know rationally, like if I drop a ball it will fall to the ground. And there's things I know otherwise — not rationally — such as my favorite color, or who I love. As the latter category of knowledge isn't subject to demonstrable and repeatable experiment, how may I have confidence in it?

Some people are confident about their favourite colour and others not. I suppose I fall into the latter category, because if someone asked me my favourite colour, I wouldn't know whether to say blue, or green. I might even on occasion say red. But if we take a person who confidently asserts, 'Red is my favourite colour', and we notice that they never choose clothes, or home colour schemes, or cars which are red or have red in them, then that is pretty good prima facie evidence that they don't know their own mind. All the same, there is room for doubt. Perhaps the person whose favourite colour is red is too self-conscious to wear a red shirt, or paint their front door red, or drive a red car, opting instead for what they see as a 'safer' colour.

Notice, however, that what is going on here is has a parallel with regularities in the physical world. If I drop a football, I can be confident that it will fall to the ground. But that's provided someone standing close by doesn't get the boot in first, or provided that it isn't attached to the ceiling by invisible elastic string, and so on.

Or consider the question, Who is it that I love? Love is not just a preference that we feel strongly. Love is put to the test. I may feel ever so strongly that I love a particular person, yet when put to the test, when required to do an action that someone who genuinely loved that person would do, my resolve fails. Yet, following the example of colour preferences, there is always the possibility that my resolve failed because the genuine love that was there was thwarted by cowardice, or because at the last moment I doubted my decision concerning which action I ought to do for my loved one's sake.

There is, however, an important difference between knowledge of the physical world, and such cases of self-knowledge. I don't think it is correct, as I hope I have made clear, to explain the difference by saying that the former type of knowledge is rational, while the latter is irrational. We know our own minds without first having to make observations of our behaviour, that is the crucial difference. It doesn't follow, however, that our confidence in our self-knowledge is immune to experimental evidence.

Geoffrey Klempner

Helena asked:

As a novice to all things Philosophical I'm struggling to write an essay on the question "How would you distinguish logical and natural necessity?". Any help would be greatly appreciated, especially a reading list.

A wonderful question that is very complicated and to which I am not at all sure of the answer. But I'll give you the standard answer anyway.

Logical necessity such as what you get in logic and mathematics (and, just maybe, in philosophy) is that a true logically necessary proposition is a proposition whose negation is a self-contradiction. E.g., "All dogs are animals" is a necessary truth because "Some dogs are not animals" is self-contradictory.

The standard answer to the question, what is natural necessity? is that propositions that express natural necessities are general propositions that support counterfactuals, or 'contrary to fact' conditional statements. (This is the answer given by the American philosopher, Nelson Goodman)

For example: the natural necessity "All metals expand when they are heated," implies the counterfactual, "If this book were a piece of metal (which it is not), then, it would expand when heated." Contrast this with, "All the coins in my pocket are pennies." This universal general statement does NOT imply, "If this coin (which is a nickel) were in my pocket, then it would be a penny."

Kenneth Stern

As an introduction you could read A.C. Grayling's An Introduction to Philosophical Logic which will guide you to further reading.

Basically, a proposition is logically necessary if it could not be otherwise, such as the truths of mathematics and the principles of logic such as the law of non-contradiction, as well as Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles. One way in which a logically necessary truth has been defined is to say that it cannot be denied. However, Quine has argued against this "unrevisability" thesis, claiming that any truth might be revised and there are no such things as necessary truths.

However, if you don't accept Quine's argument, and allow that a logical necessity is something we cannot deny, a naturally necessary truth can be defined as a truth we might conceivably come to deny. It is naturally necessary that all dogs have four legs, because the concept of a dog is of an animal with four legs. But nature could change so that all dogs have six legs.

Alvin Plantinga rejects this on a different basis to Quine, claiming that there are non-necessary propositions we take as true and won't give up despite evidence to the contrary, such as "Willard is an exceedingly fine fellow".

Quine's argument can be found in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (in From a Logical Point of View) and Plantinga's in The Nature of Necessity.

Rachel Browne

Some philosophers have argued, Hume most notoriously, that there are no logical relations between 'matters of fact', but only between what Hume calls 'relations of ideas', such as the definitions found in Euclid, perhaps. A matter of fact might be that there is a tree in the wood and another might be that there is a bird on a branch of the tree. To say there is no logical relation between these two facts, or states of affairs, is to say that 'There is a tree in the wood but there is no bird on any of its branches' is not self-contradictory. As we move towards relationships in the natural world that strike us as somehow 'necessary,' for example, 'This water is heated to 100 degrees C, and this water is boiling', it becomes tempting to say that 'This water is heated to 100 degrees C, but it isn't boiling,' is self contradictory.

Nevertheless, while this might need explaining, it isn't, strictly speaking, a contradiction. If it were, scientific laws would be true by definition and no possible experience would count against them. So, Hume makes a very strong point here.

Here's another way of looking at necessity. Aristotle (in de Interpretatione, Book IX), asks us to consider the proposition 'There will be a sea battle tomorrow.' Now, according to the Law of the Excluded Middle, either there will be a sea battle tomorrow or there won't be. Call this proposition 'T.' Clearly T is necessarily true, for the Law of the Excluded Middle expresses a logical truth.

Imagine then, that tomorrow comes, and there is a sea battle. Since it was necessarily true yesterday that there would either be a sea battle or there wouldn't, it might seem that the sea battle occurred 'of necessity,' and that yesterday it was 'necessary' that today there would be a sea battle. Apparently logical necessity has necessitated some event in the world!

What has gone wrong is that what philosophers call necessity de dicto (applied to logical relations between statements), has been confused with necessity de re (applied to things or events in the world). So, you should notice that in proposition T ('Either there will be a sea battle tomorrow or there won't'), the necessity attaches to the entire proposition: T is necessarily true.

However, this is not equivalent to 'Necessarily, there will be a sea battle, or necessarily, there won't be a sea battle.' In the former case, the necessity attaches to the whole of T. In the latter it attaches individually to the propositions conjoined by 'or'. And you can see, I believe, that 'Necessarily this or necessarily that' isn't equivalent to, and can't be derived from 'Necessarily this or that.'

Something to think about: if the Second Law of Thermodynamics 'describes,' or is true of the world, it must be possible to say, without contradiction, 'Heat can be transferred by means of some self-sustaining process from a cooler body to a hotter one.' We may not see how it can be possible for the world to behave that way; but to say that the Second Law can't be denied amounts to saying that it is true by definition and thereby trivial. It is only propositions which express logical necessity, e.g., 'Either it is raining or it isn't,' that cannot be denied without contradiction. And, although they are necessarily true, they are uninformative.

Paul Trevor

Jana asked:

Could you please explain to me, what is a Nussbaumian philosophy or a Nussbaumian dictatorship? I would appreciate your answer to be rather simple, I need it for my translation work and can`t find it anywhere. Thank you.

Martha C Nussbaum is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She is an Aristotle scholar and so her 'Nussbaumian philosophy' or 'dictatorship' are probably glosses or expositions of what Aristotle taught about democracy and dictatorship. It would be helpful if you could offer a broader context of the text you are translating so thatÊmore specific help might be given.

Shannon asked:

I am writing a paper for university on Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Illyich" and I was wondering if you had any suggestions on how Tolstoy attacks society and its hypocrisy.

It is certainly true that Tolstoy does attack society and its hypocrisy. In philosophical terms the crux of Tostoy's 'critique' arises from the distinction made between being and appearance. For Tolstoy, society is a superficial place of glamour, appearances and illusion, where one loses oneself in the reflections of other people and in other people's reflections. Finding oneself is a matter of the soul, not so much of soul-searching, but of allowing for a soulfulness, which Tolstoy defined along fairly strict ascetical lines. In the background is the influence of Schopenhauer, but this had waned by the time of Ivan Ilyich.

Influencing this work is Tolstoy's love-hate relationship with Russian Orthodoxy. He was especially taken by the devotion and piety of the Old Believers and the staretz movement that had revitalised monasticism at that time. While these two movements are not complimentary, they are both anti-social. They are intent to "render unto God" rather than Caesar, and for them, as for Jesus in the second temptation, when Satan takes him up a mountain to see the kingdoms of the world and extent of the power that could be his, the Realm of the Spirit and the Realm of Caesar are at odds. To find oneself, one needs to seek the realm of the Spirit. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world if he is to lose his very soul? — as the rhetorical question in the Gospels has it.

The story is a parable and a wake up call. It still functions just as powerfully in this regard today.

Through Ivan we are shown the vanity of the social world, constituted, governed and soaked as it is by inauthenticity. Illness is the event that turns Ivan back to his soul-self and makes him wonder what it is to live (section ix). This had been so obvious before he had never stopped to ask it, nor had anyone else, nor, most likely has Tolstoy's reader, hence the parable. Reality as Ivan had known it was "as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up." Illness leading to death is the first authentic thing that happens in the life of Ivan Illych. But, even more darkly, an authentic relation to oneself in the world is yet to happen to those whom he leaves behind; which is the reader's own realm, so that the story points directly at us as well, to make us question ourselves (the parable again, typical of late Tolstoy). By contrast, authentic living (like that of Ivan's serf, who supports his foot) is that which takes account of our mortality. The story doubles (hence its tremendous power) as contemporary a meditation on death. It is one of the great modern meditations on death, if not the greatest.

Tolstoy doesn't tell us how to live, or how to die. But he presents us in the most graphic terms imaginable with the fact that these are the questions. And anything we do must begin with them.

Gary asked:

A co-worker once told me 'I don't know isn't an acceptable answer'. I seem to remember from a college philosophy class that Socrates (or a contemporary?) said 'I don't know IS an acceptable answer. Someone asks you a question. You think about it, but you don't know. Therefore, 'I don't know' is a completely acceptable answer. What is your opinion on this?

It's not important what Socrates said, or is thought to have said. In the real world, 'I don't know' is never an acceptable answer. 'I don't know, but I know a man who does', or 'I don't know, but my best guess is...', or, 'I don't know, but I'll try to find out for you', those are acceptable answers. We're not talking epistemology here, we're talking manners.

You raised your question in the context of 'what a co-worker once told me'. That is significant. It was not just anyone who told you, but someone who works with you, someone who depends on your input. Not just as a source of factual information, but as a member of a team prepared to pull his weight in contributing to a positive atmosphere of trust and co-operation. Work can be hell when the fragile understanding between co-workers breaks down, and it's every person for him or herself.

Of course, it doesn't help anyone to pretend to know when you don't know. You've got to be honest. But there's all the difference in the world between admitting when you don't know, and giving someone the brush-off.

Geoffrey Klempner

Alabbas asked:

What are the epistemology schools?
What is the difference between theory and philosophy?
What is the difference between epistemological theories and theories of science?

Epistemology is the thjeory of knowledge: It tries to find the answers to the following three questions: What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? What are the sources of knowledge?

Historically, the two main theories of epistemology have been Rationalism and Empiricism. What divides them is the place of reason in of knowledge. Rationalism (as the name implies) says that reason is central to knowledge, and downplays the role of sense-observation. Empiricism thinks that what is central to knowledge is sense-observation, and gives reason an subordinate role.

Philosophy is the study of the central concepts in terms of which human beings understand the world like "existence" "truth" and, as you have just seem, "knowledge." Theory is one of the central concepts in science and is another one studied by philosophy. Theories are explanations of what happens. They explain why what happens, happens. For instance, the theory of gravity explains, among other things: why objects fall; why there are tides; and why planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun.

The philosophy of science is an important part of epistemology since science is our main way (perhaps our only way) of acquiring reliable knowledge. Some contemporary philosophers have argued that science is the model for all of epistemology, and that "science is the mainland and epistemology the peninsular."

Kenneth Stern

Paul asked:

Which of the major religions is the most philosophically credible?

I don't think it is as simple as asking which one of the worlds religions is the most credible. The real problem is this: Either none or all of the world's religions have philosophical credibility. Lets see what this means.

For any system to count as credible it must satisfy some pretty basic requirements. Among them are the need for coherence, consistency with other systems, non contradiction, and explanatory powers. (Note however that it does not have to be true, that is a separate question. Though it must be plausible, and plausibility requires that there is at the possibility that it is true.)

Now none of the world's religions even come close to satisfying these requirements, either in theory or practice. And never mind the big issues such as the compatibility of an all powerful and loving God with the existence of evil. Even in everyday matters religion fails to make sense. For example, the current pope of the Roman Catholic Church has decreed that the Sanctity of Life makes abortion wrong, but old John Paul also says that capital punishment is OK. Now what the h... is that all about?

Or to take a problem common to all religions, the question of authority. if I ask "what should I believe ?" a believer will say "you should believe what is written in The Book of X (The Book of X will vary depending on who you ask, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, etc.). If I then ask "why should I believe what is written in The Book of X ?", the believer will say "you should believe what is written in the Book of X because it is written in the book of X that you should believe what is written in the Book of X". But them we are just going around in circles. What is needed is some independent reason to believe what he says in the first place.

Perhaps those religions that promote a personal "coming to the Truth" would not be subject to this problem, but I suspect that there would be other kinds of incoherence to be found. The believer of any religion is unlikely to be phased howeve by these objections, because they may not even be concerned about their status as philosophically credible systems. Claiming instead that religion and philosophy are concerned with different things. That philosophy shouldn't even concern itself with evaluating religion or religious belief, because this is a matter of faith which has nothing to do with credibility or coherence, but with a way of life.

The philosopher may agree here and leave it at that but there is also the danger of agreeing with the religious believer and then dismissing him as a fruitcake or head case who is off in his own world. And this may be uncalled for because there is a case to be made for the claim that while religion and philosophy are incompatible, religion could still be philosophically credible. Now before you dismiss this as an incoherence on my part and brand me a head case let me explain.

This is the other side of the claim that either none or all religions are philosophically credible. The view is derived from a philosophical approach called Pragmatism and especially from the works of William James. In his paper "The Will to Believe" James argues that a person is entitled to, is justified in believing something independently of reason. But this works only in special circumstances. James is not saying that any belief whatsoever may be simply chose at will. Rather he argues that if one is faced with a "genuine option", namely one that is unique in ones life, that is 'momentous' (where something valuable and important is at stake), then the factors contributing to a belief will be wider than any rational, i.e. philosophical requirements.

if James is right about this and if religious belief constitutes a genuine option (as James thinks it does) then religion is just as credible as philosophical or scientific belief. It will add to the prospects of an individual's life being fulfilled.

It should be noted that James is not offering a general defence of religious belief, for some people it will never be a live option. And for others it will not be a live option whether to be a Jew or a witch doctor, though it will be an option to be an orthodox Jew or a liberal Jew.

If that is the case then for those for whom it is a live option whatever religion they do follow will be on James's view equally justified. Of course there are problems with James's philosophy that might lead us to reject his account, also this approach does not answer the question I posed earlier about the internal coherence of a religious system, but it may be the best defence any religion has.

Brian Tee
Dept of Philosophy
University of Sheffield

Tony asked:

A question I have concerns solipsism, which seems much discussed hereabouts. How would people respond to the following reply to solipsism, which I came across in Bryan Magee's excellent book on Schopenhauer? To anyone who claims they are a solipsist, the retort is to ask how they came to write the complete works of Shakespeare and all nine of Beethoven's symphonies.

While this does not refute solipsism, it does question its value as a philosophical standpoint. It does ask of what interest it can be, how does it work, what can it tell us that is new. To justify a belief that the Earth orbits the Sun, the early physicists had to explain how come we don't feel the Earth moving. It was the latter that lead to much that is great in physics, more so than the original assertion. Likewise, a solipsist must explain their bounteous creativity, for solipsism to become both tenable and worth pursuing further. It seems to me there is a lack of imagination present in the solipsist attitude, and this is reason enough to reject it, at least until something inspirational ever comes of it. But is this reason enough? It leads us to question why we philosophise. As a search for absolute truth? Or just to stretch the imagination?

You're missing something rather important here. Solipsism isn't a hypothesis, put forward in the spirit of, 'Let's see whether the solipsist theory proves useful.' The solipsist, or anyone who as ever felt the grip of solipsism, has an argument, which says, in effect, 'It is completely irrelevant whether you like being a solipsist or not, or whether or not solipsism is a useful thing to believe. These are the facts, and when you look at the facts without prejudice you will see that there is no alternative but to embrace solipsism.' (I'm not going to rehearse the argument now, or possible responses to it. The important thing is that Magee's 'refutation' of solipsism is not such a response.)

As a solipsist, as one who believes that reality is co-extensive with 'the world of my possible experience' I have to acknowledge that my experience (to date!) does not include writing, or remembering having written Hamlet. The character William Shakespeare and the Hamlet experience are simply features-to-be-encountered, part of the stuff and furniture of my world. Without me they would be nothing. But that is not a reason for saying that I must be the author of Hamlet any more than it is for saying that I must be the father (or inventor?) of Shakespeare.

As a solipsist, I can raise the question, 'Why all this? Where does it come from?' There is no answer except to say, 'It's just there.' But then exactly the same thing can be said about the world of the non-solipsist! In the world that you and I supposedly share, there is Hamlet and the playwright Shakespeare who wrote the play. Why? Why was there a Shakespeare? Why did he write Hamlet? Every explanation you give will just refer to more facts, which might have been otherwise. Why, indeed, is there anything, rather than nothing?

Whether you are a non-solipsist or a solipsist, whether you think that Shakespeare and Beethoven were 'real people' (whatever that means!) or just 'characters in the story of my world' (whatever that means!) you have to accept that things are the way they are. Things might have been otherwise than they are, There might have been no Shakespeare and his plays, or no Beethoven and his symphonies, but there is and that's just a brute fact which is no more embarrassing to the solipsist than it is to the non-solipsist.

Geoffrey Klempner

Peter asked:

I understand that there is a contemporary refutation of the Humean is/ought 'naturalistic fallacy' which incorporates ideas from philosophical logic. Could someone please outline simply how it is suggested that 'ought' can, after all, be derived from 'is'? Thanks.

You are probably alluding to a well-known article published, I think, In The Philosophical Review called "How to Derive an 'Ought' from an 'Is.'" by the University of California philosopher, John Searle. I read it some time ago, so I don't recall the details. Whether you believe it is a refutation of Hume's view really depends on whether you think it is a successful rebuttal of that view. I don't remember finding it persuasive myself, and I don't think many other philosopher have either. Hume thinks that to derive an "ought" conclusion from any premises, those premises must contain at least one "ought" premise. On the general principle that in a valid deductive argument, there can be nothing in the conclusion not contained in the premises, I would say that there can be no refutation of the naturalistic fallacy, although there have been, and may yet be, many rebuttals.

Kenneth Stern

Hume's point that you cannot derive an "ought" from an "is" is not the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy is a logical problem described by G.E. Moore aiming to refute arguments that good is a natural property.

I didn't know that there was a logical way to derive an "ought" from an "is" so I looked in An Introduction to Ethics by Geoffrey Thomas and there it was! You would probably find this book helpful generally. The argument comes from an article by A.N. Prior called "The Autonomy of Ethics" in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy 38 and is probably presented more plausibly than it is here.

The argument is based on material implication. Any proposition 'P' implies the truth of 'P v Q' ('v' is the logical connective which represents 'or' in the inclusive sense, i.e. 'either P, or Q, or both') because if 'P' is true one disjunct is true. Whenever 'P' is true, 'P v Q' can never be false. Call this the 'v-introduction rule'. If you have 'P v Q' and you add the premise ¬P ('not P') then that logically implies Q. This is the 'v-elimination rule' or material implication.

Now take a factual descriptive "is" statement, Thomas's example being "she is old and lonely" the negation of which is also factual and descriptive, i.e. "it is not the case that she is old and lonely". Call these F and ¬F. Then formulate a normative "ought" statement such as "you ought to help her". Call this N.

Here is the formalised argument:

1. F (premise)
2. F v N (v-introduction rule)
3. ¬F (premise)
4. So N< (v-elimination rule = material implication)

Or in English:

1. She is old and lonely (premise)
2. She is old and lonely or You ought to help (v-introduction rule)
3. It is not the case that she is old and lonely (premise)
4. So you ought to help her (v-elimination rule = material implication)

This looks absurd and one reason for this is the logical rule that a self-contradictory statement implies any other statement. However, the point is that because F is a descriptive statement, F v N must also be a descriptive statement despite the fact that F contains an "ought". This is because only a descriptive statement can imply another descriptive statement. N, "You ought to help her" is no longer a normative value statement expressing an attitude or imperative. So "ought" becomes a matter of fact.

Rachel Browne

Roger asked:

What is a community?

A community may be a group of people identified in terms of their commitment to a particular way of life, or a set of people who hold to something in common, and is a subset of society. Being a member of a community requires a positive commitment. Society is something we cannot help being involved in unless we rebel against society, such as New Age travellers did. Commitment is important if a community such as the gay community can properly be regarded as such. To be a member of the gay community is to openly declare oneself as gay and to take an interest in gay causes and issues. To be privately gay, taking no interest in the gay community is not to be a member.

A neighbourhood may constitute a community if the residents regard it as such and treat it so. If there is no sense of neighbourliness then there is no community.

Neighbourhood communities and ethnic communities are based upon being in a particular locality, and because we say "there is a large gay community in Sydney" I assume this is also true of the gay community as such.

Rachel Browne

Emma asked:

I am taking A-level Philosophy of Religion and am lacking in information on Christian religious experience, namely conversion and mysticism. I would be grateful for any information on this topic.

"Christianity is in the first place and oriental religion and it is a mystical religion." (Olivier Clément). Modern Bible Christians tend never to know this. This is strange, because the beatitudes are hardly common sense, let alone the sayings of Jesus in John, or the interpretations of Paul. Paul in fact boasts of the "folly of the cross." Orthodox and Catholic traditions have remembered and transmitted the mystical nature of Christianity from age to age, for better or for worse.

The term 'mysticism' is a modern modern non-believer's concept. The mystical is not properly mystical if it is an 'ism'. The proper term is 'the mystical life'. This is a comparative term. The mystical life is that in which God's action predominates, by contrast with the ascetic life in which human action predominates. Mystical life requires some passivity, like a sail which needs to catch the wind. Therefore, at its extreme it is contemplative (e.g. monastic). Too much human action can obstruct the will of God, as we see so often. A mystic is one who is 'acted upon' rather than one who acts.

Conversion means "change of mind" (metanoia). The task is to come back from the corrupt state of sin in which one is estranged from God, living in such a way as to disallow his acting upon one, to a pure or primitive state of mind, for it is presupposed that each of us is the image and likeness of God as our human nature.

The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition (OUP) by Andrew Louth of Durham University is excellent on 'mysticism'.

Jacinto asked:

"An argument is based on the principle of inferential necessity." Discuss.

The first question you have to ask is what are arguments for. An argument is not just a structure made of sentences or strings of symbols. We make use of these structures. They have a point. Text books on logic often forget this rather elementary observation. They tend to assume — or at least give the reader the impression — that we all know what an argument is for, and the only question is what is the difference between a good argument and a bad one.

We have to narrow this discussion somewhat. It is not true that all