It is evident that English is not your native language. Aristotle, of course, wrote in ancient Greek, a language very different from both modern Greek and from modern English. There are very many translations and commentaries of Aristotle in various languages, with probably the best being in modern English, German, French and I'd guess Italian.

So, first, if you want to read Aristotle, and have little background in Western philosophy, start with a good commentary, not with the original. He is difficult, mostly because of the difficulty in translation. If there is a good commentary in your native language, I would advise your reading that first, before you go to the original. As I say, if you actually look at the ancient Greek (which I have done to some extent) you find huge differences in the way that words were used, defined, and combined, from the way they are employed in English.

Then, after you've read the commentary on whatever aspect of Aristotle you're interested in (and that's another question — he wrote an enormous amount in a variety of fields), go to the (translated) original, and read, carefully, the translator's introduction before you start on the text.

In general I would highly recommend, if you are reading in English, that you find recent commentaries and translations, for this reason: the older writers took themselves, for the most part, to be the final authority on interpreting Aristotle, in part because there were very few others, and in part because that was the style, some time ago. Modern translators are much more humble, and take a variety of interpretations and translations into account (if they're any good). So in finding a translation, try to find one which has footnotes and/or references to other translations. You will get a much more complete and rounded account of Aristotle and incidentally of the history of his interpretation.

I found, for example, H.G. Apostle's translation of the Nicomachean Ethics excellent for those reasons.

To answer your questions specifically, "Is Aristotle's Metaphysics a work only destined for erudites?" Basically, at this point, yes, because of translation problems, and because of his topics.

"If negative, how could an academical student read the work, without complications?" There's no way to read Aristotle "without complications"; he addresses some of the most complex problems there are. Try what I've suggested above. If you want something like a Reader's Digest watered-down version of Aristotle, well, I'd say don't bother. But if you insist, in the US there is a publisher which prints "Idiots Guides" to various subjects (I'm not joking, that's what they're called); they might have something.

Steven Ravett Brown

Caroline asked:

Is existentialism compatible with ethics? (looking at both Sartre's and Beauvoir's differing ideas of freedom).

Sartre was a moral philosopher. As an atheist, Sartre thought there was there no a priori way to establish the good or God, and because he thought that there is no essence to human nature there could be no objective principles and, furthermore because of the way Sartre characterises morality, there can be no moral knowledge. Morality, for Sartre, was a way of being, or an aspect of subjectivity so his moral stance might be described as inter-subjective. Man's subjectivity is defined by his relation to others, particularly with respect to guilt, shame and responsibility, which are ethical concepts.

A person feels shame when he is being looked at and judged. In Being and Nothingness Sartre gives examples of making a vulgar gesture or spying through a keyhole. You might be absorbed in spying through a keyhole and suddenly become aware of what you are doing, as seen through the evaluative eyes of others, and this gives rise to shame. There can be no such thing as shame without other persons. You cannot choose not to feel shame, since shame is in the face of others or an affect of the being of others. This form of moral description does not interfere with man's ability to choose what to do or determine what he thinks is right. The awareness of others, bringing a feeling of shame, is moral consciousness or a consciousness of values, and the individual is free to ignore this consciousness.

At any one time, genuine alternatives for action are available from which an individual is free to choose and for which he is responsible for as the "author of the event". As one amongst others, in possession of a moral consciousness in relation to others, a man may perform what he knows to be wrong in the eyes of others and he is morally responsible because he is free.

For de Beauvoir, on the other hand, freedom is curtailed by one's having been moulded by the world, especially society and past history. This implies less moral responsibility. As a feminist, de Beauvoir felt that she was oppressed rather than free, but limitations to freedom caused by social conditioning are not incompatible with an ethics based on relations with others. De Beauvoir saw ethics as emerging from close relationships, such as family, and affinities with others.

Rachel Browne

John asked:

I am young and nascent in my knowledge of philosophy but I have a pretty good idea of the philosophy that I think is the "right one". (Pardon my apparent naivety and arrogance). I have a good idea of it but I'm at a loss for resources and materials to help further my study of this topic. Here's my basic philosophy:

The purpose of life lies in happiness. Each and every individual deserves to and should be free to seek happiness. Government should exist to meet that ends. Therefore barriers that prevent a person from achieving happiness (e.g. genes that handicap a person and make their life worse), should be broken down by say, in this example, research and developments in the genetic engineering field. And at the extreme of this philosophy things like death could be eliminated or at least exponentially postponed so people can enjoy longer, happier lives.

Now the only book I've read that dealt with this was Charles Murray's In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government. Could you provide me with a bibliography or list of philosophers or works that are related to this manner of thinking?

Well, a lot of people would probably agree with you that the purpose of life is happiness: although there might be some debate about what happiness is, and how you decide whether you have achieved it. Aristotle (who, by the way, agrees with you) nevertheless cautions us not to call anyone (including ourselves) happy while he is still alive. The reason is that something that happens at the end of a life, or near the end of a life, may be so catastrophically bad, that it outweighs all else that has happened until then, and would force you to judge that overall, the life has been an unhappy one. Aristotle reminds us that just as "one swallow does not make a summer" one happy day does not make a happy life. So, it may be more complex than you think.

On the other hand, the great philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that (rather because of Aristotle's point above) that happiness cannot really be the purpose of life since happiness is really not up to us but is up to fortune; or as Kant puts it, to "stepmother nature." He thinks that what is the purpose of life should be something that is entirely in our hands, and whether we are happy is certainly not. Kant, nevertheless, thinks that the purpose of life does have something to do with happiness. He thinks that the purpose of life is "to be worthy of happiness." Whether you are going to be happy or not is a question of fortune; but it is in your hands whether you deserve happiness by being a good person, and, for Kant, doing what you ought to do; being a moral person.

Perhaps this will make you think more about your conviction that the purpose of life is happiness, although it may not change your mind about it.

Kenneth Stern

I'm really at a loss as to a simple answer here. The Greek ideal was termed "eudaimonia", which very roughly translates to "happiness". You'll find it in Plato and Aristotle. If you want an Eastern take on this, Buddhism's goal is to free oneself from the wheel of karma, the endless repeating of lives, in order to be delivered from suffering. Moving right along, back to the West, we find the religious philosophers, for example, Aquinas, for whom the goal was to live according to the laws of the Christian god in order to achieve heavenly paradise — a delayed happiness. We can look at Kant, for whom happiness was entirely intellectual, and move from there to, say, Rousseau, for whom it was entirely emotional. And so on.

The point I'm making, of course, is that you've hit on one of the two or three of THE questions, which have concerned people from day one. So, first, you're not alone. Second, take a deep breath and be prepared to dive into it, if you really want to do philosophical research on this, because there are libraries of discussion on this question.

You might think about what exactly happiness is. There are many many answers to this question. You might think about what exactly "purpose" means. Aristotle attempts to answer this, and it goes from there. Plato attempts to define what "government" and its purpose is. And so it goes, for the next 2000 years or so of debates.

Start with Plato, go to Aristotle (the Ethics). By then you'll have the beginning of an idea of where else to go (read the introductions, footnotes, and look at references). Don't, DON'T, get hung up on one person's answer to this...for at least the next decade or so.

Steven Ravett Brown

Gilead asked:

Skepticism of the existence of an external world, or the possibility of receiving artificial or false perceptions, has been described by Hume and other philosophers. I think that such Ideas were presented by ancient philosophers, such as Confucius and others.

My question is: How did these ancient philosophers visualize (if at all) mechanisms that will allow such false perceptions to be received by a person?

I wasn't aware that Confucius professed scepticism concerning the external world, but you are right that philosophical scepticism has been around since ancient times.

The foundations for scepticism concerning the external world were laid by the Greek atomists. Here is a fragment from the Presocratic philosopher Democritus (Kirk, Raven and Schofield The Presocratic Philosophers p. 412):

But we in actuality grasp nothing for certain, but what shifts in accordance with the condition of the body and of the things which enter it and press upon it.

What Democritus has seen is that if all perception involves a chain of causes and effects, then no inference from the way things appear to the way things really are can be certain. It is a familiar observation that a bowl of lukewarm water feels hot if your hand is cold, and cold if your hand is hot. Democritus means to draw the far more wide ranging conclusion that any perception involves the causal effect of both the object perceived and the state of one's own body. Those two elements can never in principle be factored out. We can never know how much of what we seem to perceive is due to the object and how much is due to us.

According to Democritean atomism, the experience of warmth, or of colour, smell or sound, is illusory. In reality, all that exists are atoms whirling in space. The seeming richness of human experience is merely the effect of the physical interaction between our sense organs and the external world. Democritus never doubts, however, that there is an external world. How could he? He is merely claiming that we cannot know for certain how things are in the external world because all knowledge relies on chains of cause and effect. In addition, our senses deceive us into thinking that there are such things as warmth and red when in reality these 'experiences' are nothing but atoms knocking into one another.

After Aristotle, the spectre of scepticism returned with the fearsome Pyrrho, who preached the gentle doctrine that we should 'follow nature' rather than strive to determine whether or not our naturally acquired beliefs are true, since every set of reasons in favour of a belief can be countered by equally strong reasons against.

To my knowledge, neither Democritus or Pyrrho go so far as to postulate hypothetical mechanisms that would explain how, e.g. my belief that there is a table in front of me might be false. This is the most significant difference between Ancient scepticism, and the far more radical scepticism explored by Descartes in his Meditations, with the aid of the hypothesis of an 'evil demon' who deceives me into believing that there exists a world of objects in space, while in reality all that exists are states of my own consciousness and their non-physical cause.

Geoffrey Klempner

Paulo asked:

I have several students asking me: What is this: Analytic Philosophy? I answer and explain but I don't get a short and good formulation. Could you help me?

I sympathize with you. I think a "short and good formulation" or even a long and good formulation is not going to mean much to a student in the abstract. The student really needs to see instances of analytic philosophy, and do some himself. Wittgenstein, one of the greatest of analytic philosophers, wrote that philosophy was not a theory but an activity. Moreover, the term "analytic philosophy" is not the name of just one kind of thing. There are many ways of "doing" analytic philosophy ranging from the very formal to the very informal. But, perhaps, what these all have in common is the conviction that philosophical problems have to be dealt with painstakingly with close attention to detail and trying to get to the root of the problem. Most analytic philosophers (although not all) would agree that philosophical problems are (very) generally speaking, problems about certain fundamental concepts like truth or knowledge, and that these problems will yield (or should yield. anyway) to the analysis of these concepts. It is, perhaps, generally agreed that this analysis will very much involve the language in which these concepts are expressed which is why there is a close relation between analytic philosophy and what is sometimes called "linguistic philosophy."

For an example of an analytic approach to a philosophical question, see my reply to Jenn, below.

Kenneth Stern

Chris asked:

Human nature and World Peace.
Can world peace truly be attained?

In an answer to Marcela on this page, I suggested that it is human nature to form strong beliefs and alliances and to be territorial. This is not necessarily incompatible with world peace as long as wars and terrorism are made impossible. Wars and terrorism will only be impossible if there is a worldwide ban on the production — or a total control of — weapons and arms. However, even if all national governments agreed to give up arms to some central control, or there was a global government with the power to command this, man still has the intelligence and ability to make weapons. There may be no wars if nations were to abide by international peace charters — or if they were all committed to one global government — but this would not rule out terrorism and terrorism tends to lead to war.

As I answered to Marcela, a global aspiration or commitment is difficult to envisage. Ideally, we could all commit to environmental conservation at this time, but man is too selfish. This selfishness is, though, part and parcel of our ability to form close connections in a beneficial sense, since it gives rise to commitments to communities. We care most for those with whom we live in close contact. Since mankind doesn't have a universal attitude which can bring unity between persons, war and terrorism seem inevitable.

Religious commitment is one cause for strife, and although atheism is now an option, it doesn't follow that religious zeal, where it exists, is lessened. Indeed, it is probably strengthened. Even if there were no territorial claims based upon geographical and religious alliances, there would still be individuals who strive for power and wealth who will make claims against which others rebel.

So, really, there is no hope for peace for mankind. It might be wondered whether mankind might change. If we were inclined to be peaceful we would be a strange passive, tolerant sort of being with no strong beliefs and no religious attachments.

Rachel Browne

Jenn asked:

I am taking Buddhist Philosophy, only including classical Indian Buddhism. I am trying to write a paper on Nagarjuna's doctrine of emptiness, specifically that emptiness itself is empty. I haven't figured out an argument that is small enough to encapsulate within 10 pages, but I think I was going to argue something having to do with the difference between sunya and sunyata — or perhaps that nirvana is really non-existence because it is in an "empty" realm...?

I'd like to define emptiness (the fact that is does not denote lack of function), then I'd like to define how "emptiness" is empty...but that's where I find myself unsure of where to go...do you have any thoughts, suggestions, or book references?

I don't know whether you are going to find my reply helpful in your work (in fact I rather doubt it) but others may find it helpful in theirs):

What I would like to comment on is your desire to "define how 'emptiness' is empty." You say that you are "unsure" how to do such a thing, and I think your instinct here is good because I don't think there is a way to do it.

Why not? Well, because "emptiness" is not the name of anything which could be empty, since it is not the name of anything at all. We say of a drawer or of a room that it is empty. By saying that we are not, I think, asserting that there is "really" something in it, but invisible to us which is called "empty." Rather, we are denying something. What we are denying is that anything is in the drawer or the room. So, by trying to "define" how "emptiness" is empty, you are assuming that "emptiness" is like a drawer or room that has something in it. That very assumption is wrong. Emptiness is not a "something" and so "emptiness" cannot itself be empty. Therefore it is impossible (or worse) to show that "emptiness is empty."

Kenneth Stern

David asked:

What did John Locke mean by secondary qualities in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding?

Secondary qualities, according to Locke, are the "powers" or dispositions the primary qualities of an object — for example, shape — have to produce in an observer certain ideas. However, these ideas, unlike the ideas of primary qualities, resemble nothing in the object itself. Thus, for example, color was a secondary quality because although the idea of color (say red) was caused by the (primary) qualities of the object, there was nothing "in" the object that the idea of red resembled. On the other hand, the primary quality of shape does produce in the observer an idea (say oblong) that does resemble something "in" the object itself.

Roughly: secondary qualities are not "really" qualities of the object, although their ideas are produced in the observer by qualities of the object, whereas primary qualities are "really" qualities of the object. So, objects are not "really" red, but they are "really" oblong.

Kenneth Stern

Shula asked:

I have been reading on various websites about Philosophical Counseling, and controversies within this new field.

What is the general feeling in the philosophical world regarding this hybrid? Does it have standing?

As a academic philosopher who is very interested in philosophical counseling and who is doing a bit of research in the field, my feeling is that the philosophical world has not, as yet, fully recognized philosophical counseling or granted it much respect. If I'm right about this, the reasons are probably manifold.

There's a long-standing tendency for theoretical philosophers to denigrate any sort of applied philosophy and the reasons for this lie and the nature of the work done in each broad area. Theoretical philosophy often invokes the technical framework of formal logic and conceptual analysis and usually concerns itself with questions that are dependent on, but multiply removed from, the "Big Questions" normally associated with philosophy as the classical pursuit of wisdom. "What is the meaning of life?" for instance, depends upon some notion of meaning, so theoretical philosophy turns from that question to a closer analysis of meaning itself. But an examination of meaning naturally leads to a philosophical study of language, the prototype of a meaning-bearing system, and that study leads to inquiries regarding what words mean, and sooner or later you're at Russell's analysis of definite descriptions, employing the resources of modern logic to unpack the meaning of "the." So, in general, theoretical philosophy tends to focus on tiny questions and tends to deal with them in a technical way. I like theoretical philosophy, so I don't think there's anything wrong with this. Big pictures are painted with little brushes, and by attending to the narrow questions on which fully satisfactory answers to the broad questions depend, theoretical philosophy is highly relevant and extraordinarily important.

But, although no less relevant or important, applied philosophy is different. Since applied philosophy needs to generate results that are useful now, it can't afford to spend time on narrow, technical issues at the expense of the messy and immediate questions posed by life in all its urgency.

This difference between theoretical and applied philosophy has two implications which often, but unfairly, reflect poorly upon the latter. First, the complex and dirty problems engaged by applied philosophy almost never admit of simple and clean solutions, with the result that attempts to think about sloppy problems can all too easily be confused with sloppy thinking. Second, because the issues addressed by applied philosophy are multiply-removed from the classic questions which serve as portals to philosophy, because an approach to those issues often requires the apparatuses of formal logics of various kinds, because the issues of applied philosophy are more immediately accessible, and because work in formal logic is less dependent upon the explicit application of technical training, applied philosophers can have a hard time understanding the work of theoretical philosophers, whereas theoretical philosophers can usually comprehend the work of applied philosophers. I've found that, in general, when person A can understand person B, but person B can't understand person A, person A often thinks of himself (or herself) as smarter than person B. Person B often shares this opinion, notwithstanding that the fact that asymmetry of comprehension need not imply a corresponding asymmetry of ability. (To see this, suppose that I make up a language all my own and proceed to speak it in to you. This would show that I'm a lot of things, but "smarter than you" isn't one of them.)

In general, then, philosophical counseling might never get the respect it deserves, or would like to enjoy, simply in virtue of its applied nature. As of this writing, however, I suspect that philosophical counseling is much worse off than this, and that academic philosophy is reluctant to even recognize philosophical counseling as a bona fide, but budding, twig on even its most applied branch. For one thing, philosophical counseling is new and there's always a justified concern that anything new is a flash in the pan. For another thing, some of the work in philosophical counseling really is third-rate, in my estimation, and there's no univocal conception of what philosophical counseling should be. Finally, there's the feeling that, in philosophical counseling, applied philosophy has at last gone over the edge into a touchy-feely morass of self-help treacle from which no clear and critical thought can escape. I'm not terrifically troubled by any of this. I doubt that philosophical counseling is a fad since the conviction that an unexamined life is not worth living has roots too deep in the philosophical tradition. There's third-rate work in all areas of philosophy, and the field of philosophical counseling continues to attract good minds. Every area of philosophy is home to debates about the nature of that field. And, as a matter of fact, philosophical counseling is not a sticky-and-sweet-as-molasses discipline but is, instead, fully amenable to serious, philosophical work.

So, to summarize, I'd have to say that philosophical counseling is often ignored (at worst) and disrespected (at best) by academic philosophy, but that this situation shouldn't distress anyone interested in the field. It's still the new kid on the block and can expect to get its ears boxed a few times before it gains acceptance. And, as a type of applied philosophy, it may always be dismissed by philosophers in thrall to the arcane. Outside the academy, however, philosophical counseling may just make philosophy relevant again.

Dona Warren
Department of Philosophy
The University of Wisconsin — Stevens Point

Marianne asked:

Do blind people dream of objects and colours? if so does that mean there would be evidence of a priori knowledge? and if that's so does that then point towards the possibility of the soul/spirit being separate? and if all this is so would there be a possibility of our awakening state being actually a dream, and our dreams being real? although there could be the possibility of maybe both being in some way real, as we only know what a small portion of our brains actually do? Please reply as this is a question my tutor wouldn't attempt to answer.

It depends on why they're blind. You experience colors, shapes, etc., because parts of your cortex are (1) processing "information" (a loaded term, since it comes from computers) from visual inputs in the eyes (2) because outputs from those areas in the cortex are then integrated into whatever system (prefrontal/reticular, probably) involves consciousness. So you can be blind because (1) there's no incoming visual information; (2) the cortex isn't working, (3) cortical processing doesn't get inputted into the "consciousness modules", or some combination of those.

If you've got eye injuries, so you're blind for (1) only, then you can indeed dream in colors, shapes, etc... assuming that the eye injury didn't take place too early, in which case you probably also have problems with (2), because early input is necessary for cortical development. Hey, I didn't claim this would be an easy answer, did I?

There are, I think, extremely rare instances of (3) being the case, where people have been in an accident and lost consciousness of all or some part of vision without losing processing. See "blindsight", also see the Sachs write-up of the painter who had a concussion and lost color vision (and nothing else — he still had black and white — but he also forgot colors).

Now, I do not think that any of the above is relevant to the issue of a priori knowledge. It is clearly the case, for people blinded because of brain injury to the appropriate areas of the cortex, that they completely lose sight, including dreaming in colors, and so forth; yet of course they remember that they once saw. This is an interesting example of a memory being of something without being that something, isn't it, whereas usually when we remember, we also "bring up", to some extent, the original stimulus. It is also the case, for the rare person born with such brain damage and no other damage (so they survive, are able to speak, etc.), that they have no knowledge at all, except by inference from other people, of what seeing is like. Think about the difficulty of explaining colors to a color-blind person, or sounds to a person born deaf.

There is a huge amount of literature, in the areas of neurophysiology, vision, and cognitive science, to name only a few, dealing with this and related questions, which many many people are very interested in and actively investigating. You might look at Stephen Palmer's work; he's an expert in vision and cognition. But you need some background in biology to follow this literature. This is a case where, unfortunately, people with little background in the field cannot just plunge in.

Steven Ravett Brown

Your tutor probably didn't have time to answer this question!

You must be thinking of "one born blind", as Berkeley says, since if a person has experienced sight there is no reason why he would not dream of objects and colours. Ideally, we should ask "one born blind" and I wish I knew such a person now that you have raised the question!

Berkeley would say that without sight there could be no dreaming of colours and objects and I think most philosophers — and non-philosophers — would agree.

You cannot have a priori experience of empirical states of affairs. A priori knowledge is acquired non-empirically, i.e. not from the world, but within the mind, or rationally. If a person who was born blind did dream of colours and objects it would be because he moved in a world with such things — but this does not make the knowledge a priori. There are cases of "blind sight" — and I'm afraid I cannot remember the sources of these cases, but they probably come from psychological experiments — in which a person can detect what is before him. While this person is blind (not necessarily born so) he can identify a triangle, as opposed to a square with no phenomenological experience. That is, there is no sense experience, no "look" that the person experiences, but he identifies and so perceives a shape. Somehow the object to mind relation bypasses sense-experience, but this is still empirical knowledge. If this can be so, then such a person may well dream in a way we, who have not any idea of what blind sight is like, cannot imagine. I don't think that there are "blind sight" cases of colour. However, if this is true for shape there is no reason that such a person cannot dream of shapes. Components of dreams are based upon sense-experience, but there may be some sort of experience involved in blind sight. That perception without phenomenology is some sort of experience is evidenced by our wondering what it can be like.

There is no essential connection between a priori knowledge and the soul. Even rational thought involves the use of concepts acquired from the real world. It might be thought that this is not true for mathematics and logic, for instance, but Wittgenstein has argued that we cannot follow rules alone.

It wouldn't follow specifically from the separateness of souls that we couldn't tell dreams from reality. This is a possibility which is considered in relation to embodied existence: This is the problem of scepticism. If you haven't encountered this yet, you will.

Rachel Browne

David asked:

I have been reading Sartre's Being and Nothingness and am interested in his account of freedom. Does Sartre really account for freedom through an argument that I'm missing, because it seems that he presupposes its existence. Is this because consciousness is 'not a thing'?! If consciousness is not a 'thing' with causal relations/properties, how on earth does it affect that which does (i.e our bodies?)? I can't help but think that Sartre fails to move away from Cartesian dualism — I assume that Sartre would assert that he does move away from Descartes but I can't see how.

I accept that you might agree with this point of mine but I would be grateful if you might perhaps respond in a way that looks at both the for/against arguments here. How do I become more comfortable with Sartre's freedom?! I have heard that another existentialist, Merleau-Ponty, has problems with Sartre's freedom. Namely that Sartre forgets about (a) the body (b) that we are already in a meaningful world (c) we are 'in history' and our past 'has a weight'. What are these problems?? (I am not really familiar with Merleau-Ponty). Why does he have them? Finally, are these problems the same as my problem relating to dualism or are we worried about different things?!

You're having trouble reading Being and Nothingness? Join the club! Sartre's dualism, if that is the right word, is very different from Descartes'. You may have been mislead in that Sartre repeatedly says that he begins with Descartes 'I think therefore I am', but the distinction for Sartre is not between mind and body, but a dualism between things which are things in-themselves and those which are for-themselves. A tree or a stone is a thing in-itself, because it is what it is and can be no other. A stone is a stone is a stone, so to speak. But we humans are things for-ourselves; we choose to be what we are. Not only do we have complete freedom to make ourselves, but we have no other choice but to do so. That is why Sartre says that we are 'condemned to be free'. Unlike the tree or the stone we cannot simply be what we are, we are left utterly alone to make choices to define ourselves, and in doing so we have no hope of any help from outside. His view of consciousness is more like Hume's than Descartes', he sees it as a vessel through which things pass, rather than a thing itself, aware of itself only when 'nothingness' becomes apparent, and with it an awareness of all the possibilities which we are free to fill it with. Failure to admit this freedom is to have 'bad faith' with yourself. Freedom IS uncomfortable, very uncomfortable indeed.

Having said that, you, and M. Merleau-Ponty, are very probably correct in thinking that Sartre overestimates freedom — if for no other reason than freedom for a prosperous leading French intellectual of the 1940's is far from the same thing as freedom for the rest of us struggling humanity. Being and Nothingness is very obscure, deliberately so, I suspect. You might care to have a look at Sartre's rather more straightforward Existentialism is a Humanism, which covers much the same ground in a quarter of the words, but do try to get the Frechtman translation as the one by Philip Mairet has some horrible errors which mess up the meaning.

Glyn Hughes

Natalie asked:

It's not so much of a philosophical problem but i am having trouble defining the word 'cognitive' in terms of philosophy. Please help!

"Cognitive" comes from the Latin "cognoscere" meaning "to know" or "to be aware of." So, in philosophy, what have been called "cognitive attitudes" are knowledge, belief, awareness, and maybe, experience. Philosophers often distinguish between the cognitive meaning of a sentence or a word, which concerns its implications for knowledge and truth, as contrasted with the emotive meaning of the term or sentence which concern its emotive implications for the speaker or the hearer. For instance, the cognitive (sometimes called "descriptive") meaning of the term "dog" would be something like a middling sized domesticated animal of the genus, "canis" While the emotive meanings (sometimes called "connotation") would be (in our society) friendly, brave, loyal, etc., (at least for most people in our society).

Kenneth Stern

Oh, this is a good one! I like this question! Most philosophers will hate you if you start throwing around terms like "cognitive" because fields like cognitive science, cognition, and cognitive linguistics involve what is termed the "naturalization" of various questions in philosophy. Most philosophers regard that as a kind of betrayal of the philosophical ideal of putting and answering questions through pure logic and perhaps a little induction, if pressed. Cognition actually involves (whisper) "data", that awful stuff you have to get by actually investigating the "real" world (yes, scare quotes).

However, I, and a few other contemporary philosophers, usually involved with questions about the mind and consciousness, believe that there is literally no other way to answer some of the most persistent questions in philosophy except by using data.

Notable philosophers who agree: Mark Johnson; Alvin Goldman; Paul Churchland; Owen Flanagan; Fred Dretske... etc. Take a look at Goldman's Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science.

I haven't actually answered your question: "Cognitive" involves the processes underlying intellectual thought (although emotions are beginning to be brought into it) and language. So philosophy which investigates those is, or should be, cognitively-informed, i.e. informed by data about those processes.

Steven Ravett Brown

Hatice asked:

Immanuel Kant's ideas about the causality law made me think that if the cause/result relationship originates from us — this means there is no such relationship in the nature and real — why should I ask this:

Why was I born? What is the meaning of the world and my life?

These are nonsense, so philosophy is nonsense too.

Could I explain? This is too important for me.

"Why was I born?" is a question which cannot be answered by citing an kind of reason or cause. If we persist in asking the philosopher to answer this question, then we have indeed made a nonsense of philosophy.

A biologist will say that I was born because a particular sperm fertilized a particular egg. That unique event in the history of the universe explains why there came to be GK, this GK, — you may substitute your own initials — but it does not explain why I am GK; why I am here rather than not anywhere; why there is I rather than no I; why there is this for me.

My existence is indeed doubly absurd. Because it cannot be distilled from the contingent facts. And the contingent facts are themselves absurd in relation to all the ways the world might have been; the worlds that might have been instead of this world.

It is perfectly consistent for the philosopher to say, "This question is important, but I accept that it cannot be answered." There is no law that every philosophical question must have an answer. To hold on to the absurd question, "Why was I born?", to refuse to give up that question no matter what, is one of the ways of keeping the sense of philosophical wonder alive.

Geoffrey Klempner

Marcela asked:

I have a work to do about "globalization" and I would like to know if globalization has an ethical fundament and, if it is true, what or which is this fundament. I am thinking especially about the consequences of globalization on the Third World.

Globalisation is an international rather than a national attitude or approach to many aspects of life. You can have political and/or economic and/or social and/or cultural and/or legal globalisation and internal to these are narrower classifications. For instance, social globalisation would include employment and/or welfare rights and legal globalisation would be concerned with justice as civil and human rights.

In a recent answer I spoke of globalisation as the exploitation of poor countries (I think the PC description is "least developed" and we don't talk of "Third World" and more) by rich countries. This was a simplification of the term or what it has come to signify at the moment. Obviously, there can be no ethical foundation for exploitation. However, there are, in fact, international charters which are attempts to achieve good international relations. The ethical foundation for a charter is international peace and also human rights are involved in, for instance, the American Declaration of Rights and the European Convention. Another positive aspect of globalisation, as it stands, is development assistance — though this isn't going too well. The ethical foundation for this is the idea that poverty is not a good thing. A reasonable foundation — but the question is "what is the right thing?" Should development aim at industrialisation, for instance?

Western cultural values which are consumeristic and materialistic are found attractive and adopted by the least developed countries before they are able to receive and benefit from global economic aid. People are being corrupted by values which are not proper to them because they are not economically viable. Consumerism is properly a product of rich nations. To become a rich nation may mean industrialisation if there is no source of raw materials with a world-wide demand. It is not enough to base a policy on the principle that poverty is bad, without considering whether what looks like the inevitable end is good.

You could also think about international peace and whether this ethical foundation is realistic or fanciful and idealistic. The "least developed" countries are often the least peaceful. So perhaps globalisation through international peace charters might be beneficial. On the other hand, it is human nature to form strong beliefs and alliances which can lead to territorial claims.

If you think of globalisation as an imminent global government with political control which could ensure peace and could provide economic and educational homogeneity worldwide, there would be benefit to the Third World. However, this may lead to a transformation in human values which it is difficult to envisage. Current values of shared religion, kinship and loyalty with a people, responsibility for and identity with a geographical area might fade away in favour of some global aspiration. Now, in a multi-cultural society, there remain cultural loyalties but these will weaken as new generations come to choose their own values from the diversity available. With a weakening of cultural ties may come global "America", materialism, kitsch, and, perhaps worst of all, international non-smoking!

Rachel Browne

Jigs asked:

Any assistance with these questions would be most appreciated:

1. What is truth and how do we measure it in philosophically?

2. Does the conscious part of the mind control/influence the brain? if so, how can philosophy be deemed scientific?

3. Can we conclude with Feyerabend in his Against Method that anything goes such as voodoo, astrology, God, etc. since these standpoints are just as valid as scientific ones, i.e. astronomy, physics, etc.?

1. The most accepted theory of truth among philosophers is called "the correspondence theory." According to the correspondence theory of truth, truth is a two-term relation (dyadic relation) between on the one hand, a belief, or a sentence or statement, or even a theory; and, on the other hand, a fact or a state of affairs in the world. This relation is called "correspondence" between the first term of the relation and the second term of the relation. So, for instance, (to take a favorite philosophical example) the statement (belief etc.) "The cat is on the mat" is true if and only if there is some fact of state of affairs such that there is a cat, and a mat, and the cat has the relationship of being on the mat. In that case, the statement in the example "corresponds" with the fact. If, on the other hand, there were a cat but no mat; or a mat but no cat; or there were a cat, and a mat, but the mat was on the cat, (and so on) the statement in the example would not correspond to the facts, and the statement would be false. Just how to understand this relationship of "correspondence" is a considerable problem in epistemology.

The next issue is, of course, supposing we understand this correspondence relation, how to "measure" it, or rather, how to establish that it obtains, is another issue in epistemology. That is, the question of how we establish in different cases, whether or not a statement does correspond with the facts. There are cases in which this is not at all straightforward. For instance, consider "counterfactual" hypothetical statements, as for example, "If that were a dog, then it would bark" when I am pointing at a cat.

2. I do not quite understand what you are asking. To start with you are assuming that the mind is one thing, and the brain is a different thing. Many philosophers (and physiologists) would disagree, and say that hold that the mind was identical with at least some part of the brain, or some function of the brain, so that there is no question of the mind's control of the brain.

In the second place, it is not clear to me how this question, however you answer it, connects with whether or not philosophy is scientific. This is partly because, in turn, I don't know just what you mean by philosophy being scientific. Philosophy is not, I think, a science like physics or biology. Like any subject that requires careful thinking, and attention to detail, philosophy also requires such qualities too. But why should this requirement conflict with the mind's control of the brain (given there is such a thing)?

3. According to you, Feyerabend presents the following argument:

(1) Voodoo, astrology, God, etc. are "standpoints" which are just as "valid" as scientific standpoint such as astronomy, physics, etc.

Therefore, (2) "Anything goes" (meaning that voodoo and so on) are sources of knowledge about the world as established science.

My answer would be, no. My reason is that the above argument is unsound because the premise (1) is clearly false. There is absolutely no reason to believe it is true, and much to disbelieve it. I find it peculiar that so obvious a fact even needs to be argued for. But it is well discussed in David Stove's Anything Goes: The origins of the cult of scientific irrationalism.

Let me just repeat here David Stove's first two sentences from his first Chapter:

(1) Much more is known now than it was fifty years ago, and much more was known then than in 1580. So, (2) there has been a great accumulation or growth of knowledge in the last four hundred years.

Notice, that in contrast to the argument you gave above, this argument is sound. The premise (1) is clearly true, and (2) the conclusion clearly follows from the premise. Therefore, the conclusion is clearly true.

Does anyone seriously believe that had we still been, and if we were now, using voodoo, astrology, and religion instead of physics and astronomy, we would have known and would know now, what we have known, and do know now?

Kenneth Stern

John asked:

If it could be shown that happiness was merely a result of neurochemical conditions, then wouldn't it be fair to say that true happiness (in the most scientific sense) could be reached through pharmacological means, just as authentically as through religious or philosophical means?

There is a tradition in philosophy going back to Aristotle which contrasts the subjective feeling of happiness with objective reality. We can only call a man or woman truly happy provided that certain objective conditions are met. So that a man who died thinking he had been the happiest man alive, could not be said to have been truly happy if his wife and family, and the people he believed to be his closest friends despised him.

You would no doubt reply that Aristotelian happiness or eudaimonia, embodying as it does a moral judgement about the quality of a person's life, is not a scientific concept. In any case, it does not follow from the fact that no-one would want that kind of deluded happiness, that in such a situation one would not in fact be happy.

It is important that we are talking about happiness and not the sensation of pleasure. In a famous experiment, monkeys' brains were wired so that by pressing a button, they experienced intense pleasure. The result was that the monkeys could not leave the button alone, and died of starvation. Perhaps the same would happen to humans. However, a happiness pill is not a pleasure pill.

What would a happiness pill do? It would fill you with energy and a joy for life. The dullest task would be undertaken with a relish. The pain of failure would be minimized, the joys of success magnified a hundredfold. One would be filled with the love of humanity. One would be incapable of envy or malice. I am not talking about drugging yourself up with Ecstasy tablets and dancing until you drop. The effect would be precisely the effect that is attained by a few fortunate persons through philosophy or religion. A feeling of serene, confident joy.

"How can this be genuine happiness if it is purchased so cheaply?" Well, we could make the tablet really expensive!...Seriously, I can't see that price has anything to do with it, whether measured either in monetary terms, or in terms of human striving and effort.

No, I don't see how one could rule out a priori that there might be such a pill. Or, better still, let's suppose one could re-write a few lines of human genetic code to achieve the desired effect. Then there would be no danger of coming down to earth with a thump when the pill supply ran out.

We need not take seriously the killjoys who complain that they prefer to remain unhappy in the face of the world's miseries, because the kind of happiness I am talking about is a spur to action rather than a temptation to complacency. And besides, there wouldn't be any misery. With the happiness pill, or with your genetic code altered, you could be happy, even in the face of imminent starvation.

I just have this niggling suspicion that it wouldn't work. Not necessarily for any reason that can be derived from philosophy, but because of the complex nature of human psychology. Because we do not understand enough about the psychology of happiness, we imagine that you could take one aspect of our mental life and turn it up, the way one might turn up one of the control buttons on a music centre, while holding everything else constant. I suspect that what we have overlooked is the contribution of the down side — boredom, depression, anxiety, all the 'negative' feelings and emotions — to the overall economy of human psychological well being. But I could be wrong.

Geoffrey Klempner

A.Z. al-Ramady asked:

I am a faculty member (Ph.D), and I would like to know about the philosopher Hastings Rashdall to support my research. His birth place, his religion, which philosophers he was effected by. Thank you for your concern.

Deanna asked:

I am a college student in America researching Philosophical Psychology and the origins of psychology. I was hoping that you could point me in the right direction as far as credible articles on the internet about this subject. Any help would be most appreciated.

William James springs immediately to mind; there's also Tichener and the Gestaltists. I'm not sure what you mean by the origins of psychology — that was probably Brentano and Freud insofar as psychology as a science is concerned. Mesmer, perhaps, also. But if you mean psychology as the study of the mind, then of course the origins go back to Socrates in the West and Buddha and Confucius in the East, at least.

Steven Ravett Brown

Kevin asked:

Give an individual the ability to understand the biological outcomes of humanity to an undeniable level of determinism. A Mathematician, for example my friend Marvin Minsky. Could he determine the outcome of himself? For example, could a Mathematician calculate the outcome of his own math calculation before, without calculating it? He could not use anything to symbolize the problem because he would be doing it. Does it have any significance? I was just wondering. I have not had too much time to think it out. Seems like common sense, that he could not answer the question without somehow symbolizing, and actually doing it.

Wow! You could spend a day just figuring out all the angles to this question. There are four issues that I would like to deal with first, just to get them out of the way. Then we can get to the core of the question, and my answer.

1. We are considering a hypothetical subject capable of knowing its own internal physical state to the point of being able to make predictions about its future states with hundred per cent accuracy. In order to do this, it needs to be capable of knowing its internal state without any margin for error, and without omitting any detail. If we allow it to omit a single detail, or allow any margin for error, then the predictions it makes will involve cumulative errors resulting in greater and greater inaccuracy as time goes on. (This is related to the mathematician Lorenz's famous speculation about the 'butterfly effect'.) The point is a familiar one from discussions of free will and determinism. In principle, no measurement of physical reality can be error free. So even if my actions are determined, there is no way they could be reliably predicted by anyone on the basis of knowledge of my physical state.

2. But let us suppose that our subject does know its own internal state totally, and with hundred per cent accuracy, and not worry about how it knows this. Immediately, one runs into the following puzzle concerning self-knowledge. A being that knows everything there is to know about its internal state must seemingly represent that state of knowledge in some symbolic form. Let us call the representation, R. Representation R must be as complex — in terms of Wittgenstein's Tractatus it must have the same 'logical multiplicity' — as the state which it represents. But now we run into an infinite regress. For now we need a second state, R*, which has sufficient logical multiplicity to include both the representation R and the state of affairs which R represents. By similar reasoning, it follows that we need a third state, R**, which includes R* and R, and so on.

As an illustration of this, imagine a room with a fireplace, and a picture on the fireplace. The picture is a perfectly accurate picture of the room, with no details missed out. However, included in that picture is the picture on the fireplace! If we examine the picture within the picture, then it too will contain a picture, and so on. This potentially infinite series is plainly inconsistent with what we know about physical reality. There is a physical limit to how 'fine grained' a physical representation can be. Even if physical reality did not impose this limit, however, the construction of such an image would set an infinite task.

Does this show that the idea of perfect self-knowledge involves a vicious regress? The regress is only vicious if the task has to be undertaken one stage at a time. There is no logical inconsistency about the idea of an infinitely fine grained representation such as I have described. A further point to make is that it is not even clear that self-knowledge would necessarily involve this hierarchical structure of representations (although I have no idea what else it could be).

3. So let us take that on board too. It is arguable that the being with total knowledge of its internal state can only exist in a possible world where there is no limit to how fine grained a representation can be. Now we encounter the third problem. How can a subject do anything, perform any action, if it is capable of predicting in advance every decision that it makes? This is the problem which prompts Thomas Nagel in The View from Nowhere to talk of a 'penumbra of ignorance', a necessary blind spot concerning the cause and effect process that leads an agent to make each decision that they make, as a presupposition of our having 'free will', of our having a conception of ourselves as agents.

One reason I am not totally convinced by this is that the physical prediction will not be given in terms that one would recognize in terms of the language of human action. For example, the action which I would describe as, "I will go down to the corner store to buy a six pack of beer" will be predicted as a complex series of bodily movements. It would be perfectly possible to know what those bodily movements were going to be, without grasping their upshot. I would not recognize myself, or my actions, from a purely physical description.

Incidentally, the description of the physical process involved in calculation will not require any reference to 'symbols', as you seem to suggest. Numbers appear simply as marks on paper, or shapes represented in the brain, without any associated meaning.

Now we get to the core problem.

Our subject's brain is partitioned, as described in 4. Presented with the algebraic equation, "x² - x³ + x = 49". The subject calculates that the outcome of the brain process involved in solving this equation will be that the subject writes on the piece of paper, "- 3.634". (This result is incorrect, but I wouldn't bother trying to find the correct solution!) So now the subject knows the outcome of the calculation, or do they?

To know the outcome of a calculation you are going to make is not the same as performing that calculation, for the following reason. It is possible that in attempting to make the calculation one will make an error. Performing a calculation involves following certain rules, while predicting the outcome of the physical process involved in calculation involves different rules. Trying to get a calculation right is a different task from trying to make a correct prediction about the answer, perhaps the wrong answer, that one will give.

In terms of our scenario, this result is mildly paradoxical. If I try to predict the outcome of the calculating process I intend to perform, it seems I have given up on trying to get the calculation right. Yet, by hypothesis, it is not going to make the slightest difference if I do try to get the calculation right, because the result will necessarily be the result which I would have predicted.

Geoffrey Klempner

Mark asked:

As part of our 3rd year work, we've to do a presentation on philosophy and physics — a topic which has been assumed to be related to our dissertations. One of us intends to write about space, another on black holes and another is on quantum logic. Any ideas about how we could bring these three topics together for a presentation? We're thinking about things such as time travel and parallel/ possible worlds, and how far we are capable of travelling through space. Perception will also be related.

What a fascinating issue! You know, I assume, about the information-theoretic analysis of black holes, right? And that because of Hawking radiation they're supposedly losing information? Now, surely, the relationship between black holes and space is pretty clear (warping, gravity waves, etc.)... was it Wigner who was theorizing about physics and information theory? Quantum logic is also interesting, in the context of black holes... what about a black hole being a single quantum state (or very few)? Then we might be able to use them to do quantum computation. What if the information being lost relates to that, in some way? Unfortunately, Hawking radiation makes very small black holes extremely unstable, so they probably aren't good for pocket computers... If you want to go the whole route, there are the old Gordon Dickson novels involving instantaneous space travel through controlled use of the uncertainty principle, but I don't think this is very workable, really. However, there are experiments now being done relating to the indefinite storage of information in quantum states (see the articles on the arresting of light — which really involves storing information about the light, not arresting it).

Steven Ravett Brown

Khalid asked:

Do we need a government?

It seems to me like we don't really have to ask this question. Whether we need it or not, we will still get one. it is in our nature.

People feel a need for a government — I include dictatorships here — because the alternative is anarchy and the lack of organization implied would be difficult to accept in an advanced culture.

A government is also able to maintain relations with other states, so that in advanced cultures we are able to take advantage of cheap workforces, goods and raw materials from less developed countries. This seems to be becoming a global goal which the international anarchist movement is trying to put an end to. It is this goal, rather the concept of a government, which is wrong.

The role of a government is to maintain a legal system, impose taxes and distribute wealth in a way the people think is just.

I think is Locke's view. Locke thought that people want a government because of the inconveniences of a state of nature which is lawless. It can be argued against this that the impositions and restrictions maintained by government are not actually preferable to a lawless state of nature, but unless we are able to live in small self-sufficient communities — which we do not seem to want to do — then government is necessary.

Rachel Browne

Libby asked:

Are philosophical questions actually questions of language?

I think that it would be a mistake to believe that philosophical questions are anything but philosophical questions since philosophers should not assume there is but one way to approach them. But, still, it is true that close attention to what the questions mean is extremely important to trying to answer them. It would be nearer the truth to say that philosophical questions are conceptual questions, and that concepts are expressed by language.

It would be useful to cite an example: Immanuel Kant is not someone who is usually thought of as a "linguistic philosopher". Yet, it was Kant who famously said that existence is not a predicate, which is, after all, a linguistic point. What he meant is that although when we say that something exists (like tigers) or deny that something exists (like unicorns), we are not ascribing to them or denying of them some property that all existing things have, and non-existing things lack. This, despite the fact that the sentence "tigers exist" looks as if we are predicating a property of tigers, and the sentence "unicorns do not exist" looks as if we are refusing to predicate a property to unicorns. And, in fact, as Bertrand Russell, expanding on this point of Kant's argued, when we say that tigers exist, we are not actually referring to tigers at all (again, despite appearances to the contrary) but we are referring to a description of a certain kind and saying that at least one thing answers to that description. (The description is "large striped ferocious feline") And, when we deny that unicorns exist, we are not talking about unicorns (for how could we since there are no unicorns to talk about) but, once again, we are talking about a particular description ("Large white equine winged animal with magical powers and a horn on its head") and saying of that description, that nothing answers to it.

The central point — that when we ostensibly ascribe existence to something, or deny existence to something, we are not really talking about something at all, but we are saying something about a description, and saying of that description that something answers to it, or, alternatively that nothing answers to it — may, I suppose, be called linguistic, since it is about descriptions and they are items of language if anything. Nevertheless, we could have said the same thing, perhaps more obscurely, in the language of concepts instead of descriptions. Calling this an exercise "a paradigm of philosophy" as one philosopher called it is, it seems to me, a not particularly important thing to say. It is Kant's insight (which by the way, I must mention was had much earlier by a contemporary of Descartes Pierre Gassendi) and its later expansion and refinement by Russell, about existence that is the important thing. Whether you choose to call the question, "What is existence?" transformed into the question, "What are we asserting when we assert of something that it exists?" seems to me a matter of taste.

And, of course, I have provided only one example. It would be rash to say that every philosophical problem would yield to the kind of approach just described. I think that in philosophy, it is a matter of, we try and we see what turns out successful. It would be a mistake, I think to believe that there is one formula, and that answering philosophical questions is formulaic.

Kenneth Stern

José asked:

Hello my good friend.

I'm writing with a short question about a writer and philosopher who is mentioned in the New Testament by Paul in the book of Acts 17 when he is in Athens. Thank you very much.

I take it you mean Dionysius the Aeropagite (Acts 17:34). Dionysius is known as Pseudo-Dionysius, because he was what we call today "a literary fraud." Philosophically he clarified what is called "negative theology" and coined the term "mystical theology", both rather important movements in the history of thought. Thomas Aquinas quotes him about 1,700 times in his writings and would surely have known that his writings did not predate the early Councils of the Church, although it was Erasmus in the 16th century who exposed the fraud, first discovered by the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla in the century before.

The writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite were unknown until the year 532. At this date Innocent the Marionite was in conference with the Severians, followers of Severus of Antioch who a Monophysite [the heresy that Christ had one nature not two]. The purpose of the colloquy was to discuss differences between the two parties arising from statements of the Creed made at the fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451. Among a battery of authoritative citations for their positions, the Severians quoted the apostolic authority of Dionysius the Areopagite against Innocent. Innocent's Conference Report makes mention of this peculiar authority. It is the first he has heard of Dionysius and the first time we too hear of him. A member of Innocent's delegation, Hypatius of Ephesus, queried the Severians: "Those quotations that you claim to have come from the Blessed Dionysius the Areopagite — how can you prove they are authentic, as you maintain? For if they do come from him, they would not have been unknown to the Blessed Cyril."

Cyril of Alexandria (c.376-444) had never mentioned Dionysius. He should surely have done so had Dionysius been the one associated with Paul, rather than a literary fraud. What Cyril did not know about theology was scarcely to be known. But an authority as ancient and as well connected with St. Paul as Dionysius was so great as to usurp the authority of Cyril himself.

The name of Dionysius the Areopagite began to resound through the world. In short, the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite came to prominence through the Syrian and Arabian provinces of the Eastern Church; areas dominated by Monophysitism and Nestorianism. There was every reason to suppose that "Dionysius the Areopagite" was a tool of heretical propaganda.

John of Scythopolis was the first orthodox theologian to fire back at the heretics with their own weapon. The 'divinising' or Monophysite tendencies of Dionysius' writings were read by him in such a way that it seemed as if he uncannily anticipated the credal formulations of Chalcedon (451) by four centuries.

[From Matthew Del Nevo The Theological Imagination Sheffield Academic Press, forthcoming.]

Tottens asked:

What can empirical science prescribe with regard to values and goals?

Empirical science can give us the means to pursue the goals we wish to achieve, but can it tell us which goals we ought to choose?

Consider first a plausible case where science describes a goal, which, from its very description, we recognize that we have reason to pursue. Medical science tells us that there are certain conditions of the human body which are states of health, and certain other conditions which are states of unhealth. It would seem to follow, other things being equal, (i.e. there are no other relevant considerations to take into account) that presented with two courses of action, one of which would result in our being in a state of health and the other a state of unhealth, we should choose the first rather than the second.

According to G.E. Moore, this would be an example of the naturalistic fallacy. Moore would point out that we first have to ask whether it is a good thing to be in a state of health rather than a state of unhealth. What is good about being fit and living to a ripe old age? Why should be prefer that to being unfit and dying young? If you try to say what health is good for, you merely give a list of other things. Of each of those things, one can ask the further question whether it is in fact good.

One version of ethical naturalism involves the idea that there are certain mental traits which are intrinsically preferable to other traits. The preferable mental traits are the moral virtues, and the traits to be avoided are moral vices. The empirical study of what is psychologically good for us, what makes for a good character, a good life, leads to the prescription that one ought to pursue certain moral goals. The reason ethical naturalism fails, according to Moore, is that it has no means to justify the claim that, e.g. it is good to be courageous, and bad to be a coward.

There is one way for our ethical naturalist to resist Moore's argument. The philosopher Aristotle, the originator of this notion of ethics as based on a study of the virtues and the 'good life', never doubted that the world conformed to certain teleological principles. In other words, the world we inhabit has telos, purpose, built in from the beginning. The major task of the moral philosopher is to discover what is the telos of a human being. On this metaphysical view, the empirical study of causes and effects is part of a wider scientific study of our place in the universe. With this assumption in place, there can be an unequivocal answer to the question which human traits are virtues and which traits are vices.

I have encountered one example of a contemporary 'philosophy of nature' according to which the universe possesses an intrinsic teleological structure, in the work of the neo-Hegelian philosopher Errol E. Harris. While the idea of a teleological science remains alive, it holds out the hope — admittedly slim — that 'empirical science' can, in Aristotelian fashion, prescribe values and goals.

Geoffrey Klempner

Cassandra asked:

Currently I am enrolled in an Ethics class at my college, and we have been debating major subjects that our country is held in controversy today. I was involved in a Pornography debate, which seeked to limit the use of Pornography. I took the approach that Pornography is like a drug because it becomes addictive using the case of Ted Bundy as my example.

One thing which I have found as I have searched within the bounds of Philosophy is that Pleasure is something that is questioned, and continuously strived for. My question is why is this. Why does one have to seek pleasure? For me pleasure is farthest away when one is seeking for it. Whereas if one sits back and enjoys life one finds automatic pleasure and happiness. With a relaxed approach, there is no competition. It seems to me that when one strives to find happiness one spends more time searching for it then actually involving oneself in it. I was just wondering what someone else thought of this argument.

If the line is taken that people seek pleasure or happiness as an end, then it would follow that pleasure and happiness are the ultimate values. To achieve the ultimate end of pleasure or happiness there must be a means such as becoming rich or attaining goals which will provide you with the satisfaction that constitutes the end condition. You do not search for happiness in itself, but search for ways of becoming happy.

But as you say, we do not actually seek pleasure as an ultimate value. Happiness and pleasure are feelings and we can feel pleasure in the pursuit of goals or simply by doing nothing but wander in the garden in the sunlight.

Pleasure may be distinct from happiness. You can take pleasure in doing something while happiness is brought about by something such as an achievement or the sunshine.

Rachel Browne

Ryan asked:

How does an immaterial mind move a material body? I feel that Descartes does not give an adequate answer in his letter to Elisabeth. How does the soul interact with the body or does it?

Given the formulation of the issue, perhaps Descartes' reply is the best that can be provided. The reply seems to be that indeed, it is difficult to see how what is immaterial and non-spatial can interact with what is material and spatial, but that it is a matter of ordinary experience that it happens, so perhaps we had better leave it at that. You should notice how un-Cartesian this answer is for a philosopher who customarily disdains "ordinary experience." (Although, it was just this sort of reply that the empiricist Hume, who while he did not allow that mind and body were two different substances, did accept. Hume agreed that mental and physical events did interact and gave that interaction as an illustration of his view that for all we can know a priori, "anything can cause anything.")

I said that given the formulation of the issue, Descartes' reply to Elizabeth might be the best reply that can be had. What I meant is that the unsatisfactoriness of the reply, which you recognize, might be taken as a reason to revisit the terms of the issue, and, in particular, to question Cartesian dualism. Are indeed mind and body two substances with the opposite characteristics Descartes describes them as having? Perhaps we should look for a different concept of mind which does not have the problems of Cartesian dualism. There are several of them out there. Gilbert Ryle's analytical behaviorism, and various form of the mind-brain identity thesis, as well as functionalist views.

Kenneth Stern

Descartes cannot prove that an immaterial substance interacts with material substance since we have no idea of how such a substance would be able to interact with spatial substance which falls under physical laws. It follows from Cartesian dualism that if the mind is distinct from the body, which includes the brain, no account be given of why mental impairment results from brain damage. That brain damage does affect the mental can support a claim that there is physical-to-mental causation if you want to maintain that the mental is distinct from the physical, but it doesn't work the other way around.

Rachel Browne

Jennifer asked:

I am trying to find philosophical writings on euthanasia. I cannot find a philosopher's arguments for euthanasia. If you could help me out, I would be extremely grateful.

This is not a classical question of philosophy, it is a recent question and writings on the subject are not really philosophical, but philosophising. It is a social question as much as anything and plenty of social scientists and cultural theorists and journalists have their opinion. However, if you want something short and to the point, from someone with good credentials, there is A. C. Grayling's The Future of Moral Values (1997), a Phoenix paperback available in Great Britain. The good thing about this little book is that it sets the question in the wider liberal context of "the good life in the good society." Peter Singer has written in favour of euthanasia as well.

Erin asked:

What is philosophy all about, I mean what is it, what do philosophers do exactly?

My first reaction to your question was to say, "How can you possibly be asking that, when there are all these examples of philosophy to go by? Have a look at the questions and answers, have a look at the other pages on the Pathways site. This — for example, what I am doing now — is the kind of thing that philosophers do!"

Then I began to wonder whether that answer is adequate. Am I a philosopher? Is what I am doing now philosophy? Is what my colleagues are doing philosophy? All of it? All of the time? Or do we only succeed some of the time, and fail at other times? In that case, how do you tell when an attempt at doing philosophy succeeds, and when it fails? Or is that wrong? What I mean is, can't there be such a thing as bad philosophy, or being a bad philosopher? Yes, but there must be some limits to how bad a philosopher you can be, and still be a "philosopher", aren't there?

On reflection, I think it would be a complete mistake to define philosophy in a way that by definition there couldn't be such a thing as bad philosophy. I would rather say that there is something that motivates us to do this — whatever this is — and it is that 'something', the source of philosophical wonder, that serves as the fulcrum around which any acceptable definition of philosophy must turn. Bad philosophy responds to that 'something' in an incompetent way, good philosophy responds in a competent way.

Let's cut the rhetoric and get to the point. You can never know what philosophy is, no matter how clever and elaborate the explanations and definitions, if you have never been motivated to philosophize. You may not have realized what it is you were doing, the call you were responding to. In that case, reading these pages may help after all. "So that's philosophy!" That won't be the answer you are looking for, but it will be a start.

Howie asked:

Could you compare the rational, scientific and existentialist theories of human nature? What do you think is the most important feature of humanity?

The theory of a human being as a rational subject belongs to analytical philosophy. Plato and Aristotle described man as rational and both thought that it is through the use of reason that we become better human beings. Descartes identified the subject as essentially a thinking subject. From these starting points, analytical philosophers have engaged in discussion of issues such as the nature of rationality, means/end reasoning, and how the subject relates to or adopts normative principles.

Existential theories, in stark contrast, look at the non-rational side of man's inner nature, such his freedom, his dread, anxiety and fear of death, guilt and responsibility. Consideration is given to what it is to be, or exist, as mankind in relation to his environment that is quite different to Cartesian approach that considers the nature of man as a lone subject.

You cannot easily choose whether or not it is more important that man is rational or an emotional agent in the world because man is essentially both. If you took man's rational nature away, it is hard to how that he could experience guilt, responsibility or decide to act in virtue of his freedom. Thought is essentially involved. If you took away man's non-rational view of himself as perfectly free, subject to dread, anxiety and guilt, you would have a strange being compelled by rational principles.

A scientific theory would presumably be biological and neurological. Scientific theories see man as an object and are important for medical reasons, and while it is an important feature of humanity that we are able to increase knowledge our physical nature, it leads to the possibility of genetic engineering, which is morally dubious.

Rachel Browne

Iain asked:

How is it possible to have a synthetic a priori statement? Rationalists seem to be suggesting that 2+2=4 is not analytic yet there seems to be no other way of describing it. I would say that writing (2+2) is equivalent to writing 4, only in long hand. I would be grateful if you could explain.

Although I do not want to defend Kant's view that there are synthetic a priori judgements, I think it is easier to see what Kant had in mind if you do not consider so simple a proposition as 2 + 2 = 4. (After all, although Kant would have disagreed, it might be that very simple arithmetical propositions like the one you offered as an example is not synthetic a priori, but more complex ones are. Much may depend on which examples you choose to think about.)

Suppose you consider a far more complex proposition in mathematics. For instance the Pythagorean theorem that the square on the longest side of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Now, do you think that writing the right hand side of this equation is simply short hand for the left side? I think it would be difficult to maintain this unless you were already committed to the view that all of mathematics is like the simple equation you gave as your example. And, if we think about other (supposed) examples of synthetic a priories outside of mathematics, the view that they too are "analytic" is even more implausible. Kant's prime example of a synthetic a priori was "Every event must have a cause." It would be vastly implausible to think of this as an analytic proposition (true "by definition") Indeed, to think that "event" could be "defined" as a something that is caused, would be to confuse the terms "event" and "effect." That is, although "Every effect has a cause" is analytic, since an effect is, by definition a caused event, it is not true that every event has a cause is "true by definition."

So, what I am arguing is that even if it is difficult for you to see why 4 is not just "short hand" for 2 + 2, it should not be difficult for you to see why it would be very implausible to argue the same thing about propositions that have been said to be synthetic a priori.

Kenneth Stern

An analytic truth can be described as a truth which can be known by looking at the terms. Kant's semantic example is "all bodies are extended" — it is part of the concept of a body that it is extended. Synthetic truths on the other hand, such as "all bodies are heavy", are truths in which the concepts are not analysable in terms of each other, such 2+2 = 4. To think of a body is to think of extension so this is analytic, but to think of 2+2 is not to think of four, so this is synthetic, and it is also a priori because you can come to know this regardless of empirical facts in the world.

You obviously think the above is simply false.

However, Gödel has shown that you cannot 'define' numbers on a purely axiomatic basis, as most mathematicians had argued. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems showed (oversimplifying a very complex argument) that a number has properties not shared by its components. The number, say, '12' has properties that '10' and '2' do not have, even when you add the properties of component '10' to the properties of component '2'.

This supports Kant. If 10+2 has properties that 12 does not have they cannot be the same concept so this is a synthetic truth known a priori.

Rachel Browne

Ziomara asked:

What are the four causes in Aristotle? Does any one resemble the Platonic Form?

Aristotle discusses the four causes in Book II of the Physics. He is working from a definition of "cause" which in plain English would mean, what we need to know in order to give a full account of the nature of a thing. The Greek word for cause (Latin causa) is aition, which means 'that to which something else is indebted.' "The four causes are the ways, all belonging at once to each other, of being responsible for something else." (Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology). Heidegger argues in this essay that the four causes are not what we mean by causes, but what we might mean by "modes of occasioning".

These are the four causes. (i) the causa materialis, the material, the matter out of which, for example, a silver chalice is made. (ii) the causa formalis, the form, the shape into which into which the material enters; (iii) the causa finalis, the end, for example, the sacrificial rite in relation to which the chalice required is determined as to its form and matter; (iv) the causa efficiens, which brings about the effect that is the finished, actual chalice, in this instance, the silversmith.

James asked:

Glouisel asked:

I wondered if you could help me with the good Bishop of Cloyne.

(1) How does Berkeley explain illusion e.g. a pole that seems to bend in the water (involuntary, vivid) as opposed to imagination?

(2) Why can only spirits and not ideas cause and does this mean that God is constantly intervening rather than writing laws and then sitting back?

(3) Isn't our way of perceiving and God's different? Isn't this a problem for Berkeley?

(4) Is the doctrine of abstract ideas supposed to underpin all of Berkeley's arguments against matter or just the one against substance?

(1) Illusion occurs at the phenomenological level of appearance. The illusion is a given and Berkeley does say that ideas imprinted on the senses, as opposed to imagined ideas, are "real things" but in the case of an illusion we apply knowledge of things, circumstances and standard conditions. A perception is more than appearance as it entails a judgement. For Berkeley, ideas are sensations or experience and a thing is a cluster of ideas. You cannot get the idea of a stick from a visual experience alone, you need tactile experience to form the concept of a stick because you need to experience it as firm and unbending. We know the pole in the water is an illusion because we know the stick is not bent yet will appear to be so in water from experience of other appearances of sticks in water. Imagination presupposes ideas, so you can imagine that a pole seems to bend in the water, which is an activity of will.

(2) Ideas are inert, so cannot be causal. Causes are what we talk about, but at the level of metaphysical explanation, there is only spirit. God is constantly acting rather than intervening and so he could not rest. His will is the cause of all changes including perceptual changes, so he would have to constantly cause perception of movement, for instance as well as "the succession of ideas". God is described as an "author" and as possessing a "governing spirit" and without his activity there would be nothing to perceive and all change would come to an end.

(3) God's perceptions are active rather than the mixture of passive and active perceptions given to man. This is a problem because we can't understand perception not based on a sense-perception model. Presumably God perceives all parts of things since his perceptions will not be relative to a type of being. But if that is so, it leads Berkeley to realism because there will be parts of things that we don't perceive, which he denies. A C Grayling in Berkeley The Central Arguments suggests that God's way of perceiving should be seen as conceiving.

(4) Berkeley actually argues at some length in Principles of Human Knowledge against "abstract ideas". He thought you cannot abstract a colour from extension by separation to achieve an abstract idea of red, nor can you compare different shades of red to achieve an abstract idea of what red is. An abstract triangle which is "neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral" is the sort of thing Berkeley would regard as a "manifest repugnancy".

Berkeley doesn't argue against substance, only against matter. We can have no conception of matter because it is beyond sense and concepts are developed from experience. Substance cannot be matter so it must be incorporeal, or spirit. I think that support for Berkeley's argument against matter and external objects is to be found in his account of perception as outlined in Essay towards a new Theory of Vision (this was written prior to the Principles and the Three Dialogues) in which he argues that there is no necessary relation between visual and tactile experiences so the mind has to form connections through various sense experiences in order to achieve the idea of things. If our perceptions are not brought about by the fact that there is material substance an internal account in terms of spirit is needed to explain perception.

Rachel Browne

Bill asked:

OK. I am wondering if fairies are real. I believe in them. I believe in angels and unicorns and Santa Claus and hippies and giants and the Devil and God and stuff like that. I believe in peace and love and all that stuff too. I believe that there is life on other planets and that aliens exist. Am I wack nut???

You may be whack nut, but I am not one hundred per cent sure. A lot would depend on how sure you are about all the things you say you believe.

Let's go through the cases, one by one.

Fairies. There is a problem relating to the invisible variety of fairy (which most are, apparently). No-one has ever seen a fairy, we only see what they do (for example, move stones around the garden). The question is not so much whether this is true, but whether one has any conception of what it would mean for it to be true. This is one occasion when I can well see the utility of the verification principle.

Angels. There is ample Biblical evidence for the existence of angels, from Genesis onwards. If you are a follower of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim faiths, then you ought to believe in the existence of angels.

Unicorns. It does not stretch credulity too far to suppose that once upon a time, there might have existed a variety of horse which boasted a horn in the middle of its forehead. It is rather more difficult to accept that a unicorn has the power to sense whether or not a woman is a virgin, as unicorns are reputedly able to do. One question for the theory of knowledge is whether one would accept that unicorns had this power, purely on the basis of an observed correlation, or whether we would require some account of the underlying causal mechanism, whatever that might be.

Santa Claus. Obviously you don't have children, otherwise you would know where their Christmas presents came from. To test the Santa Claus theory would require an experiment which is at least morally questionable: namely, refuse to buy your kids Christmas presents and see if Santa Claus brings any.

Hippies. To 'believe in Hippies' is to believe what the hippies believed in. The trouble is, the Hippies believed in a number of things, not all of which are equally credible.

Giants. There is no conclusive proof that the Yeti and the Big Foot do not exist and never have existed. Nor, I gather, is there sufficient evidence to conclude that they do exist or have existed. Given, however, that there is some positive evidence, albeit tenuous, the reasonable thing to do in this case is keep an open mind.

God and the Devil. The same thing applies to the Devil as applies to angels (see above). To believe in 'God and the Devil' as two independent forces neither of whom has the power to overcome the other is the Manichaean heresy. What is wrong with Manichaeanism is not that it is heretical, but that it provides us with a Deity whom we do not have sufficient reason to worship.

Peace and love. I believe in both of those things.

Life on other planets. It is an intriguing question why the radio telescopes have not picked up any evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligent life. One gloomy explanation is that civilizations naturally tend to extinguish themselves after a few thousand years — a very short period of time in relation to the history of the universe. Hence the relatively low probability of our being around at the right time to pick up radio waves sent out by alien TV shows.

Geoffrey Klempner

Svend asked:

I'm working on a paper concerning the question of "free will". I have been told, that Skinner and Sartre in various articles have debated this. Where were these articles published, and when?

I do not believe that Skinner and Sartre have debated each other on this matter. But perhaps you just mean that they have each discussed the problem of free will. That they have. Skinner is a "hard determinist," which is to say that he believes that every event has a cause which , if it occurs, makes the event (or effect) inevitable. He also holds that human choices, and the actions which flow from these choices, all are determined by antecedent causes. He believes that since Determinism is true, there is no free will. One place to go here is Skinner's Science and Human Behavior. Another is his Beyond Freedom and Dignity. And a third is his novel called Walden Two.

Sartre is an Indeterminist. He holds that human beings make undetermined or uncaused choices. In fact, Sartre makes uncaused choice which he thinks constitutes free will, the center-piece of his philosophy. The locus classicus of this is Sartre's Being and Nothingness. His much earlier lecture, "Existentialism is a Humanism" also contains the gist of this view. Sartre's plays are a dramatic expression of his views, and his novel, Nausea is another expression of his understanding and advocacy of human freedom.

Kenneth Stern

Ravi asked:

What did Kripke achieve in his rigid designator theory? Why are logically proper names rigid designators?

The theory of rigid designators is a challenge to the descriptive theories of reference which basically hold that there is a sense or description under which a person is known and this description determines which person you are referring. According to a descriptive theory, you may know Aristotle as the philosopher who taught Alexander the Great and this description, or sense, determines the reference. However, Kripke points out that Aristotle may not have taught Alexander. When we talk about Aristotle as having done otherwise, we still mean the man Aristotle. Only if we can refer to Aristotle without any particular description can we make sense of saying what he may and may not have done. Aristotle as a rigid designator picks out Aristotle in "all possible worlds" and we can talk about Aristotle as having had a completely different life than the one he did.

Kripke is able to explain the fact that we may know of someone and refer to him even when we possess a false description. We may know Gšdel as "the man who discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic" and this may be the only thing we know about him. On the description theory, if Schmidt really made this discovery then if we talk about Gšdel by means of the identifying description "the man who discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic", we would identify and refer to Schmidt, who we have never heard of and do not mean to refer to. Kripke suggests that there is a causal or historical chain between the use of a name as a rigid designator and the person named. When we use the term Gšdel there is a chain of usage leading back to the particular man Gšdel. Within this chain false beliefs can be spread.

Kripke takes language as very much something we use, and we can use language without knowing very much at all. Because it is difficult to deny that we use names as Kripke describes, this constitutes a very strong challenge to any theory of names which relates a name to an essential description or a cluster of descriptions.

Kripke has shown that necessary truth is not to be essentially related to the a priori. Kripke admits it is a contingent truth that Hesperus (the evening star) and Phosphorus (the morning star) designate one and the same star. We can imagine a possible world in which a man sees the evening star and sees the morning and they turn out to be different, but this would be a world that contained not Venus, but two distinct stars. As rigid designators both Hesperus and Phosphorus refer to the planet Venus which is a necessary identity relation because the names have meaning by virtue of a single referent, but this cannot be known a priori — it is an empirical discovery. Before Kripke's Naming and Necessity, empirical truth was understood to be contingent and necessary truth was that which we can determine without reference to the world. Kripke has shown that necessary truth is not about how we come to know things but it is about what things we think could be different.

Rachel Browne

Roger asked:

What is your philosophy of teaching? What do you like most and least about teaching philosophy? Is there a philosophical perspective that you want your students to learn? Of what benefit is philosophy to a student in science and technology? Do you have a reading list of books you'd recommend to the layman who has not studied philosophy? I look forward to reading your input about these matters.

I don't understand the meaning of the words, 'teaching', 'education'. I don't see how teaching or education can achieve what they are meant to achieve. I believe in learning. In Pathways, students are not educated or taught, they learn. Learning is an active process of inquiry under the control and motivation of the learner, whereas being taught is passive. I am guide and mentor to my students, not their 'teacher'.

I believe in lifelong learning, because the active process of self-motivated inquiry has no natural end. We should never cease to learn, to inquire, all our lives.

I am a learner, and I seek to learn from my students. That is what is so great about being a philosophical mentor. I am happy to admit when one of my students knows more than I do, when I can learn from them. The one thing I hate is grading and awarding marks. Thankfully, that is something I never have to do. I leave that to the Philosophical Society Examiner!

I have my own philosophical perspective, my views which I hold with more or less confidence, in a range of philosophical areas: metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of mind and language, logic. I have no desire that my students should acquire my perspective, or believe the things that I believe. I am much happier when a student disagrees with me than when they agree with me.

As a student of science and technology, philosophy will benefit you because it will make you more flexible in your inquiries. Philosophy asks us to see things differently. That is what all the great discoverers, innovators and inventors have been able to do. From philosophy, you will also learn the true value of what you do. Science and technology are beautiful things, to one who has learned to appreciate their particular form of beauty.

Kim asked:

How dow we know that Socrates' philosophies are that of his own when Plato wrote the dialogues? Is it not possible that ones perception could vary from another's, thus leading to a misguided or incorrect translation?

Your question expresses a central problem in Plato scholarship. We are quite sure that Socrates himself never wrote anything (at least that we have). From a little external evidence, but mostly internal evidence, most scholars are agreed that the early dialogues like Apology or Crito are closest to Socrates' own thought, unadulterated with Plato's views. The "Middle Dialogues" starting with the Meno and ending with Republic and Theaetetus in which Plato's central metaphysical doctrine of the Forms is introduced and expounded begin to use Socrates more and more as a spokesman for Plato's own philosophy. The later dialogues like Timaeus and Parmenides are thought to be expressions of Plato's thought alone. It is very unlikely that Socrates had the views expressed in the later or even the doctrine of the Forms in the middle dialogues. These views are too "synoptic" to fit what we know of Socrates' mostly analytical way of thinking.

I don't see why mistranslation itself is made particularly possible by any ignorance of the distinction between the views of Socrates and Plato. Translation is, after all, mostly dependent on the knowledge and aptitude of the translator. ("To translate" goes a French saying "is to betray," but even so, there are degrees of betrayal.) But I agree that the interpretation of what is translated is, guided to a large extent, by our beliefs (what you call "perceptions") concerning the relative core views of the two philosophers. It is always possible that we are mistaken: whether it is probable that we are is a different matter, and it is probability that counts.

Kenneth Stern

Edi asked:

Hello, philosopher. I have some course in the university called philosophy of photography and I wonder where I can get some information about it? We also study about Descartes. I will appreciate if you answer me. Thank you.

You could look at the following:

Roland Barthes Camera Lucida (Hill and Wang)
Susan Sontag On Photography (Anchor Books)
Roger Scruton "Photography and Representation", Critical Inquirer Spring 1981, pp 577-603
Stanley Cavell The World Viewed (Harvard University Press)
Gombrich Art and Illusion (Princeton University Press)
Trachtenberg Classic Essays on Photography (Leete's)

You could search for articles in your library by Scruton and also by Kendall Walton — actually I suggest starting off this way. John Searle and Nelson Goodman have also written articles on photography.

Rachel Browne

Shana asked:

Hi. I'm a freshman in college and have to write an essay 4-5 pages for the end of the year. My class is called Knowledge and Reality; basically introduction to philosophy. My paper is supposed to compare Thomas Nagel and Plato's philosophies. Plato's included theories are from Phaedo and the Apology. Could you give me some help on what Nagel thought. He really confuses me.

Both Plato and Nagel could be described as holding two world theories of reality.

For Plato, the two worlds of sense experience and the immaterial 'Forms' or 'Ideas' correspond to two different modes of understanding. The world of sense experience, of sights and sounds, is a world where nothing remains constant and true knowledge is impossible. There can be no true science of empirical reality, only more or less well founded opinions. In stark contrast, the object of philosophical inquiry is the timeless world of 'Forms', such as the Form of Justice, or Virtue. Forms are the objects of intellectual vision.

The best source for Nagel's views is his book The View From Nowhere (Oxford 1986). Nagel's theory may be seen as a reaction to a view first expressed by Plato's predecessors, the Greek atomists Leucippus and Democritus. According to the atomists, our familiar world of sights and sounds is illusory, not for the reasons Plato gave but because all that really exists is physical atoms and the void. The smell of a rose, the blue of the sky, the deepest passions of love are just mechanical movements of atoms. What the atomists stumbled across was the idea of the objective standpoint. This is what Nagel calls the 'view from nowhere'.

Modern science upholds the fundamental logical assumptions of the atomist theory, even though the basic elements are no longer simple inpenetrable nuggets of matter but more mysterious entities such as muons and quarks. The basic idea is still the same. The external view tells the complete story of what we are. Everything that happens in the universe is ultimately a physical process of cause and effect. We are nothing but tiny clumps of matter pushed here and there by forces outside of our control.

Nagel's response to this picture is to deny that such a conception could ever fully replace the view we have of ourselves, as agents who possess consciousness, who exper