Holly asked:

What are some ethical issues surrounding Prostitution. Is it OK?

Here's another of these questions fraught with political implications, which are nonetheless interesting. Ok... what is prostitution? That term has been employed for everything from being a housewife to doing art for the "wrong" reasons, to taking money for sex. I'm going to be very simplistic and define it, for the purpose of this discussion, and a bit of brevity, as the last: taking (receiving, asking for) money for sex: selling sex. (Notice that this very restricted definition eliminates, for example, temple prostitution, where a priestess took a donation for a temple in exchange for sex. Some religions in the ancient world did this.) Usually it's a woman who is paid by a man, but that's certainly not universal, as we all know.

Is a housewife (-husband) a prostitute by this definition? No. Is an artist a prostitute? No (unless perhaps their art involves sex... then it gets more complicated than I want to deal with here). What about a person who simply marries for money? Well, my off-the-cuff answer would be that if they could refuse sex, they weren't prostitutes (again, by my restricted definition above)... if not, and sex was even implicitly part of the deal, they were. In other words, there is a contract involved here, one which implies an exchange of one valuable item: sex, for another: money.

Ok. Sex for money. Now... you want "ethical issues". But what does that mean? Are you asking whether selling sex is (im)moral? Whether it, even if moral, can result in immoral actions? How people feel about or during prostitution? Buying or selling? Why or whether they should do it? "Ethical issues" is just too broad a term for me to deal with here... "issues" can be just about anything. So again I'm going to simplify. First, I'm going to say that ethical or moral issues revolve around, generally and vaguely, enhancing human life. I'm going to neglect animals (they don't sell sex anyway, as far as I know — yes I know about bonobos), and I'm just simply going to refuse to get more specific about what I mean. Enough is enough. So... first, can prostitution be an immoral act, i.e., can it result in immoral effects, i.e., can it result in the quality of people's lives declining? Yes. Is it more likely to have that result than not? Well, clearly, the practical, empirical answer to this is a resounding "yes". Just look around you. This isn't even an issue. Prostitution results in all sorts of outright evils.

But the big question is whether prostitution is intrinsically immoral, right? That is, need prostitution result in immorality, viz., in the decline of the quality of human life? It's clear that a great deal of the immorality resulting from and associated with prostitution is a result of our (and other) culture's attitudes toward it. For one thing, people want sex enough to pay for it, others will sell it, and those actions are illegal; but that illegality will not stop it — an obvious conclusion if you just look at history; it certainly never has in the past. A classic recipe for crime, then, right off the bat. But let's simplify yet again, and try to take an ideal case, inasmuch as we can, where we do not consider society as a whole, but merely a relationship between persons na•ve in these matters.

When two people are in a relationship, a good relationship, sex is given, fairly freely, as a gift, and enjoyed as an intrinsic pleasure of the relationship. Sorry, all you anti-sex people out there, but that's my opinion, for what it's worth. If that is not true, if sex is not freely given nor enjoyed as a fairly necessary (all other things equal) aspect, on a par with respect, (other manifestations of) affection, communication, etc., in a relationship, then where does it come from? It is, in that latter case, something that one person must request of another, and that request is the beginning of an obligation, a contract, is it not? So what must be done to balance the sex given only (or mainly, in some cases) upon request, is something else given back, to meet or fulfill the obligation... and we're going down the path to money for sex, aren't we. But is that bad, i.e., immoral? My take on this is that in an ideal (or even a very good) relationship it is immoral, to varying extents, since, as I say, sex, among other things, should be given and taken freely, for pleasure, intimacy, and so forth (and having children... but how much of sex is for that, really?). Why? First, with less gift-giving, and the more bargaining that goes on and the more explicit it is, the more there is possibility for resentment, in implicit and explicit contracts perceived as unequally unfulfilled. Second, more importantly, the less gift-giving, the less trust there is. That's the purpose of a contract, isn't it, to compensate for a lack of trust in others' generosity, mutual goodwill, and so forth. What about a less than ideal relationship? Who knows? Evaluate your own relationship and ask yourself that.

Next, what about prostitution outside of a relationship? A single person (one in no intimate relationship) goes and pays someone else for sex (I assume no social restrictions: no illegality, no disapproval, etc., I also assume that there's no coercion, and that the prostitute is such purely by choice. A lot of ifs here, but I'm trying to get at the ideal case.). Is this immoral? My inclination is to say yes, moderately (in this ideal case), for the following reasons. First, and not too relevantly, it would certainly be better if that former person had a good relationship, so they didn't have to have sex this way, given the reasoning above. But that isn't the situation, we're assuming. The argument, I believe, for prostitution's immorality (again, in this ideal case) is one based on habit or learning. That is, once someone engages in this kind of behavior, there will be some greater tendency, in some cases, to view sexual relationships in terms of bargaining. In such cases, the person's other relationships (if there are or will be any) will, I would think, tend to suffer (given the reasoning in the above paragraph), just because of the human tendency to generalize. That is, given some sexual relationships conducted as bargaining, others that should not be will tend to be understood in the same (or similar) way. So even in this very ideal case, there is a tendency, I think, for prostitution to be somewhat immoral. And given that the reasoning in this paragraph is correct, if someone who is in an intimate relationship goes and pays a third person for sex, that behavior again will tend to be immoral, even in some ideal world where both people in the relationship agree to, even enjoy, the prostitution.

But you know, we're not talking about stealing here, nor murder, nor violence. In this ideal and unrealistic case, prostitution, as far as I can see, is about as immoral as, say, children watching too many violent movies. There is, after all, no overt violence performed on another, since we are assuming that everyone is acting voluntarily. A tendency is set up towards seeing people similar (in appearance, etc.) to the prostitute as similar in other respects; a tendency is set up to seeing sexual relationships in that light. This is not good, but it's not, to my mind, as bad as, say, a group of men whistling at a passing woman, which is subjecting her to something against her will (and setting up tendencies towards that kind of mind-set and behavior).

Well, that's all very fine, but in the real world things are a lot worse. Drugs, crime, violence, poverty... we all know this, don't we. So in the real world, prostitution is immoral, period. Let me, however, given the above reasoning, propose a way to move prostitution towards less (not none, mind you) immorality: legalize it, with government control. Oooh... I can hear the screams. But cite me one culture in all history without prostitution (I'm of course including male as well as female prostitution). If you can do that, I'll retract my suggestion and revise it to recommend we (attempt to) change our culture to that one (and please don't tell me we should all become stone-age hunter-gatherers in little villages... how many billions would we have to kill to realize that? how much disease and suffering does living like that entail?). That's an even less practical suggestion, though, isn't it. Given that prostitution is universal and unavoidable, clearly if we make it criminal, we merely push it underground, with additional problems, right? I won't bother to outline the causative scenarios, you can do that for yourselves, or just read the newspapers.

Steven Ravett Brown

Sara asked:

Can you please explain Marx's social-political theory? I am really confused!

To explain all of Marx's social and political theory in any way that would do it justice is well beyond the scope of any short reply on this web site. What I will do is give an account of what I see as the main defining features of Marxism in the hope that this will provide a helpful introduction.

One of Karl Marx's famous sayings involves a claim that the job of philosophy is not to be content with interpreting the world, but to change it. Marx was a revolutionary socialist and his ideas must always be seen in this context. He philosophised so that he could provide an understanding of the world that involved a guide to changing it.

Marx viewed society as one holistic entity. Society, as a human construct, contains many features that, at first sight, may seem to exist independently of one another. For example, religion, politics, education, the legal system and economics may all seem to exist entirely independently of one another. Marx believed, however, that these apparently discrete human phenomena are connected at a much more fundamental level. They interact with each other and change each other in this interaction. Society can be viewed as the dynamic process where by different, apparently discrete, phenomena constantly influence one another through their interaction.

In this dynamic process of interaction, not all the components have an equal weighting. Marx viewed that the mode of production, the way in which society created and distributed its economic goods was of fundamental importance in influencing the other components. The particular mode of production of any society would play a pivotal role in influencing the form of the other components in the system.

The mode of production in any society would therefore play a very significant role in the way that the society educated its members, the manner in which politics was conducted, the aspirations and beliefs of its members and so on. For this reason, Marx is sometimes described as an economic determinist. It is economics that dictates the specific manner in which a society operates. In actual fact, the term economic determinist is on oversimplification. Marx understood that, although not pivotal, the other features in society could have an impact both on each other and back on to the mode of production. Marx's insight was that the mode of production was more significant in determining the nature of a society than the other features.

With this view of the significance of the mode of production, Marx draws his primary attention to the specific nature of the mode of production, both in capitalist society and in pre-capitalist societies. Marx saw that what typified the mode of production in both capitalist and pre-capitalist society was the division into economic classes. In any society there existed a class of individuals who owned and controlled the means of production (the land, resources, technology) and those who didn't. When the mode of production is characterised by a division into economic classes, the whole of society is structured around this division. Societies change when one class replaces another as that which owns the means of production. Such change only arises as the result of physical struggle between various classes.

In capitalist society, Marx saw that there were two fundamental classes. There is the bourgeoisie (or ruling class) who own the means of production and make profit from this ownership, and the proletariat (or working class) who own no means of production and are forced to sell their labour power (to work) for the bourgeoisie in order to survive. The two classes have opposing interests. If the bourgeoisie want to make more profit they have to pay the workers less or make them work longer. If the proletariat want better working conditions or higher pay, the bourgeoisie will be forced to cut down their profits. Because the bourgeoisie are in competition with one another (competition for share of market etc), it is not in their self-interest to give such concessions to their workers. Thus Marx saw the mode of production in capitalist society as typified by a conflict between these two fundamental classes. Whilst capitalist society is in existence, the bourgeoisie are the dominant class.

All other features of capitalist society can, according to Marx, be seen as representing and reinforcing the dominance of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. The education system in capitalist society, for example, perpetuates such class rule. It teaches working class children the values of conformity and obedience to authority. It tells them that if they work hard enough they will be successful, and tells them nothing of the vast inequality of power between the two classes. Religion, as another classic example, preaches to the working class that earthly suffering is inevitable, that liberation from oppressive conditions comes only in the after life. The media portrays economic inequality as natural and, by dictating the political agenda, circumvents any radical critique of society. The military, police and legal system all operate to maintain the dominance of the bourgeoisie.

For Marx, economics and politics are inseparable. The class nature of capitalist society determines the range of political discourse, the means by which political decision-making is carried out, and, to a large extent, the individual political beliefs and aspirations of people living in that society.

Marx wrote an extensive critique of the exploitation at the heart of the capitalism and predicted that such an economic system was inherently unstable and would never be capable of satisfying even the very basic needs of humanity. Even in Marx's day, capitalism had achieved remarkable technological achievements and yet was unable to use these to make a more humane world for the mass of ordinary people. Modern Marxists will point to the seemingly inherent contradiction at the heart of the capitalist economy — the fact that incredible technological advancement exists alongside economic stability, mass poverty and misery for a large percentage of the global population. This contradiction, they argue, provides the proof that capitalism is an inherently inefficient and inhumane economic system. The alternative to this economic system is a mode of production based on a classless society where production is collectively owned. This system is socialism or communism. Marx did not believe that a revolutionary change from capitalist society to socialism was inevitable. He did, however, believe that the potential for socialism was created by capitalism. Capitalism brings vast numbers of people into workplaces where they are forced to work alongside each other. The proletariat grows as capitalism progresses. At the same time, the competition within the bourgeoisie becomes more intense. Marx believed that social change would only occur if the proletariat recognised itself as a class, organised itself effectively and seized the means of production from the bourgeoisie. In seizing power it would effectively become the dominant class. For the first time in human history the mass of people would collectively own the means of production. They would be able to control production and direct it towards the human needs neglected by the bourgeoisie's drive for profit. This would be the socialist revolution. Marx wrote very little about the specific nature of any future socialist society. It would be safe to say, however, that once the mode of production has been transformed, there would be a corresponding shift in the other components of society. Education, media, the legal system etc. would all be affected dramatically.

Simon Drew

VM asked:

What is Hume's position on relativism in aesthetic judgements?

In his essay "On the Standards of Taste", Hume describes an aesthetic judgement as not really a judgement at all, but a matter of sentiment based upon something's being agreeable or pleasurable. Sentiment has reference to nothing beyond itself, so we are not making judgements about the quality of a thing. We cannot find real beauty in a work and different sentiments give rise to different opinions, so it looks as if this is a theory of aesthetic relativism.

Hume answers this relativism in terms of the standard of taste. The various opinions of the masses do not give rise to this standard. When we make a judgement that is a work is to our taste, which is to find it pleasurable, we are still prepared to defer to the critic on the matter of quality. Although mankind has a common nature, the critic who sets standards is a person of refined taste and experience. The critic will have the sort of taste which enables him to pick out works that we can say are of quality even if the quality of beauty is not something we can point to as real.

Relativism can still arise in two ways. Firstly, works of art belonging to different genres and periods might appeal to one critic but not another. If one critic champions the glories of abstract art whilst another finds quality only in Impressionism, there is no criteria upon which to say either one is right without making reference to taste. Secondly, there are cultural differences so that Japanese critics, say, will have different taste and experience from those in the West, so standards become culturally relative.

However, the critic need not be seen as an actual critic. If the critic is taken to be an ideal critic, a person we imagine as not embodied in the institution of art and immersed in a culture, we are supposing that such a person — who is possible but not actual — might determine which works are works of quality in light of different human tastes and cultures. The ideal critic will determine which tastes pick out real quality and which works in different cultures are worthy of appreciation.

Rachel Browne

Sara asked:

This is about "A belief is what we accept as truth" which was discussed on these pages.

One example I have come up with is that hundreds of years ago people believed the world was flat, in fact they knew it was flat and believed it to be true as they knew nothing else. However, later it was discovered that the world was round and so now we KNOW that it is in fact round. Before this discovery was made, the truth was that the world was flat and one could fall off it if they travelled too far out to sea.

What if we believe in something that isn't actually true? The hijackers of the planes in the States may have believed in something that they thought to be true, but that was disputed by most of the western population.

"One example I have come up with is that hundreds of years ago people believed the world was flat..."

Whoa! Hold on a bit. What you begin with is right, hundreds of years ago (some) people believed the earth was flat. But then you go on to say, "in fact [,] they knew it was flat...but they knew no such thing since (unless you believe that the earth has changed shape between then and now, do you?)the earth was then round. So how could they have possibly have known it was flat when it was false that it was flat. Can you know something which is false? I don't think so. The next thing you say may explain what is going on. You say "they believed it to be true [that the earth was flat]" and, again, you are right. They did believe it to be true. But since the earth was not flat but round, what they believed to be true was false. They had a false belief, which is to say, they made a mistake. In other words, they believed that they knew that the earth was flat. But believing you know something is one thing; actually knowing that thing is something else again. People often believe they know things, but find out later that they only believed they knew these things, but didn't because what they believed they knew turned out to be false as in the case you give. A necessary condition of knowing something is that what you know be false. That is different from claiming or believing you know something. For your claim may or may not be true, and your belief may or may not be true. I claimed to know, just a short time ago, the the United Constitution said that a person can be accused of treason only in time of war. Upon reading Article 3 of the Constitution, I found out that I was mistaken about that. I thought I knew something that I didn't know at all. Thinking you know something, and actually knowing it, are very different.

"However, later it was discovered that the world was round and so now we KNOW that it is in fact round..."

But, as I just pointed out, unless you believe that the earth changed shape in the meantime, it was not true that the earth was flat, not then, not now, not ever. It was always round. However (some) people thought or believed it was flat. And of course, it turns out they were wrong, and they were also wrong in what they inferred from their belief that the world was flat.

"What if we believe in something that isn't actually true? The hijackers of the planes in the States may have believed in something that they thought to be true..."

We often believe things that aren't true. After all, we are only fallible human beings, and liable to make mistakes. But with diligence and careful investigation, we can often greatly lower the probability that we are wrong, although not eliminate it altogether. The growth of science that helped this along greatly. The scientific method is the best way of decreasing the possibility that our beliefs are mistaken.

The terrorists probably did believe in what they did. But it still remains a good possibility that their beliefs were distorted by emotion and by certain views which weren't true. And it is also possible that they might have been crazy. After all, they did commit suicide, and cause the deaths of many who were innocent and had done them no harm. So, even if they thought they were doing what was right, nevertheless, in view of what they actually did and intended to do, we can safely say that they were mistaken in thinking they were right. The fact that people believe they are right is no evidence at all that they are in fact right.

Ken Stern

Sakir asked:

Could you please provide me information about Herakletos, the Philosopher, the son of Ephesus King?

Only little is reported of Heraclitus' life. His own writings make it plain that he had nothing but scorn for the popular mass "For what thought or wisdom have they? They follow the poets and take the crowd as their teacher, knowing not that there are many bad and few good. For even the best of them choose one thing above all others, immortal glory among mortals, while most of them are glutted like beasts" (frag 111), for political leaders, and for most previous writers on philosophy and religion including Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras and Xenophanes: "Much learning does not teach understanding — otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus" (frag 16).

Heraclitus' writings, like those of most pre-Socratics, have survived only in small fragments cited by other classical authors. These fragments are often dense and paradoxical — therefore Heraclitus is characterized in the history of philosophy as the obscure philosopher: While Aristotle complained of his word order, Socrates said it would take a Delian diver to get to the bottom of his work. In the following I will relate to the writings of Aristotle.

Aristotle tells us about three of Heraclitus' ideas. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle mentions Heraclitus with his Milesian predecessors in one breath, saying Heraclitus assumes another single source of natural substances: fire. But if you take for example, fragment 30, where Heraclitus says "The world, an entity out of everything, was created by neither gods nor men, but was, is and will be eternally living fire, regularly becoming ignited and regularly becoming extinguished.", fire doesn't sound to be the arche here, but a symbol for the eternal change.

Explanation: The point is, that Heraclitus was concerned to improve the Milesian monists Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, who had attempted to explain the world in terms of one underlying stuff (water, "apeiron", air) and not just to suggest another material source. Heraclitus might have asked: If everything is really one stuff, how do we make sense of the fact that we observe a multiplicity of things in the world? And if all these many things are really made of the same stuff, how can we explain that some things change into other things? That's why Heraclitus declares just change as the underlying principle. Most famous is this fragment (91), also expressing the primacy of eternal change: "You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you."

The problem now is, that change, in Heraclitus' philosophy, must imply that reality is riddled with contradictions, and this is the second of Heraclitus' ideas. For example, "arguing Aristotelean", if a seed grows into a tree, the seed is not what it was. It was a seed, now it's a tree. However, we must say that it still is the same thing: we didn't destroy the seed and then bring in a whole new and different tree. It is still what it was, but then again, it is not what it was. Therefore the tree is and is not the seed, which violates the law of non-contradiction. Aristotle concludes, "The doctrine of Heraclitus, which says that everything is and is not, seems to make all things true" (1012a). A more charitable reading can be found in W. K. Guthrie's A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 1, where Guthrie recognizes three distinct ways that Heraclitus identifies opposites. Very briefly, Heraclitus argues, that without contraries the world wouldn't even exist: how could there be a day without a night? Or winter without summer?

The third idea follows from the doctrine of radical flux: the impossibility to have knowledge of the sensible world. This impossibility caused others (namely, Plato) to develop a "theory of forms" to justify the possibility of knowledge. The theory of Forms occurred to those who enunciated it because they were convinced as to the true nature of reality by the doctrine of Heraclitus, [...]" (Met., 1078b) Heraclitus influenced not only Plato, but also had a keen follower, Cratylus, who took his teacher very seriously. He stopped talking all together on the grounds that there is literally nothing to talk about, and it is improper for a man to utter noise.According to Heraclitus we should listen to the logos, the principle of order and knowledge, which is common to all, but, and here we've come back to the point we've started from, the many remain ignorant of it, just like sleepwalkers unaware of the reality around them. You will find more detailed information about Heraclitus in an article of the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:

Elaine asked:

How to lead a philosophical life when we try to go through pain?

If this question is a practical one from someone who is currently experiencing physical or emotional pain then I think the correct initial response would be to advise the questioner to seek methods of pain control from an appropriate qualified medical practitioner. If the questioner is asking a more general question independently of their current experience or in conjunction with it concerning the capacity of philosophical analysis to offer something to the current situation then I think consideration of what it is to be philosophical or adopt a philosophical disposition has something to add that might be of benefit in general and possibly medically if there is merit in believing in Psycho-immunolgy (The Body At War John Dwyer p.239).

'Don't personalise, generalise'.

Supposing I am not feeling too well, I might begin by expressing my feeling unanalytically by announcing that I am taking to my bed and not going to work. I might be advised later that the source of my malaise is viral cold. How might I understand this information from a philosophical viewpoint whilst resting in bed? From the initial sentences describing my condition: 'Neil has a viral cold' I could construct the extension; ' Neil is being acted against by a virus'. By now I have forgotten how miserable I am feeling and beginning to enjoy the opportunity to indulge myself in some philosophical game playing and in fact I am quite grateful to my viral friend for giving me this time out.

I have begun to see that I can take this game to a new level by extracting some of the particulars out of the last sentence to derive an even more general sentence form: 'something did some act against someone'. I have now begun to see that I can zoom out from this sentence even more by constructing a sort of pseudo-sentence in list form where the names are place markers for other names that could take their place to make the sentence pattern become a sentence like the one we originally began with. My pseudo-sentence now takes the following shape:

(Person, time, place, act, value, order)

and looks remarkably like a very cryptic form of the pattern of questions that we teach children to use when analysing or constructing stories, i.e:

(Who, When, Where, What, Why?)

The slight addition comes in the last position with the introduction of a marker for 'order' by which I am thinking of What lead to, or What follows from?

If we now add a new list of generalising marker words in front of this list in the form of (every, some,) then we can begin to really start to play some interesting philosophical games once we add the final marker that kicks the game into play and this has the general form of a question mark (?).

So our philosophical attitude can now be expressed in the sentence generating pattern:

(?)(Every, some)(Person,time, place,act, value, order)

from which we can construct sentences like:

Does everyone, always experience every pain in the same way?
Do some pains have some purpose?
Can I locate my pain in some particular place?
Where does pain go when I do not notice it?
Is my pain something that exists somewhere at sometime?
If pain is a real thing that acts against me can I imagine a real thing that acts for me and against my pain?

Again, to reiterate I am sure that it is not the place of philosophy to give advice that would prevent the seeking of medical opinion, but in the realms of self help I think philosophy can offer some practical techniques to help in the management of everyday experiences.

Neil Buckland

Christian asked:

What are three characteristics of the Patristic period?

I take it that you mean the characteristics of the thought of the patristic period. There are lots of characteristics. I will give you here the three most general and most underlying.

1. Absolute spirit
Looking at Christian religion philosophically, Christianism is the ism of the absolute universal spirit. The 'holy spirit' is the Spirit that created all that is in the beginning with God, it is God this period said. The spirit governs the universe and time, and 'lives' in history through the concrete acts of men and women. The thought of the absolute universal spirit is the first moment of the thought of this period.

2. Athens and Jerusalem.
Tertullian (160-220) asked the rhetorical question, 'What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?' at the outset of the period in question. By it he meant, What have the false Greek gods to do with the living God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob? What has polytheism to do with monotheism? What has superstition to do with truth? What has the wisdom of the world to do with the wisdom of God (cf. 1. Cor. 1)? and so on... Athens and Jerusalem are to be understood symbolically as Greek and Jew. Unfortunately for Tertullian, the patristic period is one in which the two had everything to do with one another, in which they met and married, in which the semitic root religion really became embroiled in the thought of the world and changed that thought forever. This marks the Patristic period, hence the talk from Western commentators down the centuries about 'Platonism' in Christianity, as if this were an agenda or a corruption; it is merely the effect of 'Athens' having so much to do with 'Jerusalem'.

3. Church and State.
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's" Jesus had said. This reflects the difference between the Kingdom of David and the Kingdoms of the world, sacred and profane, divine and secular. Church and state can be taken in the concrete sense as characteristic of the thought of the period, or as ciphers for the origin of the whole problem of universals. Anything less than what is ultimate (for which G-d is the signifier, but not the word) is an idol unworthy of ruling and not universal. It is relative, but that which is 'rendered to God' is the whole self (Shema Israel! Deut.6:4f) which is universal. The question of universals got philosophically trivialised and lost under the thumb of Scholasticism.

None of these three moments of thought have been overcome. They persist today.

Marko asked:

What are the defenders of consciousness talking about? I often get stuck in philosophy of mind when reading an essay "defending" consciousness, saying it is out of reach for SCIENTIFIC explanations etc. The Turing Test may be insufficient, but why? Because it does not take consciousness and/ or understanding into consideration? But what is it that the Turing Test doesn't take into consideration? That may be the hard problem, yes, but are there any straightforward philosophical essays or scientific research that have accomplished a good explanation of WHAT they're talking about? Could you help me find it (tip me of some philosopher...) or perhaps give me some material or answers of your own?

I assume that by "defenders of consciousness" you do not mean people who maintain that we are conscious, nor people who maintain that it is useful to study consciousness, but instead you mean something like people who maintain that consciousness is a "thing" that is "beyond" "scientific" explanation or understanding. Well. It sounds to me as if you are reading rather haphazardly in an area in which haphazard reading is very dangerous. You can easily get sucked into some school, etc.... and the issue of consciousness is one fraught with very extreme feelings, since it touches not merely on science, but religion, mysticism, and so forth.

I'm somewhat at a disadvantage here, because this is an area in which I'm extremely interested, and I've done so much reading in it, that without knowing your background better, I feel at a real loss as to what to recommend you to read. So first, take a look at a very good site, Dave Chalmers': http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/. Second, realize that his position on consciousness vis-a-vis science is a very particular one, which many people (including me) disagree with. But he's very knowledgeable in this area (and, actually, very approachable).

Meanwhile, the Turing Test has this general problem: what if everyone else but you, or, say, half the people walking around, are "zombies"? That is, what is there, if anything, about consciousness that necessarily changes behavior? What if you can have creatures perfectly simulating the behavior of conscious entities, without themselves being conscious? So far, we cannot prove that there cannot be such creatures. Well, if not, we're sort of stuck, aren't we, insofar, at the very least, as evaluating the necessity for and effectiveness of the Turing Test? Think about it. If consciousness does not change behavior, then a non-conscious person could behave exactly the way we do (including, of course, talking about being conscious), just without having phenomenal experiences. This is the "zombie problem", and there's lots of literature on it.

The "hard problem" is something else, more or less (although they're interrelated). That is, how do you go from the physical to the mental? More specifically, given some neural circuit that we know is involved in, say, color vision, all we've got there is neurons firing, right? Where's the color? Neurons aren't colored (well, they are, but you know what I mean); neural discharges aren't colored; there's no little man in our heads sitting watching the neurons firing and seeing colors... so where do the colors come from? All there are, are just neurons reacting to other neurons. And of course we can ask the same question about all qualia, all conscious experiences: smell, touch, taste... anger (an angry neuron?), fear... the meaning of an equation... and on and on. Nasty, right? And so far unsolved (and according to Chalmers, unsolvable with science as presently conceived, which is where I — and others — disagree with him). There are also people who do not recognize this as a problem; they claim that colors (etc.) are "real", i.e., really and actually out there in the world, and that we have "direct" access to them (I'm putting that in quotes because I don't really understand how it could possibly work). They are a rather small minority.

I could go on and on. Some intro books:

Old book: Ornstein: The Psychology of Consciousness.
Very old, very good book: Ashby: Design for a Brain.
Good and controversial: Dreyfus: What Computers Still Can't Do.
Also controversial: Searle: The Mystery of Consciousness.
Very good but one-sided: Baars: A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness.
Computer-oriented: Churchland: Matter and Consciousness
and Dennett: Consciousness Explained (which he doesn't).
Some anthologies: Metzinger: Conscious Experience; Farthing: The Psychology of Consciousness; Cohen: Scientific Approaches to Consciousness.

Then there are Clarke, Flanagan, Edelman, Lycan, Dretske, Varela, Chalmers... and on and on and on. And I'm not even considering conventional philosophy of mind nor phenomenology here. Chalmers' site also probably has good intro books; I haven't seen it in a while.

This is a huge area. Do not expect easy or quick answers.

Steven Ravett Brown

Osama asked:

Please can somebody send me all they know about philosophy of punishment.

Basically punishment is a sanction against violating the law which is an instrument for the protection of society and there are three main theories of punishment which seek to answer the general question of what justifies punishment, but they also need to account for the more specific questions of who we can punish, and how severely. In most countries, there are defences available to someone who has violated the law, such as duress or provocation. So a theory needs to be able to support an account of when it is appropriate not to punish.

One theory of what justifies punishment is utilitarian, the main proponent being Jeremy Bentham. Punishment protects the majority of law-abiding citizens. Firstly, it is in the interests of the majority that a minority who are causing harm should be punished: this can mean they are taken out of society by imprisonment. Secondly, the establishment of a system of punishment means that the majority do not need to take the law into their own hands. Such a theory has difficulty answering questions about how severely we can punish and but has available theoretical grounds for saying that there are cases when we need not punish, for instance when it is clear that someone won't re-offend because they acted under duress.

The second kind of theory sees punishment as having a moral basis (see J L Austin and R Dworkin). Such a theorist can hold that a person who acts wrongly, and could have done otherwise, gets what he deserves, or he might simply hold that law is founded in moral principles. A theory, based on moral considerations is more able to support an account of how severely we can punish. It could be suggested that the punishment meet the harm done. This could give support to the death penalty for murderers. Again there are grounds to support cases where punishment is not appropriate, such as when a person could not have done otherwise because he acted under duress or was insane.

Thirdly, there are non-retributive theories which hold that punishment acts as a deterrence. Bentham held that punishment was a deterrent, as well as having utilitarian value, but the main modern-day proponent of this approach is H L A Hart. Punishment will deter an offender from re-offending and also deter those who might consider committing an offence from doing so. We have the freedom to offend or not, the more severe the punishment the greater the deterrence, and the overall characterisation of law as a deterrent allows room for theorising about excuse, mitigation and defence.

These theories take punishment for granted. The Platonic view is that there should be no need for punishment. We should strive to notice those people who have criminal tendencies and try to re-educate or cure them, so that they will naturally behave in a way which is socially acceptable. Although punishment might seem like a violation of the freedom, really it offers a greater freedom than the Platonic view. Where there is law and punishment, we have the freedom to offend and accept punishment or, if we are lucky, get away with it. In a Platonic state, there is no freedom to offend or follow one's criminal tendencies. So while punishment is that which everyone but a masochist or someone who feels safest in prison seeks to avoid, it has a positive aspect.

Rachel Browne

Michael asked:

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?...just kidding.

I see a lot of questions that ask mainly about the meaning of life. Experiences, feelings, thinking, loving, right or wrong, etc. I've always wondered what life meant as well. I also wonder why things even exist at all. At what point was the mere concept of "being" established? why is there anything? why is anything else besides the black of the universe? what is that black? why is it black? do we really live in a huge nothing? or is the whole universe one giant living organism? why is the universe so complex that we can't fathom it's endless reach?

So my question is really....WHY DO WE EVEN ASK WHY? and if you can answer that...why can you answer it? there is no end to why. Could it be that "why?" is the only thing more complex than the universe? why?

and Annie asked:

I'm a year 8 philosophy student and I would like to know why we keep asking why?

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?...just kidding."

Why just kidding? It is a serious question that has an answer. The answer is, the chicken came first. The chicken evolved from a lower species, reptiles, I believe, and when it evolved and was a chicken, it laid an egg.

"I see a lot of questions that ask mainly about the meaning of life..."

As for the question, what is the meaning of life, I don't think there is an answer to that general question. But I think that there is an answer to the question, what is the meaning of a particular life, for instance, yours. The answer to that is the meaning, or significance that you yourself give to your life. The lives of people are meaningful or not depending on what individual persons do with their lives and how they conduct themselves throughout their lives. Clearly, the life of Mother Theresa or of Albert Einstein were meaningful and important. But what of the life of Princess Diane? That is questionable, for she did very little to make her life meaningful. My point is that you should not expect, as apparently some people do expect, for the significance of their live to come somehow from external sources, God or whatever. The meaning of one's life in internal. And the question, what is the meaning of life (in general) has no answer, for it is a little like asking the question, what is the meaning of eating mashed potatoes? It is too general to admit of a sensible answer.

"And if you can answer that...why can you answer it? there is no end to why..."

"I would like to know why we keep asking why?"

As in the above case, the reason your general question seems to have no answer is that it is too general and lacks a context. The answer to "why do we ask why?" is that in the context in which we ask, we are asking for an answer to a particular question. The question, "Why does water freeze at a temperature of 0 degrees centigrade?" certainly does have an answer, and there are obvious reasons for asking that question. But all questions need a context. The English philosopher used to talk about the fallacy of asking about nothing in particular. You just might be committing that fallacy.

Ken Stern

I have never wondered about the meaning of life because the question "why" doesn't seem applicable to life. Things just are. When we ask "why?" we are looking for a reason or explanation and we have to be justified in doing this. We are not justified in asking why if the question doesn't fall within the realm of the explanatory.

Meaning is the significance something has. The relevant question concerning meaning or significance is "what?". We can ask about the significance of love and feelings and the answer is probably functional, or evolutionary because our explanation and reasons have a causal nature. We can also ask "why" do we love and have feelings and the answer will be in the same terms because explanations in terms of functionality and evolution are of a causal nature. Our notions of function and evolution are based on the way the world actually seems to us, and we are justified in thinking in this way because we cannot think otherwise. We can come up with weird mystical explanatory theories, but these are speculative and we'll have problems getting others to accept them as true.

There is no point in asking "what is the meaning of life?". Firstly this is because it is not an analysable concept, or something that picks out a state of affairs, but another way of putting the question "why are we here?" Secondly, if there is a reason we are here it is not causal or functional in the sense of physical explanation, and the only form of explanation is metaphysical. And, whereas physical explanation has a point in that it helps us to understand the workings of the world and we cannot help but think in causal explanatory terms, metaphysical explanation is of no use and only functions to satisfy religious feelings in mankind. Metaphysical commitments are relative. Some people don't believe that there is anything beyond that which can be understood in physical causal terms.

I agree that metaphysical questions are interesting, but only when we asking the "what?" question. What is the nature of consciousness and what is the nature of our ethical relations are interesting questions. Here we are looking at the nature of mankind rather than why he is, and the latter question seems ridiculous. The person with a yen for the religious or the mystical thinks that "why are we here?" falls within the realm of explanation but he is wrong.

Of course, sometimes we don't have an explanation because we haven't yet the ability to understand and explain. So we do often ask "why?", seeking an explanation, but as I say this is only justified if it is the sort of question which is answerable in terms of our natural capacity for explanation. Otherwise, you can go on asking "why, why, why" as a child does but sometimes the parent has to answer "well, that's just the way it is". Basically, asking "why" when there isn't an answer is really an age and personality related thing.

Rachel Browne

Zeli asked:

Can you clarify qualia for me?

I understand qualia to be the subjective qualities of conscious experience but is 'qualia' only representative of 'something we sense'? All the examples I have read to date seem to be along the lines of a sensory experience.

Can the feeling of love, hope, being frightened be described as qualia? We have conscious experiences of these things and I assume we can experience these things in different ways. Can we say the quality of fear I feel is different to the quality of fear you feel? If these things cannot be described in terms of qualia — can you clarify why?

This is a very good question — I'm impressed. It's also a very controversial issue. It is indeed true that the term "qualia" (or the singular, "quale"), is usually taken to refer to those aspects of phenomenal experience usually considered sensory. There isn't too much problem with emotions here also; one of the classic qualities to analyze in philosophy of mind is the feeling of pain, for example; that feeling is something Dennett and many others work with as an example. The problem comes with what might be termed "attitudes", "propositions", "abstractions", and suchlike. Is our attitude towards something a phenomenal experience? What about our understanding of a sentence, or a mathematical expression? These latter, as expressed, i.e., as symbols, are certainly propositions, but what of their mental expressions, their meanings... what do we experience as we read a sentence, an equation, etc.? The classical answer to this is that we "have" mental "propositions". I have always thought this absurd, myself, and the tide is starting to turn around somewhat, as people begin to study consciousness. That is, it is one thing to represent our phenomenal experiences as propositions, it is entirely another to claim that those experiences are literally propositions. The former seems very reasonable, given human limitations on representation, the latter, to me, if not to legions of analytic philosophers, clearly untrue. But if it is untrue that we experience propositions as such, what do we experience when we read a sentence, understand an equation, and so forth? I'm actually working in just this area, and because of that, I don't know how to give you a short answer... it would be easier if this weren't a major interest of mine. Twenty-five words or less: we experience gestalts (in a very broad sense of that word), i.e., unified complexes, of sensory, emotional, and abstract qualities, in a variety of modalities, encompassing verbal and non-verbal qualia (whoops... 30).

Let me just step back a bit... you ask whether feelings can be "described in terms of qualia"... what does that mean? If a feeling is a quale, then any description of feelings, employing feelings, is one in terms of qualia. Or you could be a behaviorist and describe fear in terms of bodily responses, but then you'd be a behaviorist. Or, perhaps, a Jamesian (James-Lange theory of emotions), or even a Wittgensteinian (given a broad conception of "body"). You could describe fear in terms of neural discharges in the amygdala (and other areas)... but then you'd be describing neural discharges. You could describe fear in terms of its social causes and consequences, but then you'd be a sociologist (or maybe some sort of post-modernist, post-Heideggerian type), describing social interactions. I actually don't think that the above, in my opinion, inaccurately termed "reductionist" approaches to describing feelings (in terms of other entities) are either correct or incorrect, appropriate or inappropriate. In other words, there are situations, contexts, in which a neural description of fear, or a sociological, is in fact the best description, and anyone, in my opinion, who wants to be able to understand and describe the mind, our phenomenal experiences, our interactions with the world, must of necessity be familiar with the totality of these approaches. It is just the restriction to one such viewpoint which limits investigation and description. I'm just dipping my toes into the ocean of literature and controversy here; there's no way to summarize it in this context.

As for referring you to the literature... the mind reels. D. Ihde: Experimental Phenomenology. James: Principles of Psychology, V1. Wittgenstein: Blue & Brown Books. Nagel: What is it like to be a bat? (an article). Metzinger: Conscious Experience (an anthology). Tye: Ten Problems of Consciousness. Flanagan: Consciousness Reconsidered. Go on the web and look up the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness for an enormous list of readings and sources.

Steven Ravett Brown

Gladys asked:

Why did we come to the world?

When we ask a question like this we should not be expecting a simple or quick answer. These kinds of questions are more an invitation to conduct a thought experiment or investigation, even if or especially if the question stands alone from any context or it is generated as part of a complex situation.

As a guide for conducting such an experiment, we can learn from the way we teach children how to conduct scientific investigations. Here we can begin with a very general and superficially simple question like," Why do candles go out" or "Why do elephants throw water over themselves"? The ensuing discussion should lead to the generation of ideas suggesting causes that can be tested through simple experiments.

An implicit technique we can transfer from scientific investigations to practical philosophical investigations is that of 'gardening', which may not on the face of it seem to have much to do with either, but by which I mean the process of growing a tree that pictures the meanings and interconnections we have 'grown' from investigative dialogue or monologue. From such trees we can recognise interconnections, coherences, compatabilities, comfort or discomfort amongst the idea we have hanging from the branches.

So, if the question, "Why did we come to the world" which probably intends to take us on an expedition into the confusing jungles of metaphysics, is the root of the tree, what questions will encourage its growth? There is some experimental value in initially taking the question literally rather than metaphorically with the intention of seeing what characteristics of the metaphorical interpretation of the original question can be generated. If we can answer well enough on a literal interpretation we may be content to say there is no need to embark on a metaphorical or metaphysical interpretation. We could then understand the question to be asking about a journey in much the way that we could ask of a holiday companion; "why did we come to this beach?" Within this supposition we already have some concrete and ordinary ideas hidden in the shadow of the attention grabbing metaphor. In particular we can identify the following:

I. a travelling companion: why we came
II. a questioner expressing doubt or uncertainty about the reason for the journey: what did we expect from the journey?
III. a questioner expressing doubt or uncertainty about the particular destination of the journey: why here and not elsewhere?
IV. a questioner expressing doubt or uncertainty about the specific membership of the travelling party: why us and not them? Or why you and not them?

There is also a presupposition that the agents involved had some choice in their destination: we came and were not sent, there may be no sender.

All of these questions are answerable in concrete terms, the answers to which may be interesting in themselves but if we were asked the original question in the context of a philosophical counseling dialogue would we be doing justice to the originator of the question if we now advised that the original question was simply a metaphorical chimera, a non-question that had no more substance than a mirage? Probably not, mainly because we have not yet examined what critical step turns very ordinary questions into metaphorical ones. Part of the answer resides in the replacement of a very specific destination like 'the beach' with an abstract one like 'world'. This term seems to take us on a giddy high-speed ride into the stratosphere and beyond before we have had a chance to consider the possibility that it may not be so abstract and general as it seems to want to be. We can bring the dialogue focus and entailed tree generation back down to ground by identifying the scope questioner explicitly or implicitly attributed to the term 'world'. What worlds does the questioner inhabit? Where by worlds we can include, families, culture, education, job and so on.

If it turns out that the level of generality was intended to transcend all particular worlds then we can close this phase of the investigation and open up a new one by referring back to the generalisations constructed from the concrete questions and asking:

V. In what sense are we travelling?
VI. Do we travel alone?
VII. Is there a purpose to our journey?
VIII. What should we expect from our journey?
IX. Is there a sender?
X. Where were we before we were sent?
XI.Is there an endpoint to our journey?

I began by suggesting that philosophical investigations can borrow some techniques from the way we teach children to conduct scientific investigations. We can further borrow the idea that such investigations are part of a learning process not simply of specific facts and results but of technique. This particular investigation offers the participants a model for the non-destructive analysis of metaphorical ideas in terms of their concrete 'earth-twins' so that should the philosophical traveler want to close the investigation at that point they can, but should they want to continue the game they can do that as well by generating a new set of abstractions synthesised from the assertions implicit in and drawn out from the original question. And so they may continue moving between the two approaches until they decide they want to rest, take another direction or give up travelling.

Neil Buckland

Floris asked:

I have a question concerning Kant's epistemology. I have been very confused about the different pairs of expressions analytic/ synthetic and a priori/ a posteriori.

In short, my teacher has taught me that, according to Kant, an analytic statement is one for which no empirical experience is required, while a synthetic statement involves empirical knowledge. The difference between a priori and a posteriori is, so she said, that a priori sentences are sentences in which the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject, while in a posteriori sentences this is not the case.

Now I am very confused having read her definition of a posteriori/ a priori being in my view identical to the definition of synthetic/analytic as described in Thomas Mautner's Dictionary of Philosophy (page 19). Her definition of synthetic/analytic was furthermore identical to Mautner's definition of a priori/a posteriori (page 33).

As I asked her about this, she said I must have misunderstood what Mautner wanted to say, and, to my grief, she refused to continue our conversation until I had read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or at least Prolegomena Then I would see why, she said.

Now I have read the first half of the Prolegomena, but still I can't think but that Mautner's definition is compatible with Kant's text and hers is not, which, moreover, makes Kant's expressions seem rather empty (like his questions about the synthetic a priori would be quite useless in my view, if we apply my teacher's definition to them).

Is the philosophical community not unanimous as to what the exact definition of the two pairs of expressions (synthetic/ analytic and a priori/a posteriori) is? If not, why is that so?

Your teacher is confused. The distinction between analytic and synthetic is a distinction about sentences (Kant would have said "judgements." It is a logical distinction. The distinction between a priori and a posteriori is a distinction about how we know a sentence is true (or false) It is an epistemological distinction.

Kant said that an analytic sentence or judgement is one whose "predicate is contained in its subject." For instance, "all dogs are animals." A synthetic sentence is one whose predicate is not "contained in its subject. For instance,"all dogs are carnivores (eat meat)" A different way of talking about the analytic-synthetic distinction is to say that analytic sentences are true in virtue of the meanings of their terms, and synthetic sentences are not true in virtue of the meanings of their terms. On the other hand, a sentence that is known a priori is not known empirically or on the basis of sense-evidence. It is known independently of sense-evidence.But a sentence known a posteriori (or empirically) is known on the basis of (dependently on) sense-evidence.

Kant says that it is clear that all analytic sentences are known to be true a priori, since they are true in virtue of the meanings of their terms. But,now, what about synthetic sentences? According to Kant, although some synthetic sentences are know a posteriori or empirically on the basis of sense evidence,this is not true of all synthetic sentences. It is true, for example, of all dogs are carnivores. We could not know that unless we observed dogs and what they eat. But what about a sentence like, Whatever is red is colored? Kant denies that the concept of color is contained in the term red. But he asserts that although we know this sentence is true, we do not know it is true on the basis of sense evidence, a posteriori. Kant insists we know it a priori, that is, independently of sense-evidence. Another, and more famous example that Kant gives is the sentence "Every event has some cause" (The law of universal causation). Again, Kant says of this sentence that although it is synthetic, it is known independently of sense-experience,and so, is known a priori. So, according to Kant, although all analytic sentences are known a priori, it is false that all a priori sentences are analytic.Some sentences known a priori are synthetic. After these distinctions are made, and Kant establishes that there are synthetic sentences known a priori, Kant asks his seminal question: How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?It is this question to which the entire Critique of Pure Reason is devoted to answering.

Some philosophers, in opposition to Kant, have held that the term "analytic"is co-extensive with the term, "a priori" and the term, "synthetic" is co-extensive with the term "a posteriori." That is to say, these philosophers hold that all synthetic sentences are also known a posteriori, and all sentences known a posteriori are synthetic and that all analytic sentence are known a priori,and all sentences knows a priori are analytic sentences. Your teacher seems to be one of these. This is a possible and respectable position, and has engendered much controversy in philosophy since it denies Kant's claim that some synthetic sentences are know a priori. But where your teacher is confused is in thinking that the terms "synthetic" and "a posteriori" mean the same thing (are synonomous); and that the terms "analytic" and "a priori" mean the same thing (are synonomous) and that is simply false, since, as I pointed out when I began, the analytic-synthetic distinction is a logical distinction,whereas the a priori -a posteriori distinction is an epistemological distinction about how we know.

Besides, to maintain that these pairs of terms are synonomous is simply to rule out Kant's question, "How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible"by definition, since it would make it a self-contradictory question. And this would be unfair and somewhat silly.

Ken Stern

I have not read the book by Mautner you mention. It would probably be better for you to forget it, if its confusing. It seems to me that it is incorrect to define a priori as meaning the same thing as analytic and a posteriori as synthetic. A priori, literally, means 'without prior experience', a posteriori means 'with experience'.

It is tempting to do what the positivists did and identify tautologies (analytic propositions) with a priori ones. Surely the only things you know without 'synthetic' experience of the world are trivial logical facts, such as 'A=A' or 'something can't both be and not be at the same time'. You don't need experiences to know that these trivial tautologies are analytically true,

Kant's point in the Critique of Pure Reason is that some non-trivial facts are known without experience (a priori) but are not simply 'analytic' tautologies. For example, the proposition 'there is space' is not analytic on your teacher's definition (it isn't a tautology), but according to Kant you cannot find out the truth of the proposition 'there is space' by looking at your experiences. What he is saying is that space is pre-supposed (i.e. it is an a priori concept) in order for there to be experiences at all.

Unfortunately, Kant is one of the worst writers to have ever tried writing philosophy. In particular, his Transcendental Deduction is amazingly badly written for such a powerful argument. This tends to disguise the importance and brilliance of what he actually argues. The main thing to grasp with the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason is how you can have 'a priori synthetic' propositions: i.e. sentences that are not tautologies but whose truth is not derived from synthetic experiences of the world. Understanding this requires you to ask the Kantian question: what needs to be the case about the world in order for this experience to be thus and so.

You could also read Quine's essay 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' in which he questions whether these distinctions are even right (after all, defining an analytic proposition as 'one in which the predicate is contained within the concept of the subject' isn't amazingly helpful) My experience was that a few hours worth of serious thought was the best way to grasping Kant on the analytic-synthetic/ a priori-a posteriori issue.

Adam Gatward

Paul asked:

I am doing a presentation in a few weeks time on Hart's argument from political freedom, as found in his Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford edition). I still don't capture the exact bearing of this argument. Could you help me?

Hart's position on politics is that it only determines what the law when there is social warrant. The law is, for Hart, founded in social considerations. Law enforcement and punishment, in fact the very existence of the law have the function of maintaining a peaceful society.

The sort of social warrant for government action that Hart uses as an example in Chapter III is social opinion which comes to light in the formation of associations, such as those for the abolition of the death penalty. In response to these associations, select committees are set up and investigations are made by the Royal Commission and Gallup polls are taken. While a poll will not reflect party politics, the select committees do because they reflect the number of seats each party has in the Commons. However, as you will see in footnote 3, recommendations can go ahead even if one party completely withdraws from the committee, and in this particular case it was the majority political party. So the Government's own consideration would not figure in the recommendation. So this is one way in which statutory law is free from Government control. Also, the nature of the considerations which resulted in the Homicide Act, were not political but moral.

Another reason the Homicide Act may be taken to be non-political is that it didn't come about as a result of members of Parliament acting as delegates for the people who voted for them, but rather as a result of personal inclinations of the members of Parliament. Although the initial warrant for Government action was social opinion, it was the relaxation of party loyalty that led to a vote in favour of the abolition of the death penalty. So the Act is free from party politics. Social warrant is only needed to justify the Government taking action. There is no claim that statutory law need reflect public opinion.

Although in the particular case of the death penalty, party discipline was relaxed, so that members of the Commons could vote freely, Hart can't and doesn't claim that this is always the case with statutory law, so this isn't sufficient to conclude that the law is always free from party politics. However, Hart's position is not that the law is completely free from political intervention.

However, the theme of the book is that law is influenced by non-political considerations. The idea of intention is influenced by philosophical debate on the nature of action. Responsibility and mens rea are considered in the light of psychological theory. Conceptual analysis, rather than politics, is shown to have more influence when the courts are assessing individual cases.

Further, Hart claims that judges are able to make their own law, as in the case of the McNaughton Rules which were made by judges, and even though the Mental Health Act provides different criteria for a defence of insanity, the McNaughton Rules can still be used. The Mental Health Act has ousted the Rules from effect. Again it is in the particular case that statutory law might not be used.

Rachel Browne

Kathryn asked:

I worry about what appears to be the increasing rate of spread of capitalist and materialist values, yet all around me I hear people saying they do not want to live like that. How can something so outrageously against all that is best in mankind be so inexorable especially when the majority neither want nor understand it? Is something driving history? Will we get through this (evolve?) to better forms of society?

When the Constitution was written, a graduated income tax provision was expected to maintain a fairly level playing field for we, the people. However that has been ineffective and we are now controlled by money interests that control the working masses. We are all forced under the work for money and security at survival levels as ordained by the big operators who need us to produce so they can reap the rewards.

There is an answer. The Vote. We have the majority vote — if there is a relevant issue to vote upon. An amendment based on limiting individual wealth to a percentage of our national wealth and affected by contributions of individuals or families — has been sketched out. It needs to find a distribution program to spread the word.

Dan Emerson

Sunil asked:

Plato's philosophy in my view lacks proof. Plato talks about the world of forms but I do not understand where he could have gotten this knowledge from and furthermore what proof is there for the forms.

Plato also talks about objective truths such as justice , beauty , truth , love which in my view are subjective.

My question is can you enlighten me as to how did Plato arrive at these ideas and how could he prove these ideas. Besides, why should someone believe in the forms and objective truth (which seem to be subjective). I do not understand how could Plato justify his invisible philosophy./P>

Sunil also asked:

Is life fair and just or not? I know that from the appearance of life as it is, life seems inherently unfair. However are there any views that life is fair?

What are the arguments for life being fair? I know one is karma but karma cannot be proven and there are so many problems with the theory of karma.

I am from Trinidad, West Indies.

When you say that Plato's philosophy lacks "proof", you are partly right. Plato's belief in the existence of a world of forms certainly lacks the type of proof we would expect to see in a thoroughly scientific work. There are no experiments we could perform to test his idea. And, because these forms can only be accessed via the mind, there is no way that we can ever observe them. It does seem, on a strictly scientific definition of proof, that Plato's theory is unsustainable.

An empiricist philosopher such as David Hume, for example, would argue that because we can never experience this world of forms, we cannot claim to have any knowledge of its existence and, as such, should reject the idea altogether.

The problem with this type of criticism is that it fails to address the method by which Plato justified his ideas — a method not based on empirical observation. Plato was confronted by a number of problems. The only rational solution to these problems, according to Plato, is to postulate the existence of a separate realm of existence such as the realm of the forms. This method of using reason to deduce facts about the world is now described as rationalism.

For example, matter does not seem to be organised in a random chaotic way. Human beings are born and they all, without exception, share some feature which makes them recognisable as a human. How can this be so? Its no good resorting to phenomena like DNA and genetics and so on for this would still beg the question — why is it that matter is organised in such a way that it creates DNA which creates humans etc. Why did the matter form into the shape of the human and not something else? To use Jostein Gaarder's example from Sophie's World, why do we have an elephant and a crocodile, but not a crocophant?

Plato's answer to such problems of identity is that there must exist, somewhere, a blueprint or "mould" of the perfect or ideal or archetypal human being/ elephant/ crocodile etc. This mould is the form of the human/ crocodile/ elephant. It is the plan that determines the organisation of matter. Hopefully, you can see how postulating a world of forms solves a problem. Although we cannot observe this world of forms we know (or at least Plato does) that it exists. If it did not exist, we could not solve the problem of identity outlined above.

It is the same with concepts that appear as subjective to the modern thinker. The concepts of beauty and justice are good examples. How can we say that something is objectively beautiful? Plato's answer is that the beauty of an object is determined by how closely it resembles the ideal form of beauty. To say that something is unjust is to say that it has properties that do not resemble the ideal form of justice. Because justice and beauty cannot be observed, the philosopher must use her or his reason to access this world of the forms and find the objective answer.

Plato believed that the world he experienced through the senses was an unstable pattern of change and decay. Nothing we observe stays constant forever. Sooner or later things decay. Truth, by definition according to Plato, must be unchanging. It must be constant. Because of the constant change (describe by philosophers as flux) experienced by the senses, Plato believed that the senses could not be used to find truth. Truth must be found in a realm of reality to which the senses have no access. For Plato, this meant that only the mind, governed by reason, could access these eternal truths.

These ideas are not, perhaps, as far-fetched as they might initially seem. Ask yourself how you know if a drawing that claims to be a circle is actually a circle. Have you ever seen a perfect circle? Could you ever see one in the real world? Wouldn't the ink/pencil mark/paper decay, even at the microscopic level, the moment the circle was drawn? How, then, do you know it's a circle? Perhaps you have an idea of a perfect circle — an idea of one that you cannot see/ touch/ hear/ smell, but one that only exists in your mind and that can only be comprehended through the use of reason. Perhaps it is a mathematical definition of a circle. The point is that this idea serves as the blueprint you can use to draw a circle yourself and the yardstick by which you can judge the "circleness" of those drawings that claim to be of circles. Substitute world of forms for mind and you're not that far from Plato's position!

Simon Drew

Plato: you're absolutely right. Plato's position lacks proof. He was making a metaphysical assumption based on reasoning something like this: where do our notions of categories and abstractions come from? When we see, for example, squares, we see all sorts of things that we call "square", but none of them really are... so where do we get that idea? Well, his answer, which he never proved, but just thought up from wherever it is that we think up answers, was that there is an ideal square somewhere that is the example, the paradigm, the ideal model, for all the imperfect squares we see, draw, imagine, etc. That perfect square, and the perfect triangle, and so forth, are the Forms. Now, does this perfect square "exist", in some sense? Plato thought so, since, after all, everyone seems to have access to it. It all sounds plausible, doesn't it? So where are the perfect squares, perfect triangles, circles, trees, colors, love, justice, etc., etc.? They're off in some part of the universe that we can only access partially and indirectly, through (rational) mental effort. Now, who believes in this stuff today? Pretty much no one... except mostly mathematicians. Think about this: does the number 2 exist? Why not? Isn't it something that relates directly to the world, something that is independent of human beings (and animals, etc.), something that will always be the same, will always have the same relationship to two things, to the number 3, etc., etc.? That seems pretty solid, doesn't it? Take the example of a country. Does a country, like Trinidad, exist? If not, why not? If it does, why not the number 2?

Well, you can see the can of worms opened here. Have fun... you've got another 2000 years of debate ahead of you to read about.

Life: is it fair. My take on this question is that asking it so generally it is like asking what a triangle tastes like, or whether a rock is fair. You've mixed categories that can't be mixed. Fairness, as a descriptive category, does not apply generally to life, the totality of the stream of events surrounding us. Fairness applies to human acts and judgments. That is, the term "fair" relates to issues of ethics and morality. You can ask whether some aspects of life are fair, namely those aspects which relate to moral judgments. You can't ask whether getting hit on the head by a falling tree in a storm is fair, it just happens. Unless you are one of those who believe that there is a god, or spirits, who cause everything and employ moral judgments in all their acts, in which case you must indeed believe that life is, or is not, fair, there are many many events that have no moral or ethical components in their causes. For example, can you ask whether coming down with typhoid fever is fair? Now, if you're in a city, and if the typhoid was (in part) the result of bad water which was (in part) the result of sewage in the water, which was (in part) the result of poor maintenance on the sewers which was (in part) the result of lack of money for maintenance, which was (in part) the result of corruption in the government... then you can ask about the fairness of the distribution of money, and so, to some extent, about the fairness of the typhoid, which was partially caused by that inequity, but also by many other factors, like the presence of the bacteria, its virulence, etc., etc. But what if you were in the wilderness somewhere, drank some water, and came down with typhoid? Was "life" unfair, because the bacteria just happened to be there? Were the bacteria unfair? The water? Your drinking it? I don't think so; I think that you were just unlucky, and that the category "fairness" did not apply in that case.

Steven Ravett Brown

Felix asked:

St.Thomas Aquinas justified God's existence by five arguments. This can't be taken literally, there has to be more for his thoughts and my question is; What interpretations followed other philosophers about Aquinas arguments in his justification for the existence of God? I'm interested on critics and other thoughts. The concept of God can be interpreted in INFINITE ways, just like Aquinas arguments.

Well, yes. It can be taken quite literally. The famous Five Ways appears in St. Thomas' Summa Theologica and you can find it there. The fact that there may be several interpretations (I doubt very much that the number is infinite, don't you?) of these arguments in no way shows that there are not just five. Aquinas was, of course, talking about the concept of God of traditional Christianity and Judaism, and, again, although there may be several ways of understanding that concept, these are not infinite either. Aquinas was simply giving arguments which he thought showed that this particular concept had a referent-referred to something which had the features or properties included in the concept.

There have certainly been critics of his arguments. Probably, the two most famous critics were the English philosopher, David Hume in his Dialogues on Natural Religion and Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Ken Stern

Berty asked:

According to Wittgenstein, should philosophy speak about reality?

Try the recently published book, Wittgenstein's Poker: the story of a ten-minute argument between two great philosophers by D. Edmonds and J. Eidinow.

Steven Ravett Brown

Kristen asked:

I'm a student in the U.S. I am currently doing a paper on the difference between knowledge and true belief. I've developed a bit of writer's block/ mass confusion. Could you give me your view on the difference (if any) between the two? I'm taking the stance that a true belief is a form of knowledge, that you need a belief in order to reach a place of knowledge. What are your thoughts on this? Just a brief synopsis would be greatly appreciated.

Well I might just guess that Whirlaway would win a certain race and even bet a lot of money. So that if someone asked me whether I believe Whirlaway would win I would sincerely reply, "Yes, I do." Well now, let's suppose I am right and Whirlaway does win, so I win all that money. But now, let's suppose that someone says to me, "How did you know that Whirlaway would win? The odds makers thought she would not." I might reply, well, I didn't know at all. I just guessed and I turned out to be right. I guess I was just lucky!" So, I had no reasons or justification for my belief, but nevertheless I was right, my belief was true. So I did not know. But I had a true belief.

Knowledge needs adequate reasons in addition to being a true belief.

Ken Stern

Lisa asked:

How can moral monotheism be proven wrong through the following premises:

1. an action is right if, and only if, God commands us to perform it.
2. God is the ultimate moral author.
3. Which actions are right is not arbitrary, but objectively valid.

By what means can I prove this wrong and state there is no God?

There is a philosopher's problem called the Euthyphro dilemma which is about this. Either of the following must be right:

1. x is good because it is loved by the gods
2. the gods love x, because x is good

So you conclude that either the good is commanded by the arbitrary whims of the gods, or else the good is external to whatever desires and proclivities the gods may have.

I don't think the Euthyphro dilemma amounts to either a proof or disproof of whether or not there is a god. But it does lead to certain conclusions about the nature of God. For example, if what's good is decided arbitrarily — or if the gods simply decides what should be good — then this leads us to think that we can morally assess the gods. Surely if the gods decide that pain and suffering are good then we can morally assess whether this is right, and morally judge the gods.

On the other hand, some people think that there could only be an objective morality if there were a god to dictate what is right and wrong. If this is the case, then there is a problem with the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma; if the gods have to measure up to a standard of goodness external to their whims, then why introduce the gods as a guarantor of objective morality?

From this, you kind of conclude that the gods must decide what is morally right, but at the same time conclude that the gods can act in an immoral way. It seems to me that theists who try to ground an objective moral system on religious belief are in something of a cleft stick here; either there is no need to postulate god because morality is external to his whims, or you have to accept that prima facie immoral activities are alright because God decided they would be.

At the very least therefore, the dilemma might make you suspicious about grounding morality in religious belief. Of course, you might respond as Descartes does and say that by definition God could never fail to be perfectly good, and avoid the dilemma. But that is much too close to cheating for my taste.

Adam Gatward

Carmen asked:

If God really exists why do bad things happen to good people?

I certainly don't know, but here is one answer that has been given, on the supposition that God exists, of course:

It is that certain bad things that happen, what are often called evils, are necessary evils. That means that without these evils certain good things could not exist, and that these good things are worth these evils so that it is better for these good things to exist even if the evil things also exist, than for the good things (and of course the evil things) not to exist.

You know how sometimes you are willing to accept a necessary evil because you believe that only that way can you have a good thing whose goodness is worth the bad thing? For instance, suppose your dentist tells you that you need a root canal procedure. Not a pleasant thing. But you have it done anyway because unless you do you will have greater trouble. So you have this unpleasant procedure for the sake of a healthy mouth. You accept an evil because it is a necessary evil. Now, let's apply this to your question. We all believe (I think) that compassion for people in trouble or in need is a good thing, don't we? On the other hand, isn't it true that for there to be compassion, there have to be people in trouble, perhaps very ill? You could not be compassionate about nothing! So, according to this answer, certain kinds of evils exist for the sake of the compassion which is good.

Now there are problems with this answer. But maybe you just want to think about it before you think about any difficulties with it.

Ken Stern

Dawn asked:

In the arguments which take place between Philonous and Hylas in the first of the Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, Can Hylas' notion of material substance be defended against Philonous' criticisms?

The first thing we must take into consideration is the fact that in the actual dialogue, Berkeley has biased the entire argument in favour of Philonous, in order to support his notion that the existence of matter cannot be proved. Berkeley's constant concern was for the fate of common-sense beliefs and religious truths , in an age when scepticism, atheism, and doubts about religion overall were coming into the ascendancy of intellectualism. He believed that they could all be refuted together, and that the key to their common refutation lay in the rejection of matter as a real entity. To achieve his objectives Berkeley had to show that there is no material substance 'out there.' To know our own ideas is to have a perfectly evident and sure grasp upon the real world ; that of sensible things or ideas of sense. To show that the world of sensible bodies is a world of mind-dependent ideas, based ultimately upon the infinite spirit, thus the grounds of atheism are removed.

In the dialogue, Philonous is enabled to push the objective beyond the attempts of Hylas to refute the argument. For most of the argument Hylas is confined to agreeing with Philonous. There are some attempts to make a case for 'external objects,' but they lack conviction and are easily shown to be untenable by Philonous. Having made positive affirmation about matter, Hylas finds himself struggling with the burden of proof laid on him. The notion that material substance can be known as a supporter of qualities, is easily disposed of by his rival. To hold that ordinary secondary qualities have only a subjective reality, is to concede the point that they exist only in ideas, or objects-in-perception. All that remains is to show that there is no essential difference between primary and secondary qualities. Hence the former must be considered just as mind — dependent as the latter.

Hylas' best course would have been to offer a direct rebuttal of the argument, as Kant actually did. Kant claimed that Berkeley's immaterialism destroys the objective world. He alleged that Berkeley reduces material things to subjective states and eventually to sheer illusion.

Hume also made Berkeley struggle to overcome his objection that, if the existence of ideas is one with their being perceived, then the sensible world ceases to exist whenever the acts of perception themselves cease. This would lead to a doctrine of intermittent existence and a consequent denial of the permanence of sense things. The criticism forced Berkeley to appeal to the distinction between God's mind and our own. Sensible things depend essentially and constantly upon the divine mind, which always actually wills and perceives them. If Hylas had used Hume's argument then Philonous would have been made to struggle, in so much that he would have to find proof , first for the existence of God, and second to confirm that the divine mind was structured and functioned in the way claimed by Berkeley.

John Brandon

May asked:

What is Descartes's argument to show that God is not a deceiver?

In Meditation 4 Descartes describes the role of "understanding" and "will" in human judgements, in an argument to show that God cannot be blamed for our mistakes. But I'm having trouble understanding the two roles.

"What is Descartes's argument to show that God is not a deceiver?"

I don't think that Descartes actually argues that God is not a deceiver since he just takes it for granted that an infinitely good God would not deceive. But it might seem that God is a deceiver because we may not have made the effort to achieve the clear and distinct ideas which God then guarantees are true. But if we do our part in achieving knowledge, God will do his part, for he cannot deceive. But see my reply to the second part of your question.

"In Meditation 4 Descartes describes the role of "understanding" and "will" in human judgements..."

According to Descartes, we persons are both similar to and also dissimilar to God.

We are similar to God in that our wills are as free as His is. This means that we have complete freedom to assent or to dissent concerning our ideas. We are free, that is to say that an idea is true of the world (assent); or that an idea is false (dissent). But we are dissimilar to God in that although his understanding or intellect is infinite, ours is finite or limited. Thus, Descartes says, our wills are wider than our intellect.

This combination of an infinitely free will, and a finite intellect leads to the possibility, and sometimes the actuality of our making mistakes. For we can (and sometimes, do) assent to ideas when we have not been able to make clear and distinct, or dissent from ideas that are in fact clear and distinct. If we gave our assent to all and only our clear and distinct idea, we would never make any mistakes. But we sometimes believe we know more than we actually do, or less than we actually do, so that we make mistakes. So, for example, to us one of Descartes' examples, if I have a pain in my arm, I may believe that the cause of the pain is also in my arm, but that goes beyond what I actually know, and so, I may be mistaken because of the phenomenon of referred pain when damage elsewhere in my body (a pinched nerve) may cause the pain in my arm. My will, my ability to assent to the proposition that there is damage in my arm, went further than what I actually knew (how my physiology works) So my mistake is my fault, and not God's. God gives me the ability to know the truth if I exactly proportion my will to my intellect; but in my human pride, I do not do this.

Ken Stern

Chad asked:

"Discuss Socrates' claim to be a midwife of ideas. How does this fit with what Socrates does in other passages from the Theaetetus (the relativism passage, and the passage on virtues as 'becoming like God'?"

I'm afraid I can't help you with the specific passages from Theaetetus but when Socrates describes himself as a midwife of ideas, he is describing his basic method — known as the Socratic method.

In the early Plato dialogues we don't find Socrates explicitly stating what he believes to be the case. Rather, we find him questioning people about their own ideas. Once a person has explained his opinion on a particular issue Socrates attempts to show that the position they have described contradicts something that they have stated previously, or that the position they hold has consequences which the individual finds undesirable. That person, faced with the contradictory nature of his or her own opinion, is then forced to come out with an alternative, more consistent, view.

In this way, Socrates hopes to find knowledge. Through the constant questioning and refinement of people's ideas Socrates hopes, ultimately, to find a consistent (and therefore true) answer.

He describes himself as a midwife of ideas because, although he does not actually state his own opinion, he is there when others do. He is present when the person he is questioning "gives birth" to a new idea. And, just as the midwife does at a human birth, Socrates sees his job as one of testing to see whether the "newborn" idea is "stillborn" or "viable". In other words, is the new idea capable of surviving the challenges presented to it by Socrates, or is it rationally unsustainable?

As far as answering the question above is concerned, it really is nothing more than examining the arguments in the passages you list, and describing the method by which Socrates "delivers" the new ideas from the people he is questioning and tests them for viability.

Simon Drew

Kim asked:

How do I argue the virtues of Religious Relativism to a Religious Absolutist?

You can use an argument David Hume used in his Natural History of Religion for the superiority of polytheism over monotheism. The argument was just that polytheism promoted more tolerance of the religious beliefs of others. The same seems to be true of religious relativism.

Ken Stern

Erica asked:

What should I believe: Darwin or Genesis?

I take "believe" to mean something close to "accept without questioning" or "accept as an assumption". In that case, my position is that one should believe neither Darwin nor Genesis. What one should do is look at the logic behind the position, and at the evidence for (or against) it.

What is the logic and evidence for the Judeo-Christian creation myth being true? Is there more reason for that particular creation myth to be the case than for, say, the Hindu creation myth? The Buddhist? What about the creation myths of the American Indians? If you want, you can probably find literally dozens of creation myths... just because you have been raised in the tradition of one doesn't give that one particular priority, does it?

Thus, one of the (many!) problems with what is termed the "creationist" position is that it takes the Judeo-Christian myth as the truth, neglecting all the others. "Intelligent design" (which is thinly disguised creationism) neglects the many myths that have a god which creates the world fairly spontaneously and then pretty much sits back and lets it run — like Buddhism or Hinduism (if I understand them correctly). In fact, in at least some forms of Buddhism (a more widespread religion than Christianity, by the way), the universe just is a kind of universal mind which just sort of thinks us up for no particular reason. A nice idea, in my opinion, if you must have a religion.

So, then, how do you choose? On what basis? Well, how about the strange, radical, recent idea of looking at evidence? Bizarre, right?

Now, there are lots of people around right now who are trashing Darwinism, for one reason or another... mostly religious. Let's look at the basic logic of the evolutionary thesis.

1) It has been established that the basis for cellular functioning and structures in both individual cells and in organisms is their DNA.

That's the "master code", so to speak (of course there's other stuff, RNA, various cellular structures, mitochondria... but DNA is the necessary basis.). When DNA is changed, the organism changes (although there are some changes to DNA that are insignificant for the organism... but when there is a permanent change, it's ultimately due to a change in DNA — I mean, car accidents will change our bodies too, but clearly that's not the kind of change I'm talking about.). Ok... DNA is what maintains and can change our body shapes and functions. Us and virtually all life on earth (there are some viruses which might be minor exceptions — they rely on RNA). I don't think anyone except the most fanatic (and ignorant) religious bigots will deny the above.

2) DNA is what passes those physical characteristics to offspring (I don't need to justify this also, do I?).

3) DNA is a chemical, a big complex molecule, and like any chemical, it can be changed accidentally through a variety of random factors, including radiation, chemicals, even physical force.

4) by 1), above, at least some of those changes will result in changes in the organism, at some level. Just totally randomly; we're not talking anything profound here, just garbage getting into the system.

5) Meanwhile, we're living in a dangerous, rather chaotic world. All sorts of things going on outside: we need food, there are accidents, animals and bacteria and whatever out to kill us, etc., etc.

6) So those garbage changes in 3) are probably going to screw something up and kill us.

7) But what if we get lucky, and one of them makes us stronger, faster, just a little warmer at night, because our hair is longer; our beak is a little longer so we can get further into a seed pod, or something like that, which, just by chance, helps? Well, we do a little better than anyone else who wants that same seed (etc.), right? Or the opposite might happen: we get unlucky and do a little worse. (What if some big change happens as a result of a little change in DNA? Like growing an extra foot taller, or becoming severely retarded? The logic is the same.)

8) So if we have a little better chance at coping, we'll also have a little better chance at having offspring, right? If we have less chance of coping, we'll have worse chance at having offspring, or maybe we just move somewhere where the extra height (or whatever) actually helps.

9) And since it's the DNA which has changed, and which is what passes on those changes to offspring, those latter will have, if they get that change passed to them, the same teeny (or whatever) advantage.

10) Then we just go back to step 4, and repeat the process. Over and over (and over and over and...). And maybe you think that it's difficult to get changes into DNA? No way, it's just the opposite, there are mutations happening all the time; we've got very elaborate repair mechanisms that fix most of them. But not all.

And there you are. The horror of Darwinism, in 10 easy steps.

Is there evidence that the above has happened? Well, there are libraries full of it; museums full of it; laboratories busy observing evolution in bacteria, in flies... in thingies that grow and multiply fast, so we can see it happening. How about much more detailed theory than the general outline above? Yes, there's evidence, by the truckload. I'm not even going to begin to give you references, there are too many. Just go on the web to pretty much anywhere studying evolution of any sort, and you'll get sick of all the evidence. And the next time someone says that some piece of "crucial" evidence is missing... just remember, first, that there will never be proof of any theory in science. Newton's "laws" of gravity are not proven, and indeed were shown to be approximations. Science deals (at base) in induction not deduction... you never know for certain; certainty is for people who want religion. Second, remember the logic above. Where's the flaw? You find it; I can't.

Steven Ravett Brown

The simple answer to the question is BOTH!! But then you might also want to believe contemporary cosmologists, and cosmogonists. It is not a question of science seeking to destroy faith, or faith seeking to assert its superiority over science. It is rather that both are legitimate visions of the world. It is unfair to assume that all scientists are not without faith or that they seek to destroy it through rational explanations of the origins of the world, witness, for example, the work of Teilhard de Chardin. Genesis does not claim to be a scientific explanation of the origins but a religio-mythopoetic explanation. For the authors of Genesis it was as real as the 'Big Bang' is for those who propose it. But then so to were the myths of Babylon, Sumeria, Egypt, Greece and the East. Darwin sought to offer a thesis for origins based on the phenomena he observed, but, as with the Genesis authors, he was bound by the confines of his time, culture, language and available scientific knowledge. Darwin is a theory, as is the 'Big Bang', it may be the most plausible theory, but one is not unreasonable in accepting Darwin, the Big Bang, or Genesis. A faith position is as much a reasonable position as the sceptically scientific, or the philosophically rational. Believe both, or believe neither — each position is plausibly acceptable.

Fr Seamus Mulholland OFM

Generally Darwin and Genesis are considered as personifications of two contradictory views of the Universe. Darwin symbolises an evolutionary and naturalistic view of the universe from which God is (or at least can be) excluded. Genesis symbolises a world-view where everything is created by the direct creative act of God, from which science is excluded, or at least is not necessary.

If Darwin is taken seriously then Genesis is ignored and God is squeezed out of existence. Some do just that, the Oxford Zoologist Richard Dawkins, for example.

If Genesis is taken seriously, then Darwin and all his works are seen to be fundamentally flawed, and a Creationist position is adopted, in which not only Evolution is rejected, but so are the findings of Geology and Astronomy, and the age of earth is held to be a mere 10,000 years. Darwinists and Creationists behave like cats and dogs and there seems no way out of this dilemma.

Why not try a smoother decision?Rather than to force a choice of EITHER Darwin OR Genesis, let's try to say that Darwin and Genesis are a case of BOTH/AND, which means being complimentary because they (try to) answer totally different questions.

Darwinism holds, that biological species evolve primarily by means of chance variation and natural selection. This is at first sight contradictory to the Gen 1, 20-25. But only if read literally and assuming that scientifically spoken, God created the different kinds of animals just as the mood took Him. But didn't we apply double standards?

First: Genesis 1 and 2 concentrate in praise on Who did the Creation ("And God said" occurs nine times as an introductory formula for God's creativity!) while Darwin concentrates empirically on How it was done.

Even if the Theory of Evolution has answered the puzzling questions of how life began, and also how we arrived at this point in time, it must be noted that it does not explain the beginning of the universe. It also does not explain: Why all that?

Second, I cannot see why the arguments in favour Evolution:

1. The Evidence of the Fossil Record
2. "Mutual Affinities"
3. Geographical Distribution

should contradict the Bible, for the same reason. By the way, in Genesis God creates living beings roughly one after another, which is in essence the idea of evolution.

Third: People having had a divine vision, are very unlikely to write their exceptional experience in scientific "protocol statements", rather they will try to come up to their experience in a stylistic appropriate way, and one is simply praise.

If expressions in sentences differ, then contents will as well. Therefore it's impossible to simply translate sentences of the Bible in scientific sentences. Perhaps it's possible to transform them.

Attempting to tie the Genesis in to scientific discovery fails for another reason, as the Bible was "written" 3000 years before the rise of Geology.

As a conclusion I would suggest, taking Creation seriously as a mature Christian is an affirmation that God is the Creator of all that is, with a realisation that the Bible gives no scientific explanation. Science will enlarge our understanding of Creation, but not overthrow it.

Comment: You might be interested in reading books by Ken Wilber, who is one of the authors who pleads for reintegration of science, religion and philosophy. Integral Philosophy holds that there are three complimentary ways of knowledge each of them gaining knowledge using appropriate methods:

• empirical knowledge using scientific methods and instruments
• rational knowledge using logical instruments
• mystical knowledge using meditative techniques

Claims or Theories in each of these epistemological "modes" can be examined, confirmed or refuted only by using the same method it was established.

Simone Klein

What or who you believe is entirely up to you. You have to ask yourself which idea/ notion/ theory has for yourself the greatest appeal. You will, of course, have to consider the evidence available for each case. After some deliberation you may come to the conclusion, like many thinkers, that there is not much going for either concept and set out to seek a third option.

The problem with both these theories is that neither can be put to a scientific test. Karl Popper's view is that a true science is one in which experiments can be derived which could refute the theory under consideration. In a pseudo-science, no experiment which would finally refute a theory can be made. For example, a theory regarding the relationship between heat and temperature can be tested in any laboratory at any time and can, therefore, be classed as scientific. On the other hand, no experiment on evolution or biblical creation can be carried out, these must then be classed as pseudo-science. All that can be done, so far as evolution is concerned, is to study such subjects as paleontology and geology and offer an interpretation.

Unfortunately the geological record is not very supportive of evolution; it never shows one species changing into another. What it does reveal are progressive changes in some organisms to adapt to changing environmental conditions, this is called 'adaptation' not evolution. If the organism has not been able to adapt owing to environmental changes coming too rapidly, it has been overwhelmed and become extinct, it does not escape environmental pressures by changing into something else. Throughout the geological column we find extinction after extinction, never do we find one species changing into another. Darwin himself was aware of this and perceived it as a problem in his theory: where are the missing links, the intermediates, he asked himself. This may sound rather naive, but the objective of a beetle is to become a good, well adapted, beetle, not to become a mouse.

Progress in genetics has not helped the evolution notion, the accidental progression claimed in evolution is thought to be brought about by chance mutations in the genome. Unfortunately we find that mutations are usually detrimental to the organism or lethal, and rather than 'selecting' the mutant as the 'fittest' usually wipes it out. (The fittest, by the way, means the best reproducers not the physically strongest, that is where Adolf Hitler got it wrong.) Also a complex organ like an eye is controlled by several genes, to produce an eye accidentally several very fortuitous accidental events in the genome would be necessary: this defies mathematical credulity, and compared to this you would stand a much better chance of winning the lottery.

The evidence for the evolution of man is very tenuous and very unreliable. For over one hundred years enormous efforts have been made to discover the missing links between man and the apes. The results, however, are a small collection of unconvincing fossil bones. Science should try to fit the theory to the facts, sadly, in the case of evolution the desperation to prove the theory has resulted in the reverse taking place. Reconstructions from the fragments of bone discovered seem to have been manipulated to indicate a progressive sequence from ape to man. Artists have been inspired by the inferred evidence to allow their imaginations to run riot, hence the drawings of hairy half-wits running around with clubs threatening each other, and where the women in particular seem to be in constant danger of being knocked unconscious for sexual gratification. It is interesting to see that some of the hairy creations are inclined to an ape-like appearance, whilst others seem to incline to a more human aspect, to indicate the, so far, unproven succession. Over the years the attempt to press home the theory as fact is found to be contaminated by hoaxes and, worse still, alleged suppressed evidence which would go some way to disproving the theory.

Creationists fair little better, although, unlike evolutionists, they do attempt to go back to the origin of the world and the origin of man. Evolutionists start half-way up the ladder. Creationists are favoured by the fact that life seemed to burst upon the scene at the beginning of the Cambrian Period some five hundred million years ago. Pprior to this, in the Precambrian, very little, if any, even basic life is in evidence. The fascinating thing about this Cambrian life explosion is the incredible diversity of life forms which suddenly appear, seemingly from nowhere. Old fashioned creationists, by the way, would not accept the geological time scale, to them the world is only a few hundred years old. For any other support the creationist depends on ancient writings which are a confusion of myth, allegory, and alleged historical facts. However, they read into this hotch potch of literature a genuine attempt by the ancients to solve the mystery of origins.

The theory of evolution was developed by Thomas Huxley not Darwin himself. Huxley was an anatomist who was trying to reach a position of power in the English scientific establishment. After reading Darwin he saw his chance to leap onto the bandwagon. Unfortunately for posterity his effort to use evolution to discredit the view of the church regarding creation was premature, and has left evolutionists still struggling to find the evidence he himself failed to produce over one hundred years ago.

We shall always be hampered in discovering the origin of the world/ universe whilst we are bogged down with the 'matter' myth. Starting with a complete vacuum where did the first atom come from? To reduce it further, where did the first atomic particle come from? A further reduction would compel us to ask where light came from. I have always been of the opinion that philosophy can get nearer to the truth than science, with its necessary attachment to the fundamental concept of matter as a solid substance. Get rid of the matter myth and we might find a way throu