Ed asked:

Is reality a dream?

If not, what differentiates the 'real world' from the 'dream world'?

If so, Life is wrapped in a dream. If that is true, then wouldn't death be wrapped in a dream? Is death just one big dream?

Hazel and SFB asked:

What is reality?

and Aaron asked:

What is reality? Could we simply be pawns in a child's computer game?

The key to the answer is the recognition that the concepts "reality" and "dream [world]" refer to two distinctly different modes of experience. By the very nature of these two concepts, they cannot refer to the same thing. Therefore, the simple answer is "No!". Reality cannot be a dream without seriously abusing the meaning of the two words. Poets, of course, are granted license to abuse the language for artistic purposes. But philosophers must take greater care.

We each experience "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" in two distinctly different modes. When experiencing life in one mode, we notice that things perceived are constant, persistent, consistent, and coherent. When experiencing life in the other mode, we notice that things perceived are dramatically less constant in form and character, often transient in existence, frequently mutually inconsistent both from thing to thing and across time, and far more frequently quite incoherent. One mode of experience draws the focus of our attention, is amenable to inquiry, and responsive to our reactions. The other mode of experience often drifts uncontrollably past our attention, is rarely subject to inquiry, and is often unresponsive to our reactions. On any scale of measure, the difference between the two modes of experience is dramatic and unmistakable whenever noticed. One of these modes of experience we call the "real word", the other we call the "dream world" (or hallucinations, or illusions).

Most of us spend most of our time experiencing life in the "real world" mode. Episodes spent in the "dream world", while they may seem quite real at the time, always end with a transition back to the "real world" mode of experience. Some people, for reasons as diverse as drugs to organic brain damage, spend more of their time in the "dream world". Some people, again for diverse reasons, lose the ability to notice the distinctly different character of two modes of experience, and are unable to distinguish their "real" experiences from their "dream" experiences.

The bottom line is that life is not a dream. The "real world", unlike the "dream world" possesses an unmistakably greater degree of constancy, consistency, and coherence. In the real world, elephants are huge, grey and don't fly. That remains true across time, and is consistent with all other information we have about the real world mode of experience. In the dream world, pink elephants can buzz around your head, and turn into green mice stomping on the roof of your house. The fact that sometimes a dream appears so real you can't tell, does not alter the fact that you always wake up.

Stuart Burns

We cannot waken up from reality, therefore it is not a dream. However, we can waken up to reality from a dream. I think I understand where you are coming from, and it is not an unusual question you have asked. Fundamentally, you are asking; What is reality? the blunt answer is, I don't know!! Further, I have not yet come across anyone who does. However, there are several theories to choose from, posited by philosophy, science and religion. Most of these theories are backed by strong logical arguments, although some appear more feasible than others. There is little doubt that we all entertain the notion of a fundamental reality, and most of the world's human population take it for granted that there are things that are real and things that are unreal.

Probably most people who care to give the problem some consideration are willing to accept the materialist views of science, i.e. the universe is in reality solid, size, weight and shape are measurements of a solid reality. Philosophers can be divided broadly into 'materialists' and 'idealists.' Materialists basically hold views sympathetic to science. Reality for idealists is somehow linked to 'mind,' we live in an inner 'subjective' world rather than an outer' objective' world. However, there are several variations within both the notion of materialism and the notion of idealism; hence, we are presented with a choice of several 'world views.' Added to all this is the notion of 'Dualism,' which accepts that the world is both mind stuff and matter stuff. In dualism there is, in some cases, a link with religious views, where mind and body are interpreted as 'soul' and body. We have a real soul in a real body.

Religion in general is perhaps the thinking body least concerned with seeking out reality. Religion, in all its variations, remains spiritual, and establishes reality through 'faith.' God is real and God created a real universe. There is an undeniable pragmatism about the overall religious view, 'what is 'is,' do not question reality, trust in God, or the powers that be, accept the reality we are aware of and get on with living the good life.'

To briefly consider dreams. Probably most people will accept that dreams are real, though the content may be fictitious. The assertion, "I had a dream last night," is true to me and probably can be accepted as true by the person I am addressing, based on his/her own experience with dreams. We, therefore, both understand what is meant by dreaming, and are each well aware of the of the difference between dreaming and its association with sleep, and being consciously awake. The implication in your question suggests a fallacy commonly expressed by those who wish to make a comparison between a solid, material world and the idealist world of mind concepts. It is not the case that if reality is not fundamentally material, then it is somehow a dream world in the mind. The idealist world is a concept of a real world, but differently constructed to the notions of scientists and materialists in general. If our world is an idealist world, then it is a real world, in which we are capable of recognising the difference between being awake and dreaming.

I am no expert on death, for, so far as I know, I have not yet experienced it. Neither have I met anyone to my knowledge who has returned from the dead. However, what little I do know about death indicates that it is a reality and far from being a dream. In fact it is the only outcome of life that we can safely predict. Having said all this, I do keep an open mind on the subject, my years of interest in psychic phenomena keeps me alert to possibilities.

Not wishing to appear flippant, because your question is a very serious one, I would say that reality is what each individual chooses to believe, some explanations seem more acceptable than others, and until philosophy, science or religion produces the real answer, if they ever do, then we will have to go along with the choices open to us. But there is no denying the fact that one of the present theories just may be true, it is a matter of proof.

John Brandon

I think you're confusing something really basic here. Death is not a state of anything or anyone: it is the absence of existence, the non-being in or of any state. You'll have to think about this in the context of language, which treats 'Death' as though it were the opposite of something existent. But of course it's not. Language used in such a way is a means for us to bring to apprehension a state that exists (or which we presume to exist) and then to identify linguistically a non-state.

Perhaps the simplest way to explain this is as follows: if you and I were stranded in the middle of the Sahara on a hot day, and you say: 'I'm thirsty', I might reply 'there's no water here'. The important language element in this sentence of mine is not 'water' but 'here'. It implies that water is known to exist; it just happens not to be available where we are situated. So I'm not making an existential statement about water or non-water. Whereas, if in the same situation you are on your last gasp, about to expire, then I might be in the humanly very distressing situation of having to understand that, at present, you are, but in a few moment, you may no longer be. Then it is appropriate for me to report, 'this man was alive and now he's dead,' to identify a state of being which I knew you to inhabit at some temporal bracket in history. But to extend this kind of articulation to states which are not, never have been and therefore never will be 'dead', is strictly speaking just a game, the game of language (cf. Wittgenstein). It does not refer to anything 'real', it just refers back to us, and that includes to a large extent not just our understanding but our wishes and beliefs.

I expect that from this answer you will readily deduce that your question about dreams is a non-issue for the same language-dependent reasons. Reality is distinctly of the body: it is therefore experienced by every organism in its struggle to live and survive and reproduce. The only organism to which this is a 'problem' is the mind-endowed creature called homo sapiens, whose state-of-being is among many other qualities identifiable by his ability to note a difference between mental and physical features of this reality. We then go ahead from this fairly innocuous problem and hang enormous weights of speculative thinking on it, of which a great deal is again just part of the game of language.

To put this into a neat capsule for you: we tend to lump the concepts 'mental', 'psychological', 'spiritual', 'soul' and so on into a single basket, as if somehow they were all the same, i.e. parts of a dimension divorced from 'reality', which is then opposed to it as the 'hard stuff'. But just as a rock differs in significant features from a microbe, so 'mental' and 'spiritual' are different categories. What we refer to as 'mental' are states-of-reality which apply to animals as well as us (animals dream!) and are simply the neurophysiological responses of our body to the impact of 'reality' on us. Dreams are generated by the body, by the neurosystem as part of its homeostatic routine; but the dreams to which you might otherwise assign such notions as (e.g.) 'hope' are a different kettle of fish. Again, in language we usually fail to distinguish in the expression 'hope' a realistic expectation and the doodling of the mind.

But whichever you look at it, in the end 'reality' comes first. So 'reality', however experienced, precedes 'dreams', however defined. In dreams, waking or sleeping, you can do 'what you like', but God help you if you try to do the same 'in reality'!

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney.

Though it can't be proved I believe that the world exists. Existing in the dream of an unknown being is no fun, so I refuse to believe that..

But reality IS a fantasy, that is you can shape it to your own likings. However it is practical to share a big part of that fantasy with others, otherwise you'll lead a lonely life (and often end in a mental hospital)

So death is for me not a dream but another fantasy. In many cultures just an accepted part of life. In Christian culture it generally and officially was made something absolute and a subject of fear (but many Christian priests have a comforting relative view on death).

Henk Tuten

This doesn't really constitute an answer but your question sounds very much like Morpheuses in The Matrix. I don't remember the exact quote but yours is quite close unless I've lost all short term memory. Which is all a good way of saying that there are two article that everyone should read:

Nikki asked:

I am about to take a test in philosophy and am wondering if anyone can help with this question. Both Epicureans and Stoics maintain that the way we live our lives should conform to the nature or the "nature of things." In which ways do there moral visions agree/ disagree? The Epicureans also maintain that the aim of human living is to seek pleasure and avoid pain. For what ultimate end should one pursue pleasure and avoid pain? Is the Epicurean view simply an updated version of the views defended by Polus and Callicles? (Plato Gorgias) Why?

Although there are similarities between Callicles and Epicurus' views, there is a significant difference. Callicles believed in the pursuit of pleasure with pleasure defining happiness, which was the final end. Epicurus believed in pursuing pleasure, but also stated that sometimes it is preferable to choose pain if it will lead to greater pleasures. He also thought that some pleasures should not be chosen if they would lead to greater pain. In other words, Epicurus believed our choices should be moderated by having regard for their consequences. Callicles (at least how Plato painted him in his dialogue Gorgias) believed we should just pursue our desires. I presume you're studying Letter to Menoeceus. I hope this helps in some way.

Lyn Renwood

Marc asked:

I recently got into a debate with this fellow on objectivism versus non-objectivism.

My position was that a Platonic reality exists for scientific, mathematical and moral concepts. That is I want to believe that there is a timeless, universal set of scientific, mathematical and moral principles that exist external to the human mind and are knowable by it.

My opponent disputed this, claiming that any such objective reality would be unknowable, and science is simply a calculational device used for making correct predictions. He also strongly disputed that there could exist a set of universal moral principles.

What does modern philosophy have to say about this? What would be a majority consensus view of things at present? And what texts should I read to get a good grounding in the basic arguments for and against?

Your question about consensus on these questions is extremely difficult to decide. Some time ago Philosophy Now magazine did a survey on what students of philosophy tended to believe regarding ethical objectivity and what philosophy teachers tended to believe. The result as I recall was that students tend to be non-objectivists and teachers tend to be objectivists. However, in general there are likely to be more philosophers who are sceptical about ethical objectivism than mathematical objectivism or scientific objectivism.

However, we need to get a little clearer on how to couch the debate between objectivism and non-objectivism as these terms can be a little slippery and through the course of history they have changed their meaning. Hence the modern debate over these questions tends to be couched in terms of two positions called

'Response-independence' and 'response-dependence'. The motivation for couching the debate is due to a general acceptance of a distinction between primary and secondary qualities (derived from John Locke). Primary qualities were those properties of objects that existed independently of our responses e.g., shape and secondary qualities were those that were dependent on our responses e.g., colour, warmth, taste.

This way of setting the debate up offers us sharp distinctions between judgements concerning colours such as 'The carpet is red,' and taste such as 'Beer tastes bitter' and judgements concerning shape such as 'The pebbles are round.' The response dependence of the judgement, 'The carpet is red' is explained by saying that the truth conditions of the judgement are not independent of our responses, that is they are partly constituted by our responses. The response independence of the judgement, 'The pebbles are round' is explained by saying that the truth conditions of the judgement are independent of any judgement that we could possibly make about the pebbles. That is to say they would be round even if we had never come across them, or they are mind independent.

Not everyone accepts the distinction between primary and secondary qualities and you have to have one foot in the objectivist camp at least for some judgements in order to make the distinction. Some philosophers do hold a global response dependence view of our judgements but with the distinction in terms of the truth conditions of the judgement we can see what they are arguing about. The great difficulty for those who hold the response dependence view of judgements consists in saying exactly what responses are equivalent to the truth of the judgement i.e., what judgements cannot be false. Most are elusive on this question and it is a weakness in the theory.

Controversial areas in science concern theoretical posits or unobservable entities — but there is no need to see these are being response-dependent. Many scientific entities might not be directly observable without being constructed out of our responses.

With the above in mind we can now turn to maths. A response dependence view of maths looks initially attractive because we may be suspicious of attributing mathematical sets to a response-independent reality. However, certain mathematical theorems like Godel's theorem look like they are either true or false and there is no possible judgement on our behalf that could make it so because of our limited ability for determining the truth of the judgement. Much of mathematical breakthroughs only make sense on a response-independence view of the subject matter. The possibility of our best judgements being false is what the objectivist or response independence theorist has as his main foil against the non-objectivist or response-dependence theorist.

Turning to Morals the matter is a little trickier. There is a distinction to be made between objective moral or value facts and objective moral principles. Basically some philosophers like Richard Hare hold that you can have universal moral principles without objective moral or value facts. The two are likely to be more successful if they go together though. Moral judgements such as, 'Inflicting wanton cruelty to animals is morally wrong' look like they have truth conditions that are independent of the subject who is making the judgement. That is the truth of a moral judgement is not to be decided by the person making the judgement. This looks like a conceptual truth — it is what differentiates moral judgements from judgements of taste. However, the truth of the above judgement does not look like it is going to true independent of all responses — it is not going to be true independent of the capacity for the animal to feel pain or to suffer. So there is a sense in which moral judgements are both response independent since they do not concern the speaker's responses, and response dependent since they concern the responses of the subject of the judgement. (the subject of the judgement in the above is 'animals' and is not to be confused with the subject making the judgement i.e., the speaker).

If you see a Platonic reality as an objective reality, and approach objective reality as a reality that exists independent of our judgements about it, then it seems you have a good case for making it with regard to maths and science, but with ethics we have to be careful about the scope of this distinction. All of the above would be regarded as objectivist positions.

I would recommend reading the arguments of some non-objectivist philosophers in order to see what their motivations are for adopting such a position. That is to say that most philosophers take response dependence views of subjects because they see a problem with the response independent view.In this way once you remove the obstacles for your opponent they should fall in line with a form of objectivism.

J.L. Mackie Ethics Inventing Right and Wrong is a nice little book by someone who challenges objectivity in morals and distinguishes between objective moral or value facts and objective moral principles in his opening chapters. Mackie sets out what it would look like for there to be objective values i.e., everyone's happiness would count equally when making moral decisions but he rejects this view because of a clash between Platonic or Kantian conceptions of morality entailing reasons for action and Humean conceptions of reasons for action. This is one of the main debating points in contemporary meta-ethics so if you can find a good way around it then you will be able to defend your position form likely critics. Also try David O Brink Moral Realism and the Foundation of Ethics for support.

Julian Bennett

Gert asked:

Is necrophilia inheritable through the genes of the necrophile's family?

The short and sweet answer: no, no, NO.

The longer answer: at this point we have, really, no idea about what is inherited and what isn't in regards to mental attributes, except in rather vague statistical ways. BUT the absolute, strongest correlations found, between identical twins, with really very general attributes such as intelligence, still do not find 100% correlation. As far as detailed personality traits like heterosexuality and homosexuality, there is some very small correlation among siblings. I'm not even sure that anyone can say there is really a genetic component there. If there is, it's pretty small, as far as we know at this point.

Now, specifically, necrophilia is a learned sexual preference. As far as I know, you cannot inherit it any more than you can inherit a preference for Fords over Chevys or red hats over blue hats. Maybe there's something heritable there, but if there is, it would be basically science fiction at this point to assert it. There's no way that I can say, absolutely, that a preference for blue hats is certainly not genetic, and so there's no way that I can say, absolutely, that necrophilia is not genetic. There's not enough known about genetics. Maybe I bite my fingernails because of genetics. Haha. But I'd put all those on about the same level of likelihood.

Steven Ravett Brown

Bob asked:

What is Objective Idealism? Is it considered a tenable position today?

Idealism is a complex subject with several facets, Objective Idealism, better known as Absolute Idealism, is one of them. To come to some understanding of what is a fairly obscure concept, it is perhaps advisable to briefly consider the development of idealism from Berkeley to Hegel. Very often when we refer to development in philosophy, it must not be regarded in an evolutionary sense, it simply means that someone has added a new idea to what has gone before, or maybe has substituted their own idea for the previous one, but none of it can be said to fully supersede what has gone before. Take for example the graded progress to Absolute Idealism, from Berkeley's Subjective Idealism, through Kant, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and finally the total Absolute in Hegel. No development has completely eliminated what has gone before, and we find that there are supporters of each variation of idealism who will not modify their enthusiasm for the variation they adopt. Hence, what we find is a range of alternative approaches to a difficult question; What is reality? or; What really exists?

I obviously cannot go through a detailed history of the development of idealism here, but I will try to construct a brief indication of the general trend towards Absolutism. You can learn more about each of the philosophers mentioned and their ideas, by reading about them in a good encyclopedia of Western Philosophy.

Idealism is a term originating in the concept of ideas in the mind. Idealism does not quarrel with the naive view that material things exist; rather, it disagrees with the analysis of a material thing that many philosophers have offered, according to which the material world is wholly independent of minds. Berkeley asked how an observer who was aware of nothing but his own ideas could know anything about an external world. The situation is made more absurd when we realise that senses can deceive us, i.e. a sense can present us with alternative ideas about which we have to rationalise to obtain what we might call the correct choice. As there is no way of proving the presence of an external material world, why should we presume there is such a presence? It is more likely that the only world we can justifiably accept is an internal world of ideas. Things that exist are things that are perceived, when no human mind is perceiving an object, we have to presume that it continues to exist because God is perceiving it.

Unlike Berkeley, Kant did not refute the notion of the existence of things outside the mind. However, he believed that we could have no direct access to what was there, all we could be aware of are representations by way of the senses, mere shadows or phenomena of what could exist, which he called things in themselves. To make sense of the phenomena we receive, the mind adds a priori knowledge, knowledge in a way gifted to us by nature, to form mind constructs. Thus, the popular notion that the mind conforms to objects in the world is reversed, and, according to Kant, objects conform to the mind. The world out there is called the noumenal world, the things in themselves which constitute the noumenal world are thinkable but not knowable. Kant called this doctrine "transcendental idealism."

Fichte, though influenced by Kant, could not accept the notion of things in themselves. He asked, how we could actually postulate hypotheses about a noumenal world that we knew nothing about, and for which we had no proof whatsoever that it existed at all. He decided that the noumenal world had to go; there could be no grounds for asserting something quite unknown, and no meaning in doing so. After this rejection we are left with just minds and objects of experience. Fichte developed the idea further by referring to two parts of mind, the I and the non-I, the I observes what goes on in the non-I, thus eliminating an outside objective world. The I is considered subjective and the non-I objective. The I is what the Greeks might have called the soul. So we have now entered what Fichte called "Absolute Idealism."

The development of absolute idealism proceeded through Schelling, who introduced a spiritual concept, to Schopenhauer, an atheist who considered the absolute to be the will, this he considered to be the ultimate reality. Absolute idealism comes to fruition in Hegel. The absolute for Hegel was the Universal Mind, an interpersonal consciousness. Berkeleian subjective idealism and Kantian transcendental idealism, construe reality in terms of the content of individual minds, absolute idealism on the other hand, tends to construe it in terms of an interpersonal consciousness. The distinction between one 'self' and another tends to lapse, leading to a form of monism, according to which there is only one thing, the mind divided up into appearances. All reality is in the mind, there is nothing outside it.

Complicated stuff, but I trust you will grasp the general idea of what absolute idealism is about. Yes, it is considered a tenable position today by some philosophers. In fact, idealism in general is experiencing a revival. Oddly enough it is receiving a boost from science, particularly physics, which no longer sees the world as a great machine or technical construction, but is seen by many as a great 'thought!' Matter keeps disappearing and re-appearing under their very eyes. Personally, I can only make sense of the world by way of the Kantian idea of mental constructs, but, like the absolutists, I find it difficult to conceive a noumenal world. Like Bradley, I am out on a limb with the notion of the mind contemplating itself, the real absolute!!

John Brandon

Katleen asked:

What are the differences between art and science?

There are innumerable differences as well as similarities, so any answer (especially if kept short, as here) is bound to commit an injustice to one or the other. In other words, this is an issue one could not possibly address exhaustively in less than a few hundred pages. If therefore I frame an answer for you in terms of what our general intuitions would tell us anyway, this is merely to be understood as a beginning, as a kind of 'demarcation of competences'.

Fundamentally, then, science is concerned with knowledge. As a branch of philosophy (if I may push this antiquated barrel!) it occupies the branch called 'epistemology'. It is concerned, to the degree possible to us, with exact knowledge, and by extension with prediction on the basis of this knowledge of future trends among the objects studied. Thus the twig of physics on this branch seeks to ascertain, as exactly as possible, theoretical models of the interactions among atoms, electrons and other particles in order to acquire a pattern of understanding that relates to (say) the creation, movement and ultimately dissolution of galaxies, nebulae, stars, planets and (oh yes) things like atom bombs and similar benefits to mankind. The science of statistics is concerned with modelling large-scale trends, for example the incidence of motor car accidents in cities (this is of help to insurance companies), yet while such knowledge may be deficient in detail, there is a surprising agreement of its findings over the long run: so accurate in fact, that it is in its own way an exact science capable of making accurate predictions.

Art, on the other hand, is concerned with intuitive knowledge, most of which is of the kind that 'exact' science has no ready methodology to investigate. On this account it falls under the branch of 'aesthetics', a term which bears the meaning of 'what our senses communicate'. For example, human relations: love is indubitably a form of knowledge on a deeply intimate level between two persons, but it is not the kind that can be encoded in a scientific theory. But through the medium of art, we can become acquainted with it as a spiritual phenomenon (e.g. through music). This is perhaps an extreme example, but simpler ones merely reinforce the same point on their own different levels. Painting, poetry, drama are to an overwhelming extent concerned with exploring the meaning of the human estate, whether by way of private contemplation or public celebration. Now one big difference between art and science is, of course, in the 'objects' that are the outcome of their activities. In science it is a theory, a method, a technology; in art it is a 'work' which embodies some fragment of our intuitive knowledge and gives access to that knowledge by recourse to our aesthetic sensibilities.

But there is another difference, equally important: scientific knowledge is about given and largely impartial conditions and features of the world; whereas aesthetic knowledge is largely about 'meanings', which are creations of the human mind and superimposed on 'reality'. This means that an artist, whose vision or personal experience motivates him/her to make an effort to communicate it, will do so in a form and using such materials as are capable of carrying a such 'message', which is therefore inevitably an artefact to which we are sensitively and/or sensually responsive on an intuitive level. So this kind of knowledge is not only inexact, but also 'created' (cf. 'poesis', the Greek for creating); it is not found objectively in the world, but is added to the world as knowledge specifically human, by humans and for humans. We can see this impulse stirring in children when they 'pretend' that a piece of string is Mum; and anthropological researches would confirm that this search for knowledge of humans by humans and for humans is a predilection that long preceded any impulse to extend the 'exact' knowledge by means of which we survive in and control the shape of our habitat.

Here is something to ponder: not a definitive answer (which can't be given anyway), but some thoughts that may lead you on to your own path of discovery. I'll conclude with an observation that may or may not have occurred to you, when you asked your question: namely that pursued in earnest, you might have posed a problem for yourself that could easily occupy you for the rest of your life!

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney.

Charlie asked:

I have a relative who's case, I think, is a question of morals and ethics. This is my sister whose uncle fell very sick last year. She took care of him as they've always been very close since her childhood. Just recently, the doctor told us that the elderly man was not going to make it through next month. The problem is that he left a will which states that he will leave all his fortune in the research in diabetes (the disease from which he suffered). He has a pretty rich son if you ask me who has a business in Chicago who rarely came to visit his father. The elderly man's condition has deteriorated over the past few days and he simply isn't thinking clear. Just recently, he wanted to modify his will to leave all his fortune to his son! My sister's always been a kind hearted person, but when it comes to the lives of hundreds maybe thousands of others, she would even sacrifice herself. My uncle could die any day and the will hasn't been modified. Should we go ahead and let the poor man make the change? I don't know, I'm all confused let alone her.

Should you "let" the man make the change? What about respect for his freedom of choice? Is it not wrong to interfere with someone's else's property? However, if he isn't thinking clearly it is unlikely that he will be legally allowed to make a change in his will.

Rachel Browne

Shady asked:

Hey, I was wondering about a couple philosophical questions:

For one, who has the right to tell someone else what to do? I mean regarding laws and rules. Also, I would like to hear a philosophical argument of an ongoing controversy. Any kind, but I'm tired of hearing of free will/ determinism, and proving the existence of God. Thankyou.

As far as your first question goes... first, I'm not sure what the word "right" means, especially in this context. But let's take a couple of scenarios relating to "rules".

Children: children are incompetent to deal with the world. Period. If you've seen a young child, then you know this point is not even worth discussion. Ok, so then their parents have the duty to guide them, and this includes, when necessary, telling them what to do. Now you might be saying, "ok, fine, but I'm not a child any more, I'm 12 (or 15 or 16... or whatever) now". Who is competent to judge your competence? If a 5-year old says that, you say, very gently, "yes, you're a big [boy or girl] now"... and continue telling them what to do, right? So when do you (the parent) stop? When you judge you can, gradually. When is that? Um... obviously I have no answer to that. That's something that has to be worked out, usually painfully, unfortunately.

Disabled: what about intellectually disabled people? What about emotionally disabled? We tell them what to do, right? As little as possible, but still that must be done to some extent.

Incompetent: what about when you're in a situation where something must be done but you don't know how to do it, or don't know well enough for that situation? Then hopefully there is someone around who will tell you what to do. And you'd better do it, or someone will die... if, say, you work in a hospital and a doctor is telling you what you must do. Or you have to survive somewhere and don't know how.

But, you say, these are extreme situations. Yes. But I'm using them to set up a baseline, so to speak. From that baseline, commands, advice, hints, etc... shade off to the other extreme where you are telling a child, for example, what to do. If you want some black and white solution here, forget it. Each situation has to be judged on its own merit.

I'm not going to tackle "laws". I see them as cultural or societal extensions of the above; but I'm sure others will have other points of view.

The second question: well, just think of how tired I am of that. Here's one source of questions:

Tye, M. Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind. Edited by H. Putnam and N. Block. 2nd ed, Representation and Mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996.

You might also look at "the new problem of induction", and Goodman's exposition of that. A nasty problem.

There are also open problems dealing with, for example, essentialism. Are there essences, in an epistemological sense? A metaphysical sense? Believe it or not, this is a very interesting and important question which relates not only to epistemology but also to cognitive structures.

Philosophy of language: see the Pinker/ Langacker or Chomsky/ Lakoff positions: sophisticated nativism vs. sophisticated cognitive-developmental positions.

Philosophy of science: Kitcher vs., say, Lacan or even Derrida.

I mean, once you get past the basics... the necessary 3 to 5 years learning what to learn about the issues and how to learn about them, it gets very interesting and complicated. But you are wanting to do the equivalent of reading journals in mathematics or physics without learning the language and background. Or reading articles in genetics with a bare knowledge of what DNA is. You can't do it, sorry... there's background you simply have to know to understand, much less participate, in these issues. But. The issues are out there, they're just not easy to grasp, any more than technical issues in physics, genetics, or mathematics are easy for the layman to grasp.

Steven Ravett Brown

Jackie asked:

In what ways are Camus and Heidegger different?

Heidegger was much older than Camus, and he died in his bed, whereas Camus died when his car crashed into a tree. It is supposed that he had epileptic tendencies and suffered an attack just as he was driving.

Also Heidegger was a German, whereas Camus was a Frenchman. This means they wrote their books in different languages, and although Camus was deeply influenced by Heidegger, he was very selective in what he took from his older contemporary. For example, one of Camus' ideas, which he followed through in a book entitled The Myth of Sisyphus, is that the ultimate philosophical principle is suicide, i.e. whether we can justify, once we have realised the logical absurdity of living a human life, that we do not make an end of it. I'm not aware of Heidegger's response, but I think he might have shaken his head in disbelief at such naivety.

Camus, of course, also wrote plays and novels. Heidegger never wrote anything other than philosophy books and papers. That's probably why Camus got a Nobel prize and Heidegger did not. In this context it might interest you that Bertrand Russell also got his Nobel for literature, not philosophy. Now you know at least what's important in the world of Messrs Nobel & Co.

I could go on for a while yet, but in the end there is no substitute to actually saying 'hello' to Camus and Heidegger. The book is just referred to is less than 200 pages and not very difficult (if you can read the arts column in your weekend newspaper, then you can read Camus). Heidegger is difficult, true enough: but you could make a start by reading his 50-page 'Letter on Humanism' and that would give you a very good perspective on what Heidegger is all about. Then you would be very well placed to figure out the difference in their philosophies, and it would save you wading through at least the same number of pages in the secondary literature, which of course can't answer that question any better than doing what I have just recommended.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney.

Michael asked:

If as yet we have been unable to answer the question "Why are we here?" with any certainty, surely the first thing to do is to work out why we are NOT here? It would seem logical that it is not to fight over land, to create weapons of mass destruction, to allow fellow humans to live in dire poverty and obscene conditions when other people stay in palaces. Surely it is better, at least more sensible, to try to work together. So my question is this:

Why when we are destroying ourselves and our home do we continue instead of stopping and helping each other as one race not as various races?

Becoming one race can be realized in at least 2 ways.

1. Everybody getting the same system of thought (like the U.S. tries in Iraq).

2. Making a nice cocktail of views, and cherishing every different thought.

Realize that a small percentage of terrorism is just caused by some people having a different view, and not really being accepted. Should instead they stop fighting for their rights and disappear in the silent masses?

As long as the dominant view behaves in a 'religious' (dogmatic) way there'll be so called terrorists. And because often those 'deviant' people are quite intelligent they'll pose a threat. They are perfectly willing to stop fighting and start fair negotiations, but generally don't get a real chance.

Seen as evolution, the powerful win and the others disappear. But now and then on earth there is a ice age, otherwise still dinosaurs would be in power and use us humans as a snack.

Henk Tuten

Edaw asked:

Are religious people the only ones that use the term 'evil'?

A lot of people who are not religious use the term "evil" since it has a descriptive use for the extremely malicious.

It is strange that a lot of moral philosophy is about what is good and evil has been quite largely ignored. However, some philosophers take the problem of evil seriously, such as Raimond Gaita in Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception.

Rachel Browne

Emma asked:

Does Monday cause Tuesday?

Well first of all you can see that the names of the days can be anything or nothing, so they are irrelevant. Second, we humans divide out time by periods of light and dark and label those periods. We don't have to do that; we could just count the time from, say, full moon to full moon in tenths or hundredths of that time, if we wanted to.

Third, what causes the periods of light and dark we call "day" and "night"? The fact that the source of light for the earth is the sun, basically shining like a spotlight on the earth, while the earth rotates on its axis (and it also revolves around the sun, but that's irrelevant to this). Ok? What causes the sun to burn? Hydrogen fusion reactions, basically... the sun is an enormous H-bomb which doesn't explode outward because its own gravity keeps it in one place. What causes the earth to rotate? Angular momentum resulting from its formation from a cloud of rotating particles; in other words, it got going a couple of billion years ago and nothing has hit it hard enough to stop it; it just goes on momentum, like a gyroscope. Ok so far? Now then, you tell me... what causes the day to progress to night? Nothing, really, just the system sitting there, burning and turning. Does Monday cause Tuesday? That's like asking whether the shadow on a turning ball causes the light next to it, right?

Steven Ravett Brown

If you take a Humean view of causation (David Hume Treatise Of Human Nature), then the the statement, 'x causes y' is analysed along the following lines:

At all places and at all times, events of type X are followed by events of type Y, and x is an event of type X, and y is an event of type Y.

A whole philosophical industry has grown up trying to patch the holes in this deceptively simple analysis. An obvious objection is the one that you have raised. Tuesday always follows Monday. Does that mean, as Hume's analysis implies, that Monday causes Tuesday? (Of course, names are arbitrary, but one could just as easily have asked, 'Does today cause tomorrow?', or, more generally, 'Does the time period t to t+1 cause the time period t+1 to t+2?')

However, it can be argued that in a sense it is true that Monday causes Tuesday (or today causes tomorrow), because — at least, if you accept determinism — everything that happens tomorrow is caused by everything that happens today, if by 'everything' we mean the sum total of events occurring in a given time period. But it is a strange way of talking, and not at all what we normally mean when we say that one thing causes something else.

However, if you are a Humean about causation, and you believe in determinism, then, yes, Monday does cause Tuesday.

Geoffrey Klempner

Malcolm asked:

Can someone explain to me the necessary and sufficient cause distinction?

Malcolm also asked:

I don't know if this is a genuine question, but I am interested to know the ontological status of mind. It can't seem to me to be the same as physical matter (more similar to numbers perhaps). I know Descartes calls it a distinct substance, and I think Sartre argues it is not a substance.

Incidentally I am also interested to know what in Sartre is the ontology of art, and why does Roquetin in Nausea think it can cure him of the sin of existing?

Put very simply: a necessary and sufficient cause is one where the effect could not arise without that cause and where that cause itself is all that's needed to produce the effect. For example, a necessary and sufficient cause for you to exist is to have a male and female parent. At present some arguments are being bandied about in relation to cloning whether this is true or not, but I would be content to wait upon proof to the contrary being delivered (and I'm not content that cloning proves anything at all).

>From this at any rate you can deduce that there are innumerable causes without a one-to-one relation to effects, because additional causes are required the wheels turning in a motor car are produced by the cause 'combustion of gasoline', but this is neither necessary, because wheels may be turned by other causes (you can push the car), nor sufficient, because the gas released in the combustion must first push a piston, which in turn must push a lever, which in turn etc etc. So a necessary and sufficient cause could be described using other words (synonyms) such as 'compulsory and comprehensive' or 'essential and consummate' with roughly the same meaning. The virtue of using the standard phrasing has to do with adequacy of verbal expression: and we use this nomenclature by Leibnitz because it is the most precise way of enunciating the principle (Leibnitz had an inimitable gift for preciseness in such matters; indeed Ortega pointed out that nine of the ten principal concepts of philosophy were articulated by Leibnitz in the form in which we use them today).

On the ontological status of the mind I would have to say, it has none. Irrespective of what may have been Descartes' or Sartre's opinion on the matter, we are not in a position, either philosophically or scientifically, to claim such a status for the mind, for the simple reason that anyone with a converse opinion would have no difficulty punching holes into any argument we can propose for it. Now I put it this way for reasons of objectivity and in contradiction to my own beliefs: for I am myself satisfied that mind is ontologically distinct. But I cannot overlook on that account that an ontology of mind is a matter of persuasion, not proof. That 'mind' exists we can assert without fear of denial, but what it is is an indispensable part of any ontological argument, and on this we haven't got much of a clue. For Descartes as much as for Sartre, the ontology of mind is a metaphysical concept, and accordingly whatever satisfaction we may gain from the study of their writings (e.g. the cogito statement or the 'in-itself' and 'for-itself' principle of Sartre), a residue of ontological uncertainty remains because we do not possess a platform from which to judge adequately whether mind and brain are to be regarded as one or two (or even more) entities. This is where the old metaphysical claim that 'a predicate does not confer existence' retains its force. Until further notice.

You will forgive me, I hope, if I sidestep Sartre's ideas of the ontology of art and leave this to someone else to attend to. From my perspective, what Sartre contributes to this subject is muddleheaded stuff; but this judgement relies on a conception of art which I defend, that goes against the grain of what he and most writers on aesthetics conceive of as the relation between art and its objects which (in my humble opinion) is incapable of resolving the dilemma of what kind of an object a work of art is, ontologically speaking. (If you happen to have read Danto's Transfiguration of the Commonplace, you might be aware that this confusion is endemic and getting worse instead of better. Again, if you were to read Heidegger's 'Origin of the Work of Art' you might find that Sartre is off on a tangent that somehow I don't feel Heidegger would approve of. But, sorry, this is where I'm going to leave it.)

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney.

Interesting question, Malcolm. Have you looked at materialist theories of mind (such as Armstrong's A Materialist Theory of Mind)? Armstrong came up with "The mind-brain identity theory" in which he stated that the human mind and the human brain are identical. By this he did not mean that they shared the same properties (like identical twins) but that they were in fact exactly the same thing, in much the same way as "John Howard" and "Australia's current Prime Minister" are identical

Lyn Renwood

Christopher asked:

Define power. Is it merely having ability to exercise control or is the meaning of power deeper? If someone betrays himself and his/ her ethics in order to achieve "power" have they really gained any power? Macbeth for example. He betrayed his ethics in order to achieve "power" and become King. Yet, did he really gain this power that he seeked or did he lose it in the process of attempting to attain it?

Already Nietzsche said that all life is about expressing the will to power. I would define it as the ability to express your own creativity without taking to much care of others. So in essence it must be seen as a pure evolutional force, but often only the inherent 'negative' side is shown in the spotlight (robbing others of THEIR freedom).

Sorry, the last time I read Macbeth was in high school, and since then I only saw it several times on television. So no impressive quotations. But I think Macbeth wanted both sides of the cake. He wanted power to rule, but he did not want blood on his hands. What he asked for was power. This he got, but only by getting his hands dirty. So he was tricked by the dual shape of power. This is I think what Shakespeare wanted to show.

Henk Tuten

Roy asked:

Is there a difference between a "Fact" and a "truth"? I realize that some people use the terms interchangeably, but I wondered if there was a logically necessary distinction. I reasoned that the difference between them is that "Facts" are always true. Truths are temporary. For example, "George W. Bush is President of the United States" is true only within the length of his term (let's say 4 years). To make the same statement 8 years from now the truth value will be false. But, "George W. Bush was elected president of the United States in 2001" will forever be true. Is my distinction between "Facts" and "Truth" reasonable or faulty?

I think you are wrong in what you're saying. Right now, "George W. Bush is President of the United States" is a fact. It is also true. In, say, 10 years, it will be neither. So that example is not correct.

One way to test a statement is to put it through logical variations:

Statement: If P then Q.

Converse: If Q then P, which is not logically equivalent to the first statement.

Inverse: If not P then not Q, which again is not logically equivalent to the first statement.

Contrapositive: If not Q then not P, which IS logically equivalent to the first statement.

Ok?

So let's look at the statement: IF something is a fact, THEN it is true.

What do we get out of that? Well, if that is true, then the contrapositive is true: IF something is NOT true, THEN it is NOT a fact. Let's test that. "Unicorns exist" is not true. It's also not a fact, right? Or is it? We know that unicorns do not exist, at least in any normal sense of that term. Is "unicorns exist" a fact? No. So the contrapositive works.

Ok... the converse: IF something is true, THEN it is a fact. Well, we might make a distinction here between abstract mathematical propositions versus statements about the "real world" (and I'm not going to deal here with making that latter term clear). That is, if we say something like "the square of the sum of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is the square of the sum of the other two sides", which is a true statement, would we call that a "fact"? After all, there is no real triangle for which this is true, it's only really true for ideal right triangles. And so it cannot be a fact. I could find, I'm sure, even more abstract statements in higher mathematics which were true but not facts... and indeed one can fairly easily create logical systems in which true statements, statements which were consistent with the logic, and provable within the system, would be false in the real world, i.e., true but not factual. Thus I could say, "there is a world where like electric charges attract and unlike repel". It would follow, then, that atoms, etc., could not consist of clouds of electrons around nuclei... since the electrons would attract each other and the whole atom would collapse. Given the assumption, those are true conclusions. But there are no facts there.

But if that's the distinction we can make, then we must say that a "true" statement refers to any correct statement, while a fact refers to any correct statement about the real world. That seems a reasonable distinction to me... One could then get into some very bizarre discussions about what is real and what isn't... which as I say I'm not going to touch here.

But that should give you a starting point, anyway, for thinking about this kind of issue. There is a literature on "conceivability" and on "contingency" and on "counterfactuals" which you might look at, although it's not easy reading. There's also this brief exposition on the subjunctive:

Ian asked:

Some years ago I was reading the London Evening Standard on the tube train and stumbled upon an article on education by A.J. Ayer in which he said, "All education is indoctrination." it struck me as an absurd thing to say then and still does. But is there more to this assertion of Ayer's than meets my jaundiced eye? and what could it be?

Yes it is absurd and no it is not.

It is absurd, because education is inevitable. So all can't BE MEANT as indoctrination. And what is more, it is needed, it is the function in nature of all parents to teach their offspring to survive.

It is true, because without intending to all teachers become little gods to their pupils. They can't help teaching their pupils things that are only tradition. That's why after some time pupils must go their own way. Only 100% computers can be given most knowledge to survive at 'birth'. Then after that even they must learn from experience to improve.

Henk Tuten

Two meanings of "indoctrination" are given in my dictionary, as follows:

1: to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments: TEACH

2: to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle

In meaning 1. "indoctrination" is nearly synonomous with "education" except that it has a more confined scope than the latter since it concerns the elements of a particular subject, as in "children are indoctrinated into the fundamentals of arithmetic."

But, in meaning 2, of course, the term to educate is very different from to indoctrinate, since education is supposed to present students with information and ideas without any attempt to present them with any partisan or sectarian opinion.

Ayer, it seems to me, was playing on these two meanings so as to get his own view about what was actually going on in the schools as opposed to what he thought the schools should be doing. They were indoctrinating rather than educating which was what they ought to be doing. And, so, in a way, Ayer was, himself, indoctrinating the readers of The Evening Standard rather than educating them. Of course, I never read the article you are referring to, so I can't know that what I say above is true.

Philosophers often use the device of saying something paradoxical in order to emphasized a particular viewpoint on a matter. In Plato's Republic for instance, Thrasymachus tells us "Justice is in the interest of the stronger." Now, that is exactly what justice is not. But, by putting it that way, Thrasymachus gives us his view of how, in fact, the notion of justice actually operates in society.

Ayer, I think was doing very much the same thing, only, of course, concerning his own, perhaps jaundiced view of how people are educated in Britain. He might be understood as saying, "We are supposed to be educating people, but what we are doing is indoctrinating them."

Ken Stern

Just what do you mean by the term "indoctrination"? What did Ayer mean? I haven't read the article, but given that he is a philosopher, he must have defined that term somewhere in the paper. Did he mean what you mean by it?

That's point one. Point two is this: you're a child learning, say, mathematics. Now, mathematics, real mathematics, is not addition, subtraction, etc. The closest one comes to doing what mathematicians do, while one is in school, is when one learns to do proofs in geometry. Mathematicians do proofs, for the most part, in extremely difficult conceptual areas... and attempt to think up new things to prove. Now. What must a child learn, and how must they learn it, in order to even get to a point where doing mathematics is at all conceivable? They must learn arithmetic. Can they learn it by doing proofs, i.e., by proving, say, that 2+3 = 5? No, of course not. So they must first learn, by memory, what addition is. Then how to add. Then facts like 2+3 = 5. And on, and on. Then at some point perhaps they will find that they want to and have the ability to think of tentative mathematical truths, and prove them correct or not. So the first stage is memorization of the basics.

Do you see where I'm going with this? The child is, effectively, indoctrinated with the basics of mathematics, i.e., they must learn something, and accept it, without fully understanding it or being able to question it. How else would you proceed? This is true for pretty much all fields, even to a certain extent for philosophy... although that latter might possibly be the exception, if one were of a sufficiently Socratic bent. But even there, you will find tricks in the Dialogues which amount to the same thing. In physics, one learns about forces, vectors, electromagnetism, and so forth, without being able to question them. In medicine... etc., etc.

However, once one gets past the point of learning the basics, then one can start to question what one is learning; one has the tools to investigate why 2+3 = 5, and so forth. So I would agree with Ayer up to a point. Past that point, I would not agree. The difficulty, of course, is determining how far one can go before one starts playing with what one is learning. To read one must be "indoctrinated" with the alphabet, with grammar, with a basic vocabulary... an then one can make up one's own words... in the proper context. That context comes at different times for different people, depending on ability, interest, etc... And of course there are cross-influences between some fields that enable one to immediately question something in one if one has already learned another.

Steven Ravett Brown

Pam asked:

i was wondering what kind (and I mean the titles) of books did Socrates write and how did he teach his students?

Easy question, Pam. Socrates never wrote anything down. the only reason we know what he said to his students is because Plato (a philosopher in his own right but also a pupil of Socrates) wrote several works. Many were written in so-called "Socratic dialogue" form, meant to mimic the style Socrates used when he taught. Socrates tended to wander around market places in Athens and went up to people asking them difficult questions, such as, "What is happiness?" He also had a school. Socratic dialogues involved questions and answers during which Socrates usually managed to have his adversary contradict themselves and prove his point. It's worth your reading sections from Plato's Gorgias to get an idea of how Socrates taught. (besides, it's on the yr 12 reading list for next year!) you could also check out Bryan Magee's Story of Philosophy (great book, costs about 30 Dollars but covers heaps of history and has amazing illustrations) and/ or Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World — he talks about Socrates at length.

I teach year 11 and year 12 philosophy and you can email me direct if you like. I am impressed that you are trying to do the work yourself rather than just posting your essay topic and hoping someone else will write it for you. Are you in Victoria? would your school be interested in corresponding with another year 11 class?

Lyn Renwood

Socrates didn't write. Plato wrote books in which he depicted Socrates as a teacher who taught by discussing philosophical problems, questioning and trying to bring people to think for themselves. Look up Plato's early dialogues. In his later works he started to develop his own philosophy.

Rachel Browne

John asked:

Should a philosopher always take the most clear and direct approach when writing a piece of philosophy? Now I've given this some thought and it seems to me that those who insist on complete clarity at all times are oversimplifying the issue, especially when it comes to the question of interpreting the thoughts of other philosophers.

For example, how would one go about giving an accurate account of Heidegger's Being and Time if it's insisted that this account must be explicated in everyday terms? To explicate Heidegger in 'everyday terms' would do a great disservice to his thought, and to those trying to get an accurate understanding of his thought. If one is serious about explicating the ideas of a particular philosopher, then one must employ the technical terms used by that philosopher, for otherwise philosopher's arguments get leveled down to a vague semblance of their original form. Should one always try to define these technical terms? If one is writing a serious philosophical essay on a particular philosopher, shouldn't one assume that the potential readers of this essay will have some understanding of the philosopher the essay is about? Or should one simply assume that everyone is completely ignorant of the philosopher in question? Should one be giving a primer on philosophy each time one decides to undertake a philosophical project?

Furthermore, it is my contention that, if you're after a specific effect, the only way to get that effect is to eschew the notion of complete clarity. Let us take the topic of aesthetics as an example. Often I find that if I want to give a non-reductive account of the aesthetic experience, I actually have to perform an action in my writing that produces an aesthetic effect. I could ramble on and on about poetry in a style as transparent as Ayer's, but I would fail to capture the essence of the poetic. Now you may insist that my argument is fallacious if I can't give a completely transparent account of the essence of the poetic, but I think this is false because, if one can actually write poetically about poetry, then this serves as a more convincing argument than simple logical deduction. Logical deduction understands nothing of the language of poetry, but you can be sure that poetry understands logical deduction perfectly well. Now this is not to say that logic is unimportant. That would be an absurd statement for a philosopher to make. But logic can only reach a certain point in explicating the poetic, and once this point has been reached, we are left with a remainder: the quiddity of the poetic. To reach this zone it's necessary for one to ignore the limitations of strict logical argument, and proceed with a performance of the poetic.

Lastly, there are many great philosophers who are not 'clear and direct'. How 'clear and direct' is Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, or Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, or Heidegger's Being and Time, or Derrida's Of Grammatology, or Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra? Should we ignore Sartre because of statements like, "I am what I'm not, and I'm not what I am"? Must all philosophy be judged under the doctrines of the Anglo-American tradition of complete clarity?

Your question is very pertinent and well argued and you have my complete sympathy. Somewhere in his lecture cycle on 'Philosophical Terminology', Adorno takes Wittgenstein to task for his assertion that we shouldn't and cannot talk about matters that we know nothing about: It is precisely the office of philosophy to do that, Adorno retorts. Language is an extremely imprecise communicator of almost everything of value to human beings (that was one of Wittgenstein's points), but this only means that in writing down a possible very complex argument or raising issues that are new to the philosophical vocabulary, a philosopher may find him/ herself unable to express what needs to be said in 'clear' prose. The essence of this matter is that it is part of the human equation to understand very well in non-lingual terms many complex forms of communication (e.g. symbols) which are also difficult or impossible to decompose into plain statements; and when philosophers write highly convoluted arguments, invent exotic nomenclatures or implicitly redefine standard expressions to suit themselves, this is often an appeal to the intuitions of their readers to fill the comprehensibility gaps by marshalling their own imaginations. Under these terms, philosophy can be become a creative exercise not only for philosophers, but for their readers as well.

This is not to say that clear writing is not a desideratum, ultimately. If you had the chance to ask Hegel, he would unquestionably agree. No-one could have been more sensitive to the deficiencies of his diction than the man himself; but he had important thing to say that he simply found himself unable to frame into 'clear prose'; he was always wrestling with language like Jacob with the Lord's angel in the service of precision of utterance and came out of the fray somewhat bruised and dishevelled. Indeed of Kant it is well-known that he expressed the sentiment that he was forced to leave elegance to his tailor, because he simply lacked the time to polish his text. Consequently it is not a valid counter-argument that men like Descartes or Nietzsche or Santayana wrote in prose to match the best of their respective literary languages. C'est le metier. What I mean by this is: any typical sample of 100 books on Descartes would be devoted to precisely the same task as any sample of 100 books on Hegel: elucidating the meaning of the authors. But didn't Descartes write 'clear and simple prose'? Well, yes. But so did Hegel, on his own terms. For although Descartes might be more readily served up in the Sunday Literary Supplement, what he really meant is no simpler to extract from his texts than anything Hegel had to say. In a word, until somebody takes up Leibnitz's idea of a characteristica universalis and develops it into a richer as well as more precise communications vehicle than plain language, we're stuck with what we got. So your point is well taken.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney.

First question. Yes, a philosopher should aim for clarity, but should not accept absurd terms. 'Complete' clarity doesn't necessarily mean oversimplifying, but if sometimes terms of shortness do. When that seems awfully difficult, than that only means you don't master the stuff. My personal experience is that anything you really through and through understand can be explained in a few pages (or shorter). If you can't explain Heidegger in common word then you don't really understand his point (replace 'Heidegger' by any name).Then I don't mean Heidegger's mathematical views, but his philosophic ideas.

I'll explain: In SF movies sometimes in a few sentences, the subject is treated of a whole formal philosophy book. Not because of an extremely clever text, but because of the context in which that sentence is used (making use of the visual power of movies).

Second question: Yes, focus is always useful.

Third question: Be careful to accuse other philosophers of unclarity. Consider the time in which their article was written.

My experience is that for instance Kant seems at present unclear (he was clearly a product of his time), BUT considering his circumstances is quite understandable. Only his ideas have in the meantime been a lot improved. Nietzsche's Zarathustra is on close reading very clear. I even wrote a summary in which every chapter takes only a few sentences (if you're really interested I can give you the internet address). Mind that explaining something you only half understand takes a lot of words.

If it is only Anglo Saxon to demand 'complete clarity', then there sure be other ways to look at it No harm meant but that is slightly arrogant.

Remember, thing are as clear as your own eyes see them.

Henk Tuten

Since an aesthetic experience is an experience then I agree that you cannot capture it without giving an example. Furthermore, that example is likely to be a philosophical poem and so logic, I agree, would not be very important. But a logical poem might be quite fun.

Translation of technical terms into everyday language is an attempt to understand. You can assume that potential readers know something about the philosopher you are writing about, but it depends on the level of the essay. If it is an undergraduate essay you have to show that you understand the philosopher. If it is not, it is still a good idea to explicate the ideas of the philosopher since this allows readers to know whether you have the same interpretation.

It is the practice of showing that you understand which leads to the Anglo-Saxon requirement for clarity.

Something is always lost in translation even if it is just the tone of the original philosopher but it would be very restrictive if this was to bother philosophers too much!

Rachel Browne

Karen asked:

I am new to philosophy, I am interested in Kant's philosophy, I have had a question to ask about Kant's theory.

Kant (as far as I understand) says there is the thing in itself, and the world of phenomena, the world we experience, but both worlds are not two separate entities, they are one world, we understand the thing in itself as the phenomenal world.

But who are we? aren't we (in reality) in the world of the thing in itself that is not temporal, how can be there misunderstanding, misinterpretation if there is no time, and if time is said to be illusion how can such a non-static illusion be produced from a static reality (the thing in itself) and can it be said that it is produced from the world of the thing in itself? if it is said to be non-temporal then it can produce nothing, what relation is there between the phenomenal world and the world in itself? misinterpretation? how can misinterpretation exist without time?

They are in a sense two worlds, the noumenal and the phenomenal... but in a very particular sense, not what you'd expect. According to Kant, and I'm going to compress quite a bit into a teeny explanation, we construct the world we see, the phenomenal, employing "schemas" and what might be termed "built-in" parameters ("forms", "pure intuition" and "a priori concepts"). Two of the most fundamental parameters that we are, in effect, hard-wired to use, in constructing the phenomenal world, are space and time. But when I say "constructing", I'm using that term in a particular way... really, a better term might be "understanding"... but that isn't really correct either; it's not like our conscious efforts at understanding. "Structuring" is really best... but that's such a vague term... I'll use "understanding", OK? With the proviso that what I'm talking about is a kind of unconscious meaning of that term. So... we "understand" the noumenal world through those parameters. But we do not know that the noumenal world does, or does not, have comparable or even identical dimensions of space and time. In fact, to speak of the noumenon as being "atemporal" is to employ our limited parameter of time to describe something which we cannot know or describe in any other way. So saying the noumenon is "beyond time" or "atemporal" or that time is an "illusion" is to use the limited palette, in effect, that we have to work with to describe something which really necessitates another type of description. But we do not, indeed cannot, know what that type is, because of our limitations.

"We" are of the noumenon... but that doesn't mean we understand the noumenon directly. Kant's argument is very long and complicated... and I simply don't know how to summarize it all for you here. Stating the conclusions doesn't summarize the argument. I guess you could put it this way: we make mistakes about reality, and we clearly have many types of incomplete knowledge of reality. So there must be a disconnect of some sort between ourselves and reality. Ok? Now, given that, what can we say about what we do know and how we know it? Well, we then have to talk about the kinds of things we have to do with whatever connection we do have to reality. But we don't even know what kind of knowledge we have of reality, do we. So what Kant does is try to figure out, in the most general way, what we can know. Starting from the assumption that we are affected by reality (we "receive impressions"), he attempts to understand how we understand those impressions. There is a difference, very important to Kant, between receiving impressions and understanding that those impressions are objects, events, etc., etc. (which is what I mean above by "understand"). And if you think about it, you will see that even if we are direct receptors, in effect, of reality, the noumenon, that reception, those impressions, without some sort of understanding, i.e., classification, organization, structuring... would just be chaos.

So what Kant is saying is this: how do we get order from the chaos of impressions? And that ordering is done in terms of space, time... etc. Take a look at para 88 through about 100 of the Critique of Pure Reason for this introduction. So the mistake that people make is to think that Kant is saying, "Well, there's this world out there separated from us by a veil of some sort..." No. What he's saying is that without internal restructuring we would be overwhelmed by the chaotic impressions we do receive of reality. And then he goes on... and on, and on... describing how we create order from that chaos. And, interestingly enough, Kant is supported by modern cognitive science to an amazing degree.

Steven Ravett Brown

Edward asked:

Does anyone ever think that the world would have been better off if man had never taken, 'control of his affairs,' in the first place?

Evolution. Imagine what that idea would cause — that man's image is of but a limited time and of no absolute fixed value or duration — if it were generally known or believed. Do you think that man jeopardizes his future by feeling revulsion at the idea of his evolution, due to perhaps some childlike fear or immaturity? I can't imagine people being too eager to accept, perhaps eyes on the back of their heads as an evolutionary advancement, or whatever it might be. So perhaps in taking as many preventative and reversive measures as possible the fearful creature might destroy himself? Why? because everything evolves, everything improves.

Now if man prevents this natural improvement he will inevitably fall behind in the 'survival of the fittest' scheme of things. I do not mean to suppose that monkeys will rise up and overthrow their masters, as is the case in so much paltry science fiction, but think for a moment. What is the great problem in medicine today that is already worrying doctors, scientists and the rest? Is it not the evolution and adaptability of bacterial viruses and infections? If I had to spell out a certain problem I would say that evolution affects men, it improves him, in doing so it improves every organ in him, including his brain, not just improvement in his natural immunity. And an improved brain means better intelligence , intelligence to think new ideas, perhaps even unimaginable and extraordinary ideas to us today. Ideas which, none the less, he needs, needs to think up new ways to combat the ever improving threats to his existence. So, do I have a case, or am I just weird?

Very interesting question, Edward, deserving of a well-considered answer. Let me recommend to you, however, in asking important philosophical questions (not just to Pathways, but in general), that you never assume sight unseen that you're the first to put them. For example, 'Does anyone ever think... etc?' is an issue as old as the hills and there must be thousands of books and articles on the subject. By you putting questions in this rhetorical manner, I have to choose between the alternative of believing that you really have never seen an article or spoken to anyone who shares your opinion or that you are indeed just using a rhetorical device. I don't know which applies to you, and that makes it difficult for me to assess how to respond: you see the problem?

Anyway, I'll assume that it is rhetorical and that you're just looking for another answer because you've not seen or heard one that really satisfies you. This means that I can simply respond 'yes' and leave it at that.

And so now to the other parts. I'm sure your idea of 'revulsion' applies to some people, even whole societies. Maybe 'revulsion' is not the best word, but this is a minor consideration. We do constantly jeopardise our future; but this is not rooted in a fear of 'improvement'. The statement 'everything evolves, everything improves' is factually incorrect. For example, many species of bacteria have never evolved beyond their original state, and an argument may be put that creatures who reproduce by cloning are no longer evolving, and that their mode of reproduction is precisely geared to keeping the status quo going indefinitely. Further; many way stations along the path of evolution are not improvements for many creatures and/or branches on the tree of evolution. One may put the proposition that any species which is now extinct was not intrinsically an improvement on what went before. One may propose, even more radically, that homo sapiens occupies an evolutionary rung which has overshot the mark in terms of adaptability and is therefore very likely to 'write himself out' of the further evolution of species. The point of these deliberations is that evolution is not a sort of mechanism of progress, but rather an interplay between organisms and the habitat, in which the former adapt to the conditions which prevail in their niche and the latter changes on two fronts simultaneously, namely through the impact of organisms (which must inevitably change it) and the chemical composition of that habitat from time to time, of which one outcome may be that devolution is on occasion a preferable alternative. In other words, to think of evolution as an upward curve is a mistake. Evolution is neutral: and in the scientific literature you will find it stressed repeatedly that zero change is the rule of the game in stable environmental conditions.

Once you understand evolution in this light namely: that adaptability, not improvement is the key criterion of evolution, then you will be in a better position to judge the crucial issue of mankind's impact and the dangers involved in it. What you call 'improvement' is, in fact, the disposition of some types of organisms towards more complex evolutionary patterns, i.e. the development of more sensitively attuned response systems. Take the evolution of nerves as a paradigmatic example: millions of species have nerves and therefore a greatly improved resource of adaptive response to changes in the habitat over creatures without nerves; then evolutionary stress may induce a further evolution to a nervous system with control and evaluative facilities in a smaller number of species; from there more species will go on to evolve brains. Speaking generally, this is to date the topmost rung on the evolutionary ladder: fish, birds and mammals possess brains of varying size and resource capability. Along comes, in a kind of sudden upward push possibly beyond the needs of the species, the brain of homo sapiens, which displays a crucial change in the capability of brains-in-general. Brains-in-general evolved for the superior handling of short-term evolutionary changes, even instantaneous changes, i.e. changes where the time stamp is too short to allow the quasi-mechanical interplay between organisms and habitat that is the norm; but the human brain goes beyond that in that we can think of the future, i.e. events which have not yet happened, and generate plans and ideas and visions of possible tracks into the future against which we may wish to equip ourselves. One obvious advantage to this is that the creature so endowed is able to build structures, both 'hard' (material, so as to provide an artificial habitat which is to some extent independent of the natural environment) and 'soft' (societal and cultural, designed to facilitate the coherence and cooperativeness of the species in its efforts to survive). One disadvantage is that the animal instincts which we inherited are still in force and have a tendency to be productive of 'misreadings' of these possible futures in light of desires and short-term fulfilment of supposed advantages, all which change the habitat very quickly and thus create evolutionary conditions where we as well as many other species on which we depend on our survival, are endangered.

If we accept the reasonable conjecture that ultimately homo sapiens is the survivor of an arboreal simian (ape-like) branch which is now extinct, then we can see easily by comparing the life habits of other arboreal mammals (e.g. monkeys) what our problems may be. For example, we have no instinct for cleaning up after ourselves, because our instincts were formed in the trees; we have no instinct for curbing our natural aggression, because in an animal lacking 'tooth and claw' that aggression is in the main designed to frighten rather than to kill; and so one could go through a long list of bad outcomes of the evolution of certain simians into hominids. These outcomes are a result of instincts already formed and genetically transmitted which have not had the time to adjust properly to changed living conditions let me point to our eyes, whose stereoscopic ability is a reminder to us that once we needed that sharpness of vision to cope with brachiation. Against all these defects and maladjustment, our brain is the only makeweight: but our brain is heavily influenced by this instinct legacy which we carry around with us; and this is not a problem we are likely to solve in the short term. But it is a problem of which we have been aware ever since Darwin started the evolutionary ball rolling, but which as a whole we have never yet had the courage to face squarely. Instead, we've had two world wars, nuclear bombs and pollution near to suffocation level.

So as all the old religious and philosophical stand-bye's have it, the potential for good and bad has been placed into our own hands; we are the 'husbands' of the earth in the sense that as consciously aware creatures we bear an enormous responsibility far extending our own needs, for every decision we make as a collective affects untold numbers of other creatures and the vegetative world as well. The danger we are facing most acutely is that our perceived and imagined needs will outrun the capacity of the planet to sustain them, but equally deleterious, that many of those organisms which we perceive as pests, nuisances and dangers have the same 'right' to existence as we do (although strictly speaking no-one has a 'right' to live, only the privilege), but that from sheer ignorance we are likely to erode much of that hardly-perceived life on which our own depends.

To some extent, then, your concern is surely well-founded, but the presuppositions by which you judge them are still a little off the mark. You're not alone in this; but since your question revolved largely around questions of evolution, I have concentrated on this to hammer home the point that with all our 'knowledge' and acceptance of the idea, we have not yet, by a long shot, come to an acceptance of what is entailed in this knowledge. We have not yet, as you'll surely agree now, even come to an acceptance of such a simple fact as the incompatibility of our instincts with the need for co-operative living in the terrestrial mode which was probably forced on our distant ancestors by the cyclic recurrence of forest recession. One day, I guess, we'll be forced to; let's just hope that when it happens, it will not be too late!

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney.

Edaw asked:

Do we control what we think or does what we think control us? (Important to note that we can sometimes think we are in control when we are not.)

If what we think controls us, who controls what we think?

Example one: you play billiards, and you hit the cue ball, which hits another, and so forth. You control the balls; everything is linear.

Example two: the billiard table is set up so that it starts with a few balls on it, and a new ball is automatically placed in front of the cue stick every few seconds (up to a maximum number... maybe they're extracted from the pockets, if you're playing that kind of billiards, or maybe they're plucked randomly off the table), while the balls are still moving from the previous stroke. The angle the stick hits at, and its velocity, are controlled by a set of sensors which use the positions of the balls on the table and their velocities to generate angle and speed of stroke. Thus, that angle and speed a) are never the same, and b) they are controlled by the balls that the stick hits, and by the stick which hits the balls.

So in the second example, what is controlling what? Is the stick, hitting the balls, controlling them, or are the balls, generating the angle and force of the stick, controlling it?

You might think of our central nervous system as something like the second example.

Steven Ravett Brown

Jay asked:

What are the strengths of ethical relativism and objectivism?

Indeed both have their strengths, as already is remarked in classical Buddhism, when it says in Tantra Buddhism: 'Absolute Knowledge ([objectivism] and Relative Knowledge [relativism] together constitute the supreme knowledge.'

The strength of objectivism is being conservative and thus preventing mistakes. Another of it strengths is authoritarian education. Although education in theory is always indoctrination, passing knowledge can't be missed in the struggle for survival.

But in the end it is death to stay within the same truth. That means linear progress or seen from space standstill. Mind that death in nature can't be missed.

A strength of relativism is that it compensates absolutism (or objectivism). It acknowledges every system of thought and as such realizes that there can be limitless truths. It remains critical towards any truth, and therefore seen in terms of evolution it keeps things going.

It means life, i.e. acceleration into new truths.

See it as a kind of Yin and Yang. Inseparable, both necessary, together forming a unity.

Henk Tuten

Elin asked:

How can either you, or your society decide ethically which knowledge should or should not be pursued?

This is one of those old questions that I scan down to now and then... I'm not going to answer it. But I recommend that you or anyone interested in this question take a look at Philip Kitcher's latest book: Science, Truth, and Democracy. He addresses this question extensively.

Steven Ravett Brown

Law asked:

I am an undergraduate philosophy major with concentrations in cognitive science and medical ethics. I need to fulfill a language requirement in order to graduate but I am not sure which language (German, French, Latin or Greek) would be most useful considering my two concentrations. I may need to read writings on medicine, health, the body, what constitutes the mind or a living human being. Also ethics, to examine topics like suicide and some legal/ political theories (as it pertains to the state and its responsibilities to welfare issues, like the provision of health care). I am a sophomore and while I am certain by my senior year the correct response to this question would be obvious to me, I cannot wait till then to begin my language courses. Please advise.

Your best bet is German. Aside from the obvious philosophers, there is a great deal of work being done now in Germany in various areas of cognitive science and consciousness studies.

Steven Ravett Brown

Ian asked:

I recently heard someone say, "I might easily have been someone else after all, mightn't I?" The obvious question is, "Might he have been?" Any thoughts.

First of all, we have to get clear what,

(P) 'Individual x might have been individual y'

means — as the truth of (P) is going to depend on what the context of utterance is. I'm going to assume that (P) means,

(P1) 'It is possible that x has different properties than x actually has.'

Let 'x' refer to you. So what (P) means is that you might have had different properties. So, say, you might have had the properties of being a professional footballer, whereas actually you are, say, a professional basketball player.

In terms of possible worlds this turns out as:

(P2) There exists a world w & At w, Ian exists and Ian is a professional footballer.

Well, you might say "look, that's all well and good but surely I can only exist in one world — whoever that other "Ian" is, it certainly is not me!" What we need to then do is talk about counterparts of you. A counterpart of you is an individual to whom you are similar too in some qualitative respect. Hence, P turns out as,

(P3) There exists a world w & at w, there exists a individual y & y is a professional footballer & y is a counterpart of x.

(Remember 'x' refers to you.)

So, in answer to your question, yes you might have been someone else, but what that means is that you have counterparts who are different from you. You might have been David Beckham but that is only true if David Beckham is one of your counterparts.

I understand that all this is controversial, but any answer to this question is controversial — and I think this is the best answer overall. I don't have time to go into details but see David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (1986) chapter 4, and John Divers, Possible Worlds (2002). Feel free to email me with any questions.

Rich Woodward

What exactly is it to imagine that you might have been some other person from the person you actually are? is it necessarily the same as imagining that you might have been different from the way you actually are?

Whenever we think about how different things might have been from the way they are, we are thinking about other 'possible worlds'. No need to worry about how 'real' these possible worlds are (Lewis takes the extreme view that other possible worlds are as real as the actual world). If you like, it's just a convenient way of talking, nothing hangs on this so far as your question is concerned.

I am now thinking about another possible world. In this other possible world, I have just intercepted a careless pass from an Arsenal player and I am racing with the ball towards the Arsenal goal. Other information about me: my name is David Beckham, I play for Manchester United, I am married to Victoria who used to be 'Posh Spice' from the Spice Girls. In my garage, I have a Bentley and a Ferrari. So far, so good.

But now there come a tricky question. How did I get to be 'David Beckham', when my father's surname was Klempner? Two possible answers to this: 1. In the other possible world I changed my name (better name for an English footballer). 2. In the other possible world my parents were not my actual parents but were in fact Mr and Mrs Beckham.

If I opt for 1. then I am not imagining that I might have been David Beckham, I am only imagining that I might have had the name David Beckham (as well as various other enviable attributes). In that world, one might suppose that there are two David Beckham's, myself and the son of Mr and Mrs Beckham (who hated sport and became an accountant).

So I opt for 2. How did my parents come to be Mr and Mrs Beckham instead of Mr and Mrs Klempner? What the question is asking is what connects me the person writing these words at this moment, to the person called 'David Beckham' in this other possible world. What makes this individual (in Lewises language) my counterpart?

This isn't a point necessarily about the first person. It makes sense to ask (although no-one ever would) under what circumstances, and in what sense might George W. Bush 'have been' Saddam Hussein, when the person asking the question is neither George W. Bush nor Saddam Hussein. I'll leave you to work out the details.

To get back to Mr and Mrs Beckham. Let's say that in this other possible world, when the embryo which later developed into me was just a few days old, it was secretly removed from my mother's womb and placed in the womb of Mrs Beckham. Would that be enough to make me David Beckham? All I am imagining now is my being substituted (!) for David Beckham. The embryo which would have grown into David Beckham was either destroyed, or maybe became his non-identical twin brother Derek...

Geoffrey Klempner

Malcolm asked:

I actually have two questions:

1. How can someone learn to understand a book like Heidegger's Being and Time, or any other difficult book?

2. I am very frustrated when trying to learn philosophy because all I have are questions and all I think of are contradictions in the text. Combine this with an awareness of an opinion of Nietzsche and you'll see why: "The so called paradoxes of an author, which the reader objects to, are often not at all in the author's book but rather in the readers head" (from Human, all to Human).

Unfortunately there is no easy way to approach a difficult writer like Heidegger, who presupposes of his reader very wide reading in just about all eras of western philosophy, from the Presocratics onward. In such a predicament, the only useful advice is to read the text chapter by chapter with a guide that does the same thing; and fortunately there is such a book around: it's by Stephen Mulhall in the Routledge Guides (Heidegger and Being and Time).

Re the Nietzsche quote: I sympathise with your predicament! But of course you realise that this quote is a paradox in itself. Part of the problem with reading Nietzsche is that he is aphoristic and like Heidegger assumes that you know, when you come upon such a paradox, what it's background and motive might be. Unfortunately Nietzsche is not as well served as Heidegger (yet) in the basic secondary literature and it is unfortunately all to easy to fall into the hands of an author with an axe to grind and that's one reason why I gave up and just read his texts. However, I can recommend one book to you which, even though it is a bit dated by now, still conveys the essentials of his thinking, the book just called Nietzsche by Walter Kaufmann. You might have to buy it secondhand these days or borrow from a library.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

1) a) Take courses in the philosophy that the book is based on before you read the book.

b) Read the philosophical background before you read the book based on that background.

c) Take a course in the philosopher.

d) Get a version of the book with lots of annotations and explanations (Macquarrie's is good).

e) Read it over several times.

Heidegger took pride in being unintelligible (yes this was literally true). So you're not going to understand him easily. Do all the above, in that order.

2)Yes, well, Nietzsche wasn't much of a philosopher, especially in terms of clarity, organization, lack of contradictions, logic, and if it comes to that, sanity, in my opinion. So I'd take his comments with a large grain of salt. He was a polemicist, and an insightful one. That's on the one hand. On the other, without knowing the background which someone brings to a philosophical position, you simply cannot fully appreciate what they're saying. It's like trying to jump into a physics or biology journal without knowing, well, quite a bit in those fields. So Nietzsche has a point, even if it's self-serving.

Steven Ravett Brown

Jayson asked:

What does, "To be, or not to be" mean?

Miracle asked:

I. The Alpha Centauri star system has been visible from earth for some time into the past. It is a bit more than four light years away from earth, which means that light takes about 4.1 years to travel from Alpha Centauri to earth. This is all unproblematically understood in the conceptual framework of naive realism.

II. A reference point is set: 1/1/2000; at which time the perception of Alpha Centauri from earth is noted.

III. A thought-hypothesis: the explosion and immediate disintegration of Alpha Centauri on 1/1/2002.

IV. On 1/1/2004 an observer on Earth continues to see Alpha Centauri. The scientific reason for this is that the photons from Alpha Centauri which are in the vicinity of the earth on 1/1/2004 had left Alpha Centauri four years earlier; thus they had not been affected by the explosion.

There is a philosophical problem, if not scientific. What is it the observer on earth perceives on 1/1/2004? The problem is the star doesn't exist on 1/1/2004, Earth time. If one is currently existing at time, relative to one's history, can one veridically perceive an object that does not exist at time, but did exit relative to one's history?

P.S. The defender of scientific/ naive realism would say that on 1/1/2004 the observer truly or veridically sees Alpha Centauri, but he/ she sees the star veridically at the moment of its existence identical with 1/1/2000, Earth time.

From the way you have framed your question, I take courage that you might gain some benefit from reading a couple of chapters on relativity theory. Minkowski's geometricisation of the space/ time theory actually gives you clear cut diagrammatic representations of this type of event and a simple technique for solving it. So rather than give you a pre-digested 'answer', from which you would learn nothing, go to the library and pick up a copy of Einstein and Infeld. It's all in there, from the horse's mouth.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

I'm having difficulty seeing the problem here. What do you ever see? Photons. What do you ever hear? Phonons, right? Which travel at the speed of sound, much slower than light, which people have known for thousands of years. Do you have a problem that you see, for example, lightning, and then hear the thunder a few seconds or minutes later, or see an explosion off in the distance and then hear it later, etc. etc.? Does anyone?

A defender of naive realism would be naive indeed to say that they heard the lightning, or anything else, "directly". So what's the difference? Light moves faster than sound, that's all.

Steven Ravett Brown

MIke asked:

What is the relationship between happiness and work?

There probably isn't a direct relation between work and happiness except in the most extraordinary cases. The relation is probably via fulfilment. You cannot be happy in any deep sense without fulfilment. Freud described work as a 'path' to happiness. He noted that work is a source of satisfaction only where it is freely chosen, and sadly this probably isn't the normal case. Even then he talks of 'professional activity' and not manual labour.

While in Civilisation and Its Discontents Freud said that man