Phillip asked:

Do people really enjoy their jobs? We're misled into believing that the typical workplace needs to be a part of social structure. I think surveys are misleading. For instance if a survey was taken asking people if they liked their jobs. They're only able to answer that with the perspective they have at that moment. A more accurate way to ask that question would be to ask them do they prefer working or not working.

Is there a social need for work? Aren't these questions philosophers should be asking? I don't think we need work for social structure. People would rather go to clubs or to a park, and just hang out with friends. I believe life should be lived seeking real knowledge, and nurturing friendship. By real knowledge I mean where the mind naturally leads one to think, as in Aristotle or Plato. Even seemingly the best jobs are kind of mundane.

As to your first group of questions... first, surveys have gotten pretty sophisticated these days. But the question I like to ask people is, "If you won the lottery (or something equivalent happened), would you keep living the way you're living, and doing what you're doing?" The answer to that, I believe, is a reasonable indication of whether someone likes their job, or life situation, or whatever (yes, I would). At the worst, it stimulates thought about one's situation... even if the person rationalizes that they enjoy their job. I think that putting it concretely this way is better, perhaps, than asking the abstract and misinterpretable question of whether they "like" their job... which they might at some given moment, or might believe they would most of the time, etc., even if they don't at that particular moment. Or whatever.

As to your next group of questions... hard to answer without your defining "work" more clearly. The societies which have the most leisure time for the most people are, believe it or not, the hunter-gatherer societies: small groups living off the land growing minimal crops (according to a study I've seen... which I do not have the citation for, sorry). But nonetheless, everyone in such a society "works" in some sense of that word, otherwise how would people eat, have shelter, raise children, etc.? But would you really want to live in such a society? Think about it: death by infection, disease, accident; the necessity of restricting life to the village; the necessity to conform to the group norms; living with basically zero technology, just what you make (by working?) by hand. But again, it depends on what you mean by "work". Doing something necessary for survival? Doing something you don't want to do in order to survive? Is doing something you do want to do in order to survive "work"?

So here's a rough classification for you.

1) If you spend most of your life doing what's necessary for survival and not enjoying what you're doing, then you are not happy... but you may be making others happy. Is that good? I think we could argue that most of humanity lives this way... not much different from how animals live, when you get right down to it, is it?

2) If you spend most of your life doing what's necessary for survival and not caring about it, I guess you're ok... but you've given up, I'd say.

3) What if you work part-time, and spend most of your life doing things not necessary for survival, which you enjoy? You're poor but happy... at least if you can find something you really enjoy. Of course if being poor makes you unhappy, you've got problems with this strategy.

4) But the best is when you can spend your time doing something you enjoy, whether or not it's necessary for survival, and get paid for it. Now these are the happy people, aren't they. And very few. After all, first you have to determine what it is you really want to do... not something vague like "nurture friendship". What does that mean, anyway? Be a therapist? Pay people to like you? Tell everyone how wonderful they are? Just sort of sit around and chat the days away? What, exactly?

As for the "best" jobs being "mundane"... well, that's in your viewpoint, isn't it. I'd say sitting around all day in desultory conversation is pretty mundane, myself. I know several (yes, offhand I can think of 5-10 whom I know personally) people, at this point in my life, who absolutely love their work; who, if they won the lottery, would keep doing just exactly what they're doing; maybe buy a better stereo, or whatever, but not change anything basic in their lives. Not that I'm against seeking knowledge, no not at all... but even that's a pretty vague kind of description, isn't it. Just how, precisely, do you want to go about "seeking" knowledge? I'd think about that. Then plot a strategy to be able to do it and get paid for it... lab work, research, theory... you need lots of education for that kind of thing.

Steven Ravett Brown

Justin asked:

Can you enlighten me about 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment' by Horkheimer and Adorno?

You didn't specify what kind of enlightenment you wish for. Horkheimer and Adorno were principal members of the Frankfurt School of Social Research, who left Germany during the era of the Third Reich and worked on a number of sociological projects in the USA. In order to understand what the Dialectic of Enlightenment is all about, you need to first be in the clear that both were not only sociologists, but also socialists, specifically western type Marxists. Sometime in the late Forties, they worked together on this book, in which they question the genuine meaning of the term "Enlightenment" and seek to analyse out what kinds of prejudices — philosophical, political, sociological, literary etc — this Enlightenment laid into the cradle of modern (post industrial revolution) Europe. The principal issues revolve around such fundamental questions as: Is enlightenment truly rational? Well, what then is rationality? Do we truly understand what we mean by that term or are just patting ourselves on the back?

If you want more, I suggest you read some of the book. I would almost do to just read the first 50 pages, which contains the whole philosophy; the rest of it comprises two sections designed to throw into sharp relief two 'special cases' of application, in the manner of excursuses; and then there is a small collection of shorter pieces which didn't find their way into the book proper. Although written in the Forties, the book's impact came in the Sixties to Seventies and coincided roughly with the widespread student unrests.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Jules asked:

Is it possible to justify terrorism?

To justify an action is to show it was the right thing to do, even if it appeared to be wrong. That is different from excusing the action, which is to try to show that even if the action is wrong, there are mitigating explanations for why it was done (excuses like, "it was an accident" or "it was due to ignorance.")

Terrorism is a means to an end (but not, usually, and end in itself.) To justify terrorism, you would have to show that the end for the terrorism was morally worth the evil of terrorism. You would, in addition, have to show that the same end could not have been accomplished by some other means. When terrorism involves (as it does) the deliberate targeting and harming of innocents, it seem to me very difficult to justify (or to show that despite appearances, the deliberate targeting and harming of innocent people, is right. Doesn't it to you?

Ken Stern

The definition of justification is that to justify is to show something "apt or right" about the action or just to show something positive about it (Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy). So, yes, you can 'justify' terrorism. It will be right relative to the cause of the terrorists. Highly apt.

Moral justification is another matter. Is it good? I doubt it is good if justification is relative to a few people's interests. That isn't what we mean by a moral good. In any case, what is good doesn't call out for justification. If you can't see what is good or bad, you are simply not part of a human evaluation scheme.

Cameron asked:

Freud believes we have an unconscious that is a kind of repository of unconscious ideas and thoughts that could be influencing us in our everyday lives. I can understand talk of unconscious processes (such as those that occur in my body and brain that I am not aware of), but have trouble understanding the notions of active, unconscious 'thoughts' and 'ideas'. Do such things make sense?

Unconscious thoughts and ideas don't make much sense because we believe thought to be a conscious process. It is memories or experiences which are repressed into the unconscious and these are active in that they influence our behaviour and what we are inclined to think consciously.

The unconscious is not simply constituted by repressed memories and experiences which are too painful for us to face. The unconscious contains information and memories which guide us throughout our lives. Antonio Damasio points out that when children start to use the plural of words such as 'cat' or 'dog' at the age of three they are not conscious of this knowledge of the plural but use it as a result of non-conscious memory. The use of the plural cannot be described as a thought or an idea but background linguistic processing. So really we are nearly completely influenced by the unconscious in our everyday lives. This unconscious processing is also a physical processing by the brain that we are not aware of. The problem is why this is called 'unconscious'. In the case of our everyday non-conscious processing I can't see much use for the word 'unconscious' with its implications that the processing is mental. The mental is widely thought to be that which is conscious.

But Freud's position was about the nature of the repressed rather than everyday processing. Emotions and motivations we are not aware of cannot be described as mere brain processes. To be driven by past experiences that have been repressed into the unconscious is to be driven by that which was conscious or mental and can become so again. The instincts, drives and emotions that we have may not be conscious to us but such states refer to mental states rather than purely physical ones. As Freud would say, they are 'psychical'. Unconscious influences are part of the psychological structure of mental states, but the part which is not known to us. A change in one's psychical structure, which is supposedly brought about by psychoanalysis, would change a person's conscious experiences so that he would actually feel different. So we assume influential unconscious mental activity which is in some way part of our consciousness, or what it is like to be us, but this is not in the form of thought or idea.

Rachel Browne

This is quite a good question, and there are differing points of view on it. There are many philosophers (e.g., John Searle) who find the notion of an unconscious thought meaningless. He thinks that such processes, which arguably do take place, must be considered only as neural activity, i.e., "brain processes". In other words, if we're not conscious of it, it's not mental. One of the major examples cited by the opponents of that viewpoint is that of "blindsight", where people who are consciously blind (as far as pretty thorough tests can tell) nonetheless are able to say something about objects in what would be their visual field. Are these the result of "mental" and/or "neural" processes? The jury is still out on these issues.

To put this another way, given any reasonable position these days about the mind, one must acknowledge that thoughts are at the very least accompanied by neural events (I'm a materialist, so I think that they are realized by such events, but I'll argue more broadly here). Given that, what is the status of a neural event which is nearly (it can't be completely, since the conscious aspect is not duplicated) identical to that accompanying a conscious thought, but which is not conscious? Well. You see the problem, right? If it's the same, with the same effects except that it's not conscious, then why not call it a "thought"? On the other hand, does it really have the same effects?

When we really take a good look at Freud, he's not too impressive, any more, as far as his theories' accuracy are concerned. He was brilliant, his theories were wonderful and useful for a long time, but we've moved past them at this point. If you read the early Freud, you'll find that much of his work (although he later repudiated this) is based on a hydraulic theory about the nervous system, where something that might be termed an "energy pressure" fills it, and if it's dammed up in one place ("suppressed") it will pop out somewhere else, like water pressure in pipes. This is now known to be incorrect (Speaking broadly. One could, I suppose, say something vaguely similar about blood and tissue concentrations of some neurotransmitters... but that's another discussion.). But when I, at least, read the later Freud, I see this idea in many of his writings about suppression, transformation, etc., etc. I don't think he was able to get entirely away from it.

But we're still left with blindsight and a variety of things like "repressed" anger and other emotions, which seem to operate, even if you consider them merely "brain processes", nearly the same as if they weren't "only" brain processes, i.e., as they'd operate if we were conscious of them. So, how to deal with that? Well, as I say, the jury is out. But my feeling is, first, that we need more knowledge about the neural correlates of consciousness, and second, that, on one level at least, this is really not too important an issue, when you get down to it. What matters are the differences, neurally and functionally, between conscious and unconscious processes, not what we call the latter. And we find that difference by performing well-designed experiments, not by speculating on whether someone's best friend "really" felt "unconscious anger" at someone else.

Steven Ravett Brown

Ferdi asked:

What is confucianism? Is it the backdrop of communism?

The answer to the first part of your question would be vast, because Confucianism has been the principal philosophy and secular religion in China for the best part of 2000 years. If your point of view is sociopolitical, the best way of looking at it is that it provided the guidelines for a socioliterary structure, in other words for teaching. The Chinese have (had?) a national holiday for teachers in memory and honour of Confucius for his founding role in the education of mankind.

Since his philosophy is based on humanistic principles (analogous to what we mean by humanism in the West), this philosophy is totally incompatible with communism. So there is the answer to the second part.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Tamara asked:

I am interested in finding ways in which Aristotle and Confucius can be compared and contrasted in any aspect of their life, and teachings. Any information on this would be greatly appreciated.

Confucius was principally concerned with teaching, state craft, music, literature — that sort of thing. So his philosophy expresses a humanistic attitude to the cosmos in which we live and revolves in particular around the idea of Man in society. Aristotle was concerned with the same principles in those parts of his philosophy which relate to the same subject area, e.g. his Ethics, Rhetoric, Politics and Aesthetics. The idea of a "Golden Mean" occurs in both, and this is because it is true, as you seem to have noticed, that in many respects they pursued the same goal of an "achievable philosophy of life", which is obviously political. The main difference between them is therefore based on the fact that in the China of Confucius, the structure of society was royal, so that Confucius' teachings are designed to turn his humanism to account from the top down.

These are similarities worth pursuing. I've named some Aristotelian titles to help you, but with Confucius owing to the imperfect state of authentic transmissions, you'll need to rely more heavily on the secondary literature. There are several good accounts of Confucius, but if you want to stick with Confucius, rather than Confucianism (which is quite a different thing), keep to books which depict his philosophy in his own time.

Just a note on an important difference to conclude. Aristotle also wrote voluminous tracts on metaphysics and various scientific disciplines. You'll find nothing like it in Confucius, so save yourself the trouble.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Benjamin asked:

I am writing a philosophical paper and need a little advice about a theory. I have concocted a theory on the mind and have come up with a basic problem in it. I must first ask where does the mind end and the brain begin? What functions do the brain control and what are productions of the mind?

It seems that you have opted for a dualist philosophy, hence you are at once burdened by the age-old problem of the interface between mind and body (brain). Over the years dualists have proposed different solutions to the problem. The following are three of the best supported concepts :-

Interactionism.
Two-way causal interaction between the physical and the mental: physical events cause mental events, and vice versa.

Parallelism.
Mental and physical events run in concurrent series, but events of either kind are not caused by events of the other.

Epiphenomenalism.
Mental events are a kind of by-product of a physical system, the human body, which from a causal-scientific point of view is self-sufficient. Human beings can be regarded as machines which would function in just the same way without the puzzling 'extra something' that we call 'mind' or 'consciousness'; but this is not to deny that the latter exists. The example often given is the sound of a steam train whistle, the whistle emanates from a physical act in the engine; the sound of the whistle becomes a separate entity from the engine, but could not be there without the presence of the engine.

One way of considering mind and body as two separate entities is by way of the common concept that 'we' own our bodies. We frequently refer to 'my body', 'my brain', 'my leg', etc.. We talk about 'using' our bodies, about 'moving' a leg, an arm, a finger, etc.. Thus something called 'I' seems to dominate proceedings.

You ask where the mind ends and the brain begins, and what are separate tasks of brain and mind, both questions are derived from a priori judgements based on a presumption of dualism. If we accept the presumption that there are two entities referred to as mind and body, then there is a way in which one can be viewed as separate from the other, however, we are still left with the problem of the interface between the two, and how it is possible for one to act upon the other, having in mind that one is considered to be 'matter stuff' controlled by the laws of physics, and the other some form of 'non-matter stuff', immune from the laws of physics, and which has its seat in some quantum world explained only in terms of metaphysics. Unless we accept the notion of 'parallelism', where it is understood that God (Nature) has wound-up two clocks and set them off to run side by side and perfectly synchronised, but neither interferes with the other. Any change in one corresponds with a change in the other.

The term 'mind' encapsulates a whole series of concepts — attention, concentration, awareness, consciousness, intentions, choice and will. It is extremely difficult, in my view, to succumb to the pressures of science to promote the brain as the one and only possible source for the generation of such complex concepts. My belief has always been that the brain is a tool of the mind, rather than the other way around, as proposed by materialists. I recognise the ability of the brain to carry out unconscious actions, reflex responses and indeed all actions involving control of the body, although it would be unwise in view of current research to consider the brain as little more than a complex of dry electrical circuits. The brain is very 'wet' as interactions between neurones and hormones constitutes the control system of the physical body.

It would be foolish to deny any relationship between mind and brain, but it really is taxing credulity to the nth degree to claim that a bundle of neurones has 'intentions', 'willpower', capabilities of making choices, making decisions, etc. Once we have worked out how a thought can move a limb we shall have discovered what happens at the interface between mind and body (brain). Something seems to make the decision and the brain carries out the physical operations to achieve the intention. The mind, whatever it is, is the boss. Most people are too easily persuaded by science to accept the materialist view. Science is really materialist philosophy.

John Brandon

Laura asked:

I have a few questions after reading through a melange of Eastern and Western philosophy, particularly that of Buddhism and Objectivism. Are these two schools of thought in any way reconcilable? Can desire ever successfully overcome the personal ego? If so, does transcending the personal ego lead to stagnation or activity? Is it only through abandoning the notion of an individual self-hood that life becomes fully enriching and receptive?

So let me get clear on this. You've been reading Ayn Rand and also some sort of commentaries on "Eastern" philosophies, and you find them contradictory. Yes, they are. Absolutely. They are intended to be. Are they reconcilable? Probably not. Can "desire" "overcome" the "ego"? You got me. What do those words mean, anyway? Does "transcending" this "ego" lead to... no, look, I'm sorry, but here are a couple of comments on all this.

First, what you've read does not sound like philosophy to me, as that term is usually employed by philosophers. It sounds like predigested self-help homilies. And you're not asking philosophical questions, but questions about how to feel better. If that's not true, then you need to stop using jargon and ask your questions more clearly; alternatively, define terms like "enriching" in such a way that they can be meaningfully addressed. If what you want is to feel better, you're on the wrong website.

But I'll assume that you are actually serious about this and truly want to find something solid in all this mush to think about. Ok, then here's what you do. Go read some of these:

 Dupre, L. Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection: Excursions in the Phenomenology and Philosophy of Religion. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998.

 Eliade, M. The Sacred and the Profane. Translated by W.R. Trask, The Cloister Library. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1961.

 James, W. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Collier Books, 1968.

 Laski, M. Ecstasy in Secular and Religious Experiences. Los Angeles, CA: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1990.

 Ross, N.W., ed. The Way of Zen: An East-West Anthology. New York: Random House, 1960.

 Watts, A.W. This Is It: And Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience. New York, NY: Collier Books, 1971.

 Watts, A.W. The Way of Zen. New York, NY: Mentor Books, 1964.

For some very basic background in religious mysticism and Zen.

Then go read some of these:

 Apostle, H. G. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. 2nd ed. Grinnell, IA: The Peripatetic Press, 1984.

 Audi, R. "Intuitionism, Pluralism, and the Foundations of Ethics." In Moral Knowledge?: New Readings in Moral Epistemology edited by W. Sinnott-Armstrong and M. Timmons, 101-36. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

 Edgerton, R. B. Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony. 1st ed. New York: The Free Press, 1992.

 Flanagan, Owen. Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism. 1st ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.

 Harrison, L.E., and S.P. Huntington, eds. Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000.

 Johnson, M. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. 1st ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.

 MacIntyre, A. After Virtue. 2nd ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.

 May, L., M. Friedman, and A. Clark., Eds. Mind and Morals: Essays on Cognitive Science and Ethics. 2nd ed. Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998.

 Nussbaum, M.C. "Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach." pp. 32-53. Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue. edited by P. A. French, T. E. Jr. Uehling and H. K. Wettstein Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 13. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.

 Urmson, J. O. Aristotle's Ethics. 11th ed. Malden: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1998.

For some background in ethics from a more Western viewpoint. This is just toe-dipping; the literature here is enormous.

Then go back and rethink and reformulate your questions.

Steven Ravett Brown

Dianajane asked:

Who is the philosopher who said, "The end does not justify the means"?

I do not believe that any particular philosopher ever actually stated that. But, I think, that Immanuel Kant (18th century German philosopher) is the philosopher very much associated with that position. Kant held that the rightness or the wrongness of an action is never a function of its consequences, or even its intended consequences. Rather, Kant held that the rightness or wrongness of an action depends entirely on the agent's (the person who does the action) motive in doing the action. He also held that this motive must be that of doing the right thing just because it is the right thing to do.

Ken Stern

Kanchana asked:

According to Hegel "alienated consciousness" will finally be overcome when we realize that we are all part of ____ ____?

According to Hegel all reality originates from ____; whereas for Marx all reality originates from ____?

Trying to guess what you're really asking is not the best way to find an answer! However, since "alienation" is a key term in Hegel's chapter on Master and Slave, which was subsequently picked up by Marx, I'll try to give a simple and straightforward answer (leaving the complexities of the issue a little to one side). In that chapter Hegel put out the idea that the Master, due to his power over his servants, is in a position to satisfy his desires and 'consumer' orientation by simply putting his servants to work on the satisfaction of his 'needs'. In the result, Hegel says, his consciousness of being is reduced since all he needs to do is enjoy the products of his servants' labours. Thereby he becomes alienated from life, from the hands-on type of awareness that puts us in touch with life-as-it-is lived. Inadvertently, however, the slave or servant, although socially oppressed, becomes a beneficiary in that, being forced to do the hands-on work, retains these connections to life etc.

One of Hegel's successors and critics, Ludwig Feuerbach, put forward a different, anthropological perspective. He maintained that men had projected all their good nature on God and retained all the nasty, evil and negative aspects of life in the human realm; the task was therefore not to simply accept this alienated Hegelian consciousness but to do something about it; and the first step in this direction would be to dismantle religion and thus retrieve from God (you understand he was an atheist) the good side of human nature and proceed from there to combat alienation by developing a non-alienated consciousness which sees Man as a part of Nature and to encourage the structuring society in such a way that the disparities of which Hegel speaks and which are grounded in religion, disappear. This is what Marx latched onto: his "Theses on Feuerbach" are, as it were, his first articulate statement on what he perceived as alienation.

As a postcript to this, it might not be out of place to take note of the historical fact that in western, capitalist societies, the employer and employee classes came over time to an accommodation to each other, of which one outcome is the fairly generous profit sharing by the working class, who are thereby placed in the same position as Hegel's erstwhile master: in present-day capitalist societies, the only difference between master and slave is that the former has a few bucks more to spend, but generally only on the same things which the working class enjoys too, so that in terms of Hegelian alienation we are all of us alienated from Nature now, because capitalist societies have turned to large-scale consumerism. So there does not seem to be any hope, at least not on the immediate horizon, that alienation is going to disappear (we won't bother mentioning the communist experiment).

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Adrian asked:

Given the Art of memory, as done over by Dame Yates, reaching back into the Middle Ages, and it is known that they were in wide use during oral times [why is it] that no deep research is done into this? vide:

"Anatole realises that the frame of time and space, which has always seemed to be the fundamental map upon which existence itself must be drawn, is as distorted a view of reality as the Mercator projection of the Earth's surface, no less useful, but artificial." Brian Stableford.

Which is exactly how it works, not unlike the one Kepler stole from alchemy and somewhat like "Hamlet's Mill" by Giorgio de Santillana and Martha von Dechend. What they missed is this as an intellectual construct. As I recall Foucault made an attempt to find it in the family triad, and which completely misses the boat, just as does Chomsky's deep structure. It also focusses on the notion of what amounts to a universal Aristotle allowed us to only deduct from, while not explaining its function. Sapir was into it too but also missed the connection. The only one I found who knew how it works was Lewis Carroll.

"New concepts formed in his mind...but now that he had comprehended the message of the ruins, he understood the interlocking of place, time and identity that lay at the core of Bellaterran thought. For the first time, he felt that he glimpsed the ethos of the planetary deity, the creator and sustainer, the omnipresent giver-of-all." John Morresey, 'Nail down the Stars', NEL, 1979, p 76.

What puzzles me about this is how come people cannot realise or recognise this as resident in the head, or, rather, as the foundation of "intellect". I'm not so sure this is a function of intelligence so much as quite something else. So we indeed suffer as suggested by Bolke, the biologist, that our minds ossify as we grow older? What then does this not happen with some, etc.. He wrote, as I recall it, that we are the extended version of the ape's youth, given, of course, one "believes" in Darwin.

Nice, but you've forgotten Kant. He was quite clear and elaborate on this subject. And he's been taken up, in effect, by many modern cognitive psychologists. Cognitive psychology is, in my opinion, the data-driven successor to Kant's original position, and while it does not support everything Kant maintained, it definitely supports his general stance (and surprisingly many of his specific claims). It is interesting, I grant, how well-educated science fiction writers are, and how they incorporate philosophy into their stories. That's one of the major reasons I read sci-fi. But you have to realize that those ideas did not originate with them.

I would recommend, if you want to get serious about this, that you read Kant. A nice translation:

Kant, I. Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by W.S.T. Pluhar. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002.

Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by W.S.T. Pluhar. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1996.

I happen to like the Pluhar translation very much. To get into the actual data supporting this, you might start with a good general text in cognitive science:

A classic:

Neisser, U. Cognitive Psychology. The Century Psychology Series. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967.

Nice intro, if old:

Gardner, H. The Mind's New Science. New York, NY: BasicBooks, 1985.

Tie-in with philosophy:

Goldman, A. I. "Cognitive Science and Metaphysics." Journal of Philosophy 84, no. 10 (1987): 537-44.

Goldman, A. I. (Ed.). Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995.

More modern and general:

Reisberg, D. Cognition: Exploring the Science of the Mind. 1st ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1997.

Mehler, J., and S. Franck, eds. Cognition on Cognition. Edited by J. Mehler, Cognition Special Issues. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995.

Steven Ravett Brown

Michael asked:

Why are maxims or principles important for Kant's ethics?

Principles are important because Kant wants to explain and ground our sense of morality, which he takes as acting on obligation rather than impulse. Impulse doesn't have moral import. Kant thought that we actually do act from a sense of duty to others. If we act according to a sense of duty, we act on principles which can be worded in the form that we "ought" to do such and such. Before Kant, Hume said that we can't derive an "ought" from an "is" and if Hume is right and there is no ground for recognising an "ought" there is no obligation and acting from moral duty doesn't make sense. But, as Kant recognised, we do act from a sense of obligation. Kant thought this was the essence of moral action.

In acting on principle we are not acting on impulse or motivated by mere desire. We are rational and can act contrary to desire. However, there are two senses of principles and maxims. To motivate us our principles or maxims must be subjective — or ones we are committed to. To be moral these maxims we are committed to must be universalisable and essentially universalisable by ourselves as individuals. If we merely acted from desire, we couldn't produce reasons (in terms of maxims and principles) but as rational beings we can be committed to principled action and perform such actions even when we don't actually want to do so. As free rational beings we can commit ourselves to a principle or maxim.

Rachel Browne

Ramiro asked:

I read the question from Dennis about his incarcerated son. I ask, isn't your life of freedom pretty much over. Even if you do educate yourself, what is left for when you come out? You will have that record hanging around your neck forever. So, what is left?

Ok, now I have something specific to offer. Take a look at the Arts & Ideas section of the 8/9/03 issue of the NY Times. On page A13 you will find a story titled "Professors with a Past". It is about people who have been criminals who go to school in criminology. They have respectable jobs in academia, and are valued because of their first-hand experience in the area. There's one guy at Northern Kentucky University, who states, "Ex-cons make good criminology professors because we know so much about the system". And so forth. And I would assume there are other related jobs which are less academic, in criminology, where that kind of experience is valued.

So, I repeat... tell your son to get educated!

Steven Ravett Brown

Joseph asked:

Has the twentieth century produced any notable philosophers of religion?

Definitely. I'd state Evelyn Underhill and Walter T. Stace. They are both brilliant philosophers who deal with mysticism. The former is more a mystic than a philosopher, Mysticism is one of her most important works. The latter is more philosophical, with his books Religion and the Modern Mind, Teachings of the Mystics and Mysticism and Philosophy which is most likely his greatest work ever. Stace is taking the position of the neutral critic. He ends up with conclusions that the mystical experience is the most profound basis of religion, and that religion is not mainly about ethics, but mysticism. He tries to somehow blend 'Atheistic (?) Naturalism' with mysticism.

Among other philosophers [who write about religion] are Aldous Huxley, D.T. Suzuki, Rudolf Otto and R. M. Bucke.

Arthur Brown

Cressie asked:

How could Thales of Miletus consider that fire came from water — as his theory says that everything came from water?

Remember that the ancient Greeks, and indeed everyone up to the last century or so, had no real idea as to what "fire" and "water" referred to. We know, now, that fire is, roughly speaking, a dynamic state of rapid oxidation accompanied by light and heat, and water is a particular compound of hydrogen and oxygen. Fine. But the Greeks had no idea of any of this, nor even of the idea, for the most part, that substances were comprised of combinations of other substances down to the level we now know this to be true. They did realize that mixtures were combinations, but only down to a certain point. So fire was an actual substance for Thales, and so was water, not a compound, not a dynamic process. Fire corresponded better, perhaps, if you want to really stretch the metaphor, to what we term "energy" now. Given that, he could say that plants, for example, were in part comprised of both fire and water.

Steven Ravett Brown

Is uncertain whether Thales believed that everything is water (the claim attributed to him by Aristotle) or only that everything comes from water, which is what you are saying. However, on either interpretation, there seems to be a problem with explaining fire.

Let's take the second alternative first, because it is easier. Why is it a problem that fire 'comes from' water? Because water is wet and fire is dry? or rain feels cold and fire feels hot? Thales could have pointed out that if the sheer fact of change is perceived as a problem, then any perceived change in anything is a problem, even in a tiny degree. (That was before the Presocratic philosopher Parmenides who came up with an astounding argument that change or differentiation of any kind are logically impossible. It would take me a lot longer to answer that question.)

More difficult is the claim that fire really is water. What could that mean? If that is what Thales thought, then he meant it in the same sense that ice and steam really are water. One and the same substance or stuff can have different perceptible qualities at different times. However, if you think about it, there is no difficulty in principle with including fire as one of the forms of water, that doesn't apply to steam or ice. Think of a property of fire (e.g. incandescence) that it seems hard to imagine being a property of water. Well, it is equally hard (Thales would have said) to imagine that solidity is a property of water. The only difference between the two cases is that we have seen water solidify (freeze), but never seen water turn into fire.

Geoffrey Klempner

The first thing you need to understand, Cressie, is that Thales did NOT have a "theory" at all. To maintain this is to misunderstand completely what drove him and his successors to investigate Nature. Thales was looking for a "principle", a word which originally meant (and still does) "something that comes first before everything else". In the world of Thales that "first" thing was (as it is in most religions) a divinity: a creator God or some spirit or demon. And so Thales, like the other people around him who had begun questioning the standard religious tales in the context of whether religious stories are actually believable, decided they are not. But there was no science around in those days, so Thales put forth a proposition — a discussion point as we might call it today. Let us discuss, he might have said, if water, which seems to be everywhere around us, everywhere in us, everywhere in things (even those that seem at first glance to be totally dry) might be the "first substance" on which everything depends.

So, forget the term "theory". This is a modern short-hand for something much more fundamental, in fact something philosophical. And from this you should take away with you the important difference between having a theory and philosophising: namely, that theories are ideas about something "believed to be true for the time being", whereas philosophies are efforts to establish truths which may hold forever. That difference is not always adhered to, even by philosophers. But if you need an example: a THEORY is the belief that "space" (i.e. the universe) is a container in which objects are placed, while a PHILOSOPHY is the notion that, in order to hold such a belief, one should furnish a "Sufficient Reason" for it. As you can see, these are worlds apart; and so (as I said) in Thales the THEORY and PRINCIPLE of water as the basic substance of all things are also worlds apart.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Purple asked:

I was wondering if you could help me find information on substitute instances for the hypothetical syllogism and substitution instances for conjunctions.

Substitution is a test for truth functionality of a connective in modern logic. The conjunction in formal language is true just as long as both components are true. You can substitute any true sentence for A or B in the conjunction 'A and B' and the truth value of the whole remains the same. So whereas 'and' is truth functional, 'knew that' is not because you can know that Aristotle was a philosopher (proposition A) but not that Xenophanes (proposition B) was. If you use the substitution test replacing proposition A by proposition B then if 'knew that' was truth functional substitution would preserve the truth of the whole. But it doesn't.

Propositional logic has replaced the syllogistic study of logic, however the propositional form is:

If A then B
If B then C
_________
So, if A then C

According to the truth tables of logic a conditional is true as long as the consequent is true. By contrast, for a syllogism to make sense the content has to make sense to us in a transitive way because the antecedent and consequents are conceptually related. You cannot substitute different content. A dictionary example of a hypothetical syllogism is:

If the sun shines it will be warm
If it is the warm the plants will grow
_______________________________
So if the sun shines the plants will grow.

There is a conceptual connection between the sun shining and warmth. In ordinary language we need a connection between the antecedent and consequent and it is not the case that for a conditional to be true all that is needed is for the truth of the consequent.

Propositional logic is formal so substitution is possible, but in thought or argument in ordinary language we need to know what each component means and how they are related. As Aristotle says at the beginning of Posterior Analytics, 'argument proceeds from pre-existent knowledge'. Aristotle refers to semantic argument such as the syllogism above where we know or understand the conceptual content. Formal logic and substitution are syntactical rules.

You might look at L S Stebbing's A Modern Introduction to Logic and J Lukasiewicz Aristotle's Syllogistic. Or go back to Aristotle's Analytics.

Rachel Browne

Michael asked:

I have been looking for a proverb that states that when God made man he was made with four arms, four legs and two heads. God then tore apart the creature for each to go their own way. When eventually the two meet up again they will become whole. This is related to the fact that when two soulmates find one another and fall in love they too become whole. I cannot remember if it is a Buddhist, Taoist or Hindu proverb, can any one help?

This was a hard one... I also remembered it but not its origin. But it's a Greek creation myth. Take a look at this page:

Melanie asked:

I'm doing another Philosophy paper, but this time it's on the topic "Is it ethical to breed animals for human consumption?" I've got a few quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer to point out that humans are very similar to animals, but are there any other philosophers that I can use in this essay? I can't find any!

Let me be nasty. Do you really think all those nice animal lovers on the Animal Channel are vegetarian? And don't you think sharks are beautiful, possibly intelligent, killing machines?

A human being consumes at least 50 times more energy per year than a crocodile, and western humans possibly consume about 1000 times the energy need of crocodiles. This predator kills generally within a few seconds, and lives for one year on the energy provided by one prey. What if you waited lifelong in prison for execution of a death penalty?

I mean, killing to eat in itself is a way of life. Notions like GOOD or BAD are inventions in the ethics of the dogmatic part of religions. Killing can be seen as efficient and beautifully performed, i.e. as a very creative act.

That 's quite different from acknowledging that any society needs rules. If that society forbids eating cows, and stimulates eating fish, that's fine to me. But don't look at long dead Christian philosophers to explain such rules.

Breeding other animals for food is a wide spread efficient habit in nature, from ants to humans. Do you plan to rewrite Darwin?

I suggest that you look at Animal or Discovery Channel for a modern view on things. And then you'll be prepared to have a peep at Schopenhauer.

Henk Tuten

Kayleigh asked:

I am a teenager and I get these kind of complicated thoughts in my head, they are things like rude things put into sentences to do with my family. I know you will probably say I need special treatment but I just want some advice from you to tell me what I'm experiencing.

Well for one thing you're not telling me very much — "complicated" can mean just about anything; so can "rude". I guess one question is, are you actually saying these rude things, or are you just thinking them? If you're saying them, then you at least need help, maybe just talking to a friend, in controlling yourself to that extent. Another question has to do with your situation. I mean, if you're basically living a pretty good life, with enough money, clothes, you're clean, etc.; if no one is abusing you in any serious way... then that's one thing. If you're living in a slum with rats crawling over you, clothes in rags, no money, being beaten, or something like that, then we're in another place entirely, right?

Now, given that you can write reasonably well, that you can use and have available a computer so that you can go to this site and ask a question (even though really it's not a philosophical question and this site is for philosophical questions), I'm going to assume that you're pretty much ok as far as the basics of living are concerned (although you could still be being beaten, abused, etc... how can I know?). But I'll assume that you're living in reasonable comfort, being educated, and so forth.

Ok... Now I'll go through several possibilities, all or none of which may be right... how would I know? So you'll just have to judge for yourself.

Here are some minor problem possibilities:

1) You're very smart and your family isn't. So you're bored and restless, you hate school, and you argue with everyone.

This is a hard one. You're going to feel lonely, at least for a while. One possibility: read, study, become a nerd. Get great grades and research how to go to another school for bright kids; there are such schools, and some give scholarships, i.e., money or free tuition, if they think you're smart or whatever. Hey, do it. You won't be so alone there.

Another possibility: keep a diary, and read. You can talk to the diary, and live in part in the books. Not really a bad way to go; lots of bright people do it this way.

Also, since you can deal with computers, join discussion groups, socialize that way.

2) You have a brother or sister who is the "good" one, and you've always been the "bad" one, but you don't really feel good about that.

Well... I don't really know how to say this gently... just do it. Become another "good" one. You'll feel better, get along better with your family, after the initial shock. If you don't want to do it suddenly, do it gradually. If you don't want to do it at all... then you'll just have to figure out some way to balance between being "yourself" (whatever that means) and "getting along"... in such a way that you aren't as "bad" yet are still "true" to yourself. I'm using quotes here a bit cynically... you might think about where you really are on these issues pretty carefully.

3) You've been just fine until recently, until something major in your life has changed, and you may or may not be feeling upset about that... but probably that's what's upsetting you at some level.

Um. Talk to someone. It doesn't have to be "help", just talk to someone about it.

4) You've been just fine until recently, until something in yourself, probably sexuality, has changed, and you're upset about that and don't know how to deal with it.

Yes, embarrassing. Talk to someone. Think about it this way: everyone has sex, otherwise there would be no human race, right? So everyone goes through this. You are not alone, you are not unique... in this, at least. If you really can't talk about it... go to a bookstore and read, read, read. Yes, about sex.

5) Ooops, my mind just went blank. If I've missed something, go to a bookstore and read about it. Read about what goes on with teenagers. Read about the physiology of it, if you don't want to read the "self-help" section.

Ok, major problem possibilities. I seriously hope none of these are your problem... but:

1) You've been hearing, really hearing, voices (yes, I'm serious). Get immediate help. Right now, call a clinic. This is not trivial, and should not be kept secret.

2) You've started doing pretty serious drugs. Stop, if you can. Then, yes, get help. Period.

3) You've started doing what you think (and you're probably right) is too much sex. Stop. Yes, just stop. Then talk to someone, anyone, and get tested for STDs.

4) You're being beaten (seriously) and/or sexually abused. GET HELP. Look for this, just the way I'm putting it: a "shelter" for "battered women". No matter how you've been threatened, DO IT. You will be protected. Show evidence: bruises, burns, cuts, etc., if possible. People who treat abused women, and kids, know what bruises, etc., from beatings look like. Your being a minor makes it more difficult, but not impossible; that's where evidence will help your case.

Well I hope those last ones aren't what's really going on. As I say, how can I possibly know what is going on with you? I can't. Maybe I've totally missed the mark... well, that's the way it goes. Maybe in that case you can use bits of the above to improvise something. If the problems continue, really you should go to another site which is not primarily philosophy... we're not really set up for emotional problems here.

Steven Ravett Brown

Benjamin asked:

I was reading some old entries in hope to expand the knowledge of philosophy in my simple college student brain and I found one topic, which was brought up a few times, very interesting. It was on egoism and altruistic beliefs. What I gathered from the entry was that people who are unselfish practice this only for themselves. Which is selfish. My question is... Could someone elaborate on this idea for me so that I can understand it more clearly?

Reason: Every time that I go out of my way to help someone now I think that I am just trying to be selfish. It is obviously one of those human instinct things that everyone does, but how can I try to control my selfishness and when do you draw the line between selfishness being a good thing or a bad thing?

First of all, I think, you have to distinguish between being selfish and being self-interested. A person is selfish only if he is taking something from another to which he is not entitled in the first place. He is not selfish just because he is acting in what he believes to be his own best interest.

Let me illustrate what I mean:

A mother leaves two pieces of cake for her sons, and writes them a note telling them that one is for Billy, and the other is for Johnny. Billy arrives home first, and takes his own piece of cake, and leaves the other for Johnny. Billy is doing something he believes he is in his own self-interest. But he is not being selfish. Now suppose that Billy arrives home first and not only takes his own piece of cake, but also takes his brother's as well. Now, when Billy's mother finds out about this, she would certainly be justified in calling Billy selfish. But would she have been justified in calling Billy selfish just because he took his own piece of cake and not Johnny's? Of course not. But in that case, Billy was acting self-interestedly, wasn't he? So, it is a confusion to mix up self-interest with selfishness. To call someone "selfish" is to make a negative moral judgment about him. But "self-interested" is neutral. Most of what you and I do is motivated by self-interest. If I go to bed when I am tired, that is self-interest.

Now to deal with your question more specifically. You say that when you go out of your way to help someone you think you are being selfish. But why? Going out of your way to help another is exactly the sort of action which is called unselfish. Why would you call what is called "unselfish," "selfish?"

You don't say except that you "gathered" that from a book. I don't know whether the book actually said that, or whether you were just misinterpreting. But it is true that some people (and the author of that book may be one of those people) have got it into their heads that just wanting to do something you do, makes your action, selfish. But that is nonsense. It is not wanting to do something that makes your action selfish, but it is what you do, that makes your action selfish. That you want to do what you do, just makes your action voluntary, but surely, not selfish. And that you voluntarily go out of your way to assist another (without being compelled to do it) makes your action laudable, and the very opposite of a selfish action. To repeat: it isn't wanting to do something that makes that action selfish; it is, rather, what you do when you do that action that makes it selfish (or, of course, unselfish) In fact, that you actually want to help others, makes you a nice person.

Ken Stern

Take a look at these:

Gintis, H. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Altruism: Genes, Culture, and the Internalization of Norms." Journal of Theoretical Biology 220, no. 4 (2003): 407-18.

Gintis, H., S. Bowles, R. Boyd, and E. Fehr. "Explaining Altruistic Behavior in Humans." Evolution and Human Behavior 24 (2003): 153-72.

And you might also look at The Selfish Gene by Dawkins.

The idea you've seen is that any behavior can be rationalized as selfish or egoistic... if you're helping someone else it's because it makes you feel good or some such. Yes, very nice and very slick, and probably not easily refutable... I mean, how could you establish whether helping someone really makes you feel good, bad, or indifferent? You can argue this one until the cows come home and starve to death, and not resolve it.

But what you can do is look at animals and try to find examples where there is no obvious benefit for the one sacrificing themselves, and ask why that happens. The genetic argument is that animals sacrifice themselves more readily the closer the (genetic) kinship is. And this does seem to be borne out by data... thus, the "selfish gene", i.e., our genes "want" to continue, and we're here more-or-less just to help them do that. Not unreasonable, I suppose. But all that still neglects the feedback abilities of a chaotic neural net, i.e., ourselves, and how that feedback can modify virtually (I hedge with that term) any "hard-wiring".

So the likelihood, I think, is that we can act altruistically, but that it's difficult. We have to get around all the above.

Steven Ravett Brown

If an ethical theory such as egoism states that a person who acts in the interests of another is acting from selfish motives, then it is difficult to understand. It wouldn't really amount to an ethical theory at all. Being selfish is a personality trait to be distinguished from being generous. Being selfish is something we believe we should try to overcome as moral beings. If this is so such a theory would lead us to conclude that we should try to overcome our selfish motives in acting in the interests of others. So we shouldn't be selfish or altruistic.

Ethical egoism is the view that people do what is in their self-interest. This is to be contrasted with doing something for its own sake. If you think that we just do act ethically because you believe in human instinct, then this could be seen as a natural or psychological altruism yet this wouldn't be doing something for its own sake because we would be compelled by instinct rather than acting purely on external reasons.

Ethical theories can be confusing. I think the best way to look at it is to see that it is not selfish to be moral at all. Rather, self-interest is involved in morality as it determined normatively, by society, that we should have a certain amount of self-interest. It is part of personal responsibility to wash and not to give away all of your belongings so that you become dependent on others. Morality isn't solely about the good of others. If you are overly self-interested it becomes a personality defect which would be described as selfishness or self-obsession. It is difficult to say how to draw the line between self-interest and acting in the interests of others. I don't think you can do sums or plot a graph to work it out. However, to an extent we have shared interests in that we want to live in a peaceful and friendly world.

Rachel Browne

Quentin asked:

Instead of the Golden Rule:

"Treat others as you would like to be treated."

Why not the following 'Platinum Rule':

"Treat others as THEY would like to be treated."

With the first, say I am ordering coffee for my friends. Say I have not been told what each desires. So, under the "Golden Rule" I will simply get X number of my favorite drink (say a latte). Well, that seems silly. Obviously, instead I should endeavor to know what they would like.

Could you also tell me what "formal" moral philosophy might be said to be closest to my 'Platinum Rule'?

But isn't that how you want to be treated? In other words, you would want someone to ask themselves, "what would Quentin like?", right? And that might be different from what they would like. So I think both are equivalent.

But in any case, there are no formal philosophies that I know of which directly and explicitly employ this rule. Why is that? Because it is not well-thought out. Why should you be treated as you would like to be treated? What if, for example, you want someone to tell you the truth about things, and that person knows (or has good reason to believe — and that itself is the start of a long discussion) that telling you that truth in some instance would harm you or cause you to harm someone else? Should they tell it to you, even though that's the way you want to be treated? Why? And in answering that "why" you come to a more fundamental level of analysis than the previous, which implies a much more sophisticated approach to, and (attempted) answers to, ethical problems. To take another example, suppose that treating you the way you want to be treated is also treating you the way you don't want to be treated? What if you don't know, or can't decide, or feel ambiguous, or feel two ways simultaneously?

You see that there are so many problems here that one simply cannot stop at this point. And very few philosophers have.

Steven Ravett Brown

What I like about your 'Platinum Rule' is that it reminds us that other people may want very different things from us. But there is one big problem we don't always know how others would like to be treated. And that, I suppose, is why the 'Golden Rule' was formulated. As humans are all basically similar, if you can't ask the other person how they want to be treated (and that is just the kind of situation this rule is meant to cover!), the best guide is your own wants and feelings.

How could you 'endeavour to know' what kind of coffee each of your friends would like, except by asking them?! I'm sure if your friend was ordering coffee for you, you would like them to ask you what you want before they order it unless of course they already KNOW what you like best. And the 'Golden Rule' would then suggest that you should treat them in the same way, ask them what THEY would like.

Katharine Hunt

Naomi asked:

How come I can't remember my childhood, I don't have a disorder of any sort and I can remember everything from age of 12 but not before. I'm 23 years of age.

There's no way to answer that question, of course, without knowing a great deal more about you. This kind of memory deficit might be due to repression, if you had a very unpleasant childhood. It might be due to something organic, i.e., a chemical problem in your neural system. It might be due to your being very focused on the present for a long time, for whatever reasons, so that you are not skilled in accessing your memories. Or whatever. For whatever it's worth, unless you are having problems in your life due to poor memory, it doesn't have to be very important, but it is annoying. I have the same problem, and in addition I have very poor memory for proper names and arbitrary symbols like formulas. I have had enormous difficulty in school with courses requiring lots of memorization, like languages and history. I suppose there is some minor organic reason, and it's something that can be compensated for by a great deal of effort and practice, which I've done, so you probably can also.

Steven Ravett Brown

Stanley asked:

I'm not very much sure whether I agree with Rene Descartes ontological argument on the existence of God that "Everything I know of comes, ultimately, from outside of myself. I know of the existence of a being greater than which nothing can be conceived, namely God. There is nothing in my experience which ought to make me know this, so it must have come from elsewhere, namely from God Himself." (Rene Descartes)

Surely, if God wanted us to know that he was our creator, he would have given us that cognitive ability (instinctively, or otherwise) to know that. That knowledge would have been part and parcel of the formative teleology of being human. We would not have to run around, trying to find out who actually created us, and why.

Does this argument make sense?

Also, is it true that the principle of creation is such that only the creator knows the purpose of what he creates? This, by implication means that only God knows the reasons for creating mankind. We will never know what our purpose of our existence is until it will be revealed by God.

Is that So?

No doubt the creator knows the purpose of creation. That does not mean that we can never know it by using our intelligence.

If God wanted us to know that he was our creator he could have let us know. But would he want to? Could he have a good reason for making it difficult to work out?

Theologians generally agree that the only motive God has for acting is to produce an entity that is similar to God and appropriate for God to love. The catch is that even God cannot create an entity that is similar to God. God is self-existent. Anything created is other than self-existent. What can God do?

The only possibility is for God to institute a process that involves self-organisation and self-creation so that an entity could self-create in attributes that are similar to God's, such as creativity, goodness and love.

So we have the Big Bang that produces matter. Matter self-organises to produce a planet that can support life. Life begins in a simple form and gradually evolves to produce an animal that has the mental ability to self-create, to be whatever it wants to be — as humans do.

This is my argument in The Process of the Cosmos.

Dr A.B. Kelly

Descartes postulates that God has given us knowledge of God. The questioner makes a reasonable point in doubting that we have this knowledge. What is interesting to me is not that 17th Century Man Descartes believes we have a knowledge of God and 21st Century Man , Stanley believes we don't, but that Descartes cannot imagine that the knowledge he has of God came to him from the very human institution of the Catholic Church. For Descartes the Church is invisible. It is very much like people today who repeat things from T.V. News as definite facts, forgetting that they have been told these things by certain human beings with prestige and power. Instead, they believe they have somehow discerned these things by their own innate abilities. Descartes was unable to bracket his knowledge and investigate where it actually came from, as opposed to accepting the knowledge's claims about its origin.

We should remember that there was little separation between the Catholic Church and its members at this time, so in a sense, the Church we in Descartes' blind spot. He could not see it as his human source of information about the supernatural world. Stanley can see it and thus can reject Descartes' claim of direct knowledge of the supernatural, as Locke went on to do.

Dr Jay Raskin

Fabino asked:

"Our technologies establish the truth of many of our scientific laws." is there any comparable means of establishing moral rules and norms?

Well, you're asking the question here... can we "naturalize" ethics? Indeed. Well, there's no generally agreed-on answer to this question at this point. I favor the affirmative... but there are many positions on this.

For pro-naturalizing, you might look at:

Clark, A. "Connectionism, Moral Cognition, and Collaborative Problem Solving." edited by L. May, M. Friedman and A. Clark, 109-28. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998.
 Edgerton, R. B. Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony. 1st ed. New York: The Free Press, 1992.
 Harrison, L.E., and S.P. Huntington, eds. Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000.
 Johnson, M. "Imagination in Moral Judgment." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46, no. 2 (1985): 265-80.
 Johnson, M. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. 1st ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.
 May, L., M. Friedman, and A. Eds. Clark. Mind and Morals: Essays on Cognitive Science and Ethics. 2nd ed. Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998.

For anti-naturalizing:

Annis, D. B. "A Contextualist Theory of Epistemic Justification." American Philosophical Quarterly 15, no. 3 (1978): 213-19.
 Henderson, D. K. "Epistemic Competence and Contextualist Epistemology: Why Contextualism Is Not Just the Poor Person's Coherentism." The Journal of Philosophy 91, no. 12 (1994): 627-49.
 MacIntyre, A. After Virtue. 2nd ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.
 MacIntyre, A. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 1st ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.
 Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice. 21st ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

For general reading:

Williams, B. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.
 Anscombe, G. E. M. "Modern Moral Philosophy." Philosophy 33, no. 124 (1958): 1-28.
 Apostle, H. G. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. 2nd ed. Grinnell, IA: The Peripatetic Press, 1984.
 Hare, R. M. "Foundationalism and Coherentism in Ethics." edited by W. Sinnott-Armstrong and M. Timmons, 190-99. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
 Kant, I. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by L.W.T. Beck. New York, NY: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959.
 Sinnott-Armstrong, W., and M. Timmons.Moral Knowledge? New Readings in Moral Epistemology. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
 Sommers, C., and F. Sommers. Vice & Virtue in Everyday Life; Introductory Readings in Ethics. 4th ed. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1985.
 Urmson, J. O. Aristotle's Ethics. 11th ed. Malden: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1998.

This is just a kind of very limited basic set of readings on this issue. To really know it well, you need several years of reading.

Steven Ravett Brown

Adam asked:

I have read a limited amount of Nietzsche, and my interest in epistemology has led me to wonder if Nietzsche has a theory of knowledge. I am asking purely for the sake of my own interest, as I have no paper due on the subject. Three Political Science and Philosophy professors have been unable to answer my question at all. My philosophy professor even went as far as to state that Nietzsche was perhaps not even a real philosopher because his system of thought is so disjointed. I disagree, but does he make a valid point nonetheless?

Nietzsche is the first of the major impact non-scholar philosophers, so you can defend the view that he really is not a philosopher in the likes of Hegel or Kant. Using a rather poetic approach to the analysis of philosophical questions, such as individuality, freedom and morality, it is only natural that you can't make a "system" out of his body of work. The fragmented nature of his ideas, make it difficult to follow him, as you would follow a master. But then again, isn't existentialism all about not being able to follow?

What is knowledge to Nietzsche? I would adopt the Spinoza approach to answering this question, and put the question in these terms: what is not knowledge to Nietzsche? All that is not related to vitality and the search for a noble way of life. I would tend to say that knowledge for him is definitely more about conscience of what you are and what you can achieve. Conscience is an essential part of the process of the individual thought process, as it allows you to restrict yourself to those matters than are indeed valuable. It is then not a question of what you can know, but more a question of what you should know. For instance, access to the truth about God, his nature and existence, is irrelevant, as you can read in the Antichrist, because you must know that you are without Him. The end result of not having a particular objective in the field of knowledge, but only a starting point — conscience — means that in fact you have an abandoned Man, abandoned to his own destiny in a way, so he must adopt no pre-conditions.

In fact you can pretty much see what this leads to. The theory of knowledge you can find is: conscience is the Archimedes's leaver to the remainder of what should be the things necessary for a noble man's freedom, a man that refuses the slavish way of someone who believes and depends on God.

So is there a theory of knowledge in Nietzsche? I would tend to say yes. But, as for as for so many other things, not in a classical sense. Socrates said: I only know that I know nothing, and Nietzsche says: I must know what I am. Conscience that fundamental knowledge starts with knowing that you have to free yourself from God, "be alone" in materialistic and metaphysical sense, presents us with an empty, but unrestricted reservoir for what could the culture of a free man could encompass.

Nuno Hipolito

Sanneetha asked:

is the glass half empty or half full? my friend and I have been arguing over this for quite sometime. I say that it depends on if the person is drinking or pouring but she says that its half empty because you are always drinking. We are only 14 and it seems as if this question will bug us for the rest of our lives and a whole lot of life left to be worrying about a question like this so please help us!

It's interesting to me that this is so important to you. Why do you think that it is? Consider that we might say "empty" and "full" merely refer to static states. "Empty" then would be just a sort of hole sitting there, and "full" would be a container with no space unfilled. So the dynamic considerations of whether you're drinking or pouring, that is, what direction the volume is changing, would be irrelevant. Why not use this idea? On the other hand, it's certainly fascinating and original to bring up the dynamics of the container's filling (or emptying) as part of the criteria for it being empty or full... but why is it anything beyond interesting; why is it important? What further implications does it have? If there are none, then it is not important.

Think about it. Here you are, feeling that this is an important issue. Where does this feeling come from? Why does it matter? Consider this: right now, at your age, you are beginning, just beginning, to understand the world around you. What that means is that you are forming categories, classifying things, putting them into relationships. And this issue, "full", "empty", etc., is important to you because it involves your structuring of the world. But, you know, there are other ways to structure the world, and in addition, as you get older, what happens is that, if you keep learning, the categories and relationships you are now forming, that seem so important (indeed that are important, right now), become more flexible, more vague, more fuzzy. And they should become that way. After all, those relationships that you are struggling with are merely a human way of looking at objects... and why, ultimately, is that important? How is that important? Shouldn't they be able to be made more flexible?

And so you might reflect that the general process you're going through will ultimately need to be questioned, quite thoroughly... and so will your conclusions, however clear they might seem at this point. And if you do not do that, you will become stuck in a rigid net of categories, as so many adults you see around you, who have not continued learning and changing, are.

Steven Ravett Brown

I agree with you, Sanneetha, that the glass can be regarded as half-empty or as half-full, depending on how you look at it. This is what you're trying to get at when you say 'it depends on if the person is drinking or pouring'. A lot of issues in philosophy depend heavily on how you look at them!

It all depends on the attitude of mind we bring to the situation; the glass contains the same amount of liquid when half-full as it does when half-empty! I don't agree with your friend's argument that 'you are always drinking'. As you say, sometimes one is pouring, and there must come a point, during the filling of a glass, when it is already half-full, but you have not yet finished filling it!

Whether you regard the proverbial glass as half-full or half-empty is really a metaphor for your attitude to life. Do you see events in terms of how good they are (how full), or how bad they are (how empty)? It is the contrast between pessimism and optimism. Have a look at your views on other subjects. Do you tend to hold a balanced, realistic view, with your friend being more pessimistic? I'd be intrigued to know.

Katharine Hunt

Two answers to this age old question:

1) According to physics, the glass is completely full, half with water and half with air. (Half full to the human eye, half empty from the perspective of air content.)

2) According to a linguistic analysis, the glass is half full, because the word 'full' and the word 'glass' are related in the same contextual meaning. A glass is primarily filled and not emptied, so if it contains water, it should be considered upmost filled with something and not emptied of something. In other words, the glass is a container and not a "emptier". The same conclusion comes from a pragmatic and even finalistic approach — the glass should be looked as it stands, and not as a part of a process of emptying or filling.

As our reality comes foremost from perception, and we make our own reality happen, in a matter of speaking, I would consider the glass half full. Mainly because we relate to the world by the way we construct linguistic manners of understanding it. As a glass is a functional object, meant to be filled, if it contains liquid, it should be analysed in a perspective of being x amount filled.

Nuno Hipolito

Tataiat asked:

Discuss in detail about the influence of "Quantum Theory" on the philosophical field. And I would like you to direct me toward accessible resources (Professors or websites etc.) in order to deepen my knowledge on this topic.

There is a massive literature on this, dating from the introduction to QM in the 20s to the present, with branches in physics, ontology, metaphysics, and epistemology, relating to issues running from the nature of knowledge to the nature of reality to the nature of consciousness. You can spend the next 5-10 years getting to be an expert in this area if you want, with my blessing... but you're not going to get any sort of detail in this forum.

Here's an introductory reading list. I recommend starting with Herbert's book.

Atkins, P.W. Quanta: A Handbook of Concepts. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1991.
 Bohm, D. Causality and Chance in Modern Physics. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961.
 Eisenbud, L. The Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Edited by W.C. Michels. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1971.
 Greene, B. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2000.
 Herbert, N. Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1985.
 Mulhauser, G. R. "On the End of a Quantum Mechanical Romance." Psyche 2, no. 19 (1995).
 Popper, K. R. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Translated by K. R. Popper, J. Freed and L. Freed. English, 1958 ed. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1968.
 Reichenbach, H. Philosophic Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1965.
 Reichenbach, H. The Philosophy of Space and Time. Translated by M. Reichenbach and J. Freund. New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1958.

Steven Ravett Brown

Karen asked:

Could you please explain the Cosmological argument and the objections to it?

It is an argument which purports to prove the existence of God. There are several ways of putting it; two of the best known are the formalisations offered by Leibniz and Kant. The one by Leibniz is analysed by Russell in his popular book, A History of Western Philosophy. Kant's version occurs in the Critique of Pure Reason, Part I, "Transcendental Doctrine of Elements", Book II, Chapter III, sect. 5. Both of these are almost short enough to be quoted here; but rather than this overt "lifting", I'll give a rough and ready guide and leave you the pleasure of reading the full text in the books referred to.

The argument proposes that, if anything at all exists, then a 'necessary' something (e.g. God) must also exist. For example, I exist, but I did not come to be from self-causation. Rather, I came to be from a contingent cause, the more or less accidental mating game enacted by my parents. They in turn came to be from similarly contingent causes. Pursue this strain through to its end: somewhere along this line of argumentation you come to molecules, atoms, electrons, fundamental particles, big bang, what have you. All these are "occasions" which depend on other causes. Where does this so-called "infinite regress" end? According to the cosmological argument, with a creator who is uncaused, but provides the initial impulse to set this whole chain in motion. If you're religious, you might call this creator "God", if not, you might be content with the "quantum flutter" of Hartle/ Hawkins.

Clearly this whole argument rests on logical principles as well as on a linear conception of infinity. Kant demonstrates among several other refutations that this linear causality is conceptually inadequate. He mentions in his criticism that the ontological proof is unsatisfactory because it requires us to accept an a priori necessary existence, and that the cosmological proof was introduced because its saving grace is the actual and known existence of some beings, so that rather than arguing in an intellectual vacuum, we can have recourse to this known existence and argue backwards. In the end, however, both proofs, ontological and cosmological, suffer from the same defect of infinite regress.

Now one reason why this has always been felt to be inadequate (even in ages when faith in God was unquestioned) was that these proofs rather obviously do not solve the problem they tackle: God (the uncaused cause) is always a privileged entity. But once you are on course of admitting such an exception, then you are effectively free to apply the notion of privilege to any link in that chain. More recently, in the wake of complexity theory, the notion of disposition has taught us that "privilege" and "hierarchy" are in a much greater way than ever before considered fundamental principles of organisation throughout the cosmos, in every dimension, and therefore just the thing to upset neat logical proofs which taper off into infinity. But this is a chapter I might now leave you to research on your own. Check out your study resource for "first cause" and "infinite regress" and go from there. Happy hunting!

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Connolly asked:

Machiavelli and Seneca take seemingly different positions. Friendship is highly important to Seneca, whilst Machiavelli would much rather be feared than loved. But are their claims really contradictory?

But this is an interesting question to me, for another reason. What are you after here? It is certainly possible to take writings by virtually anyone, especially people long dead who have written in another language, and interpret their positions in virtually any way one wants. The so-called "deconstructivist" movement specializes in that sort of thing. And many people, including myself, are getting very impatient with it. I've no doubt that with sufficient effort, ingenuity, and research you can argue that Machiavelli and Seneca are in agreement, or are incompatible, and have a great deal of fun with that. Does it demonstrate something? Certainly it does not demonstrate that their positions were either compatible or not. Certainly it does not demonstrate that they in fact had no positions, nor that if one could actually ask them, that they would not come to blows over their disagreements. Or the opposite, that they would agree. What it does demonstrate is that with insufficient facts one can argue for any interpretation.

So you might ask yourself: do you actually want to go as far as you can, with admittedly poor evidence, towards finding out the actual truth? A truth which did in fact exist? That is, as I said, if you could have brought Machiavelli and Seneca together you would have found out that truth. So it did exist. The question for a historian, as contrasted to a deconstructivist, then, is how close one can come to ascertaining that truth. Not how convincing one can make an argument for either position, nor how convincing one can make an argument that it is difficult to determine the actual truth.

Steven Ravett Brown

Brian asked:

What is the connection between faith and hope?

and Sara asked:

Faith and hope are my two favorite virtues. Faith is believing in something unconditionally without a need for proof of it's existence. Hope is the feeling that everything will turn out for the best after doing everything in your ability to the point of impeccability! Once you live with hope in your life, you have every right to have faith that things will, in fact turn out for the best! A very strong connection?

and Floradel asked:

Isn't the connection between faith and hope is that if a certain person have faith certainly he has hope. If he don't have faith then he have no hope.

Perhaps in everyday language very little. To say, I hope it will rain tomorrow, or, I have faith that it will rain tomorrow, will in neither case necessarily produce rain. But, oddly enough, I will feel, and seem to others, to be a bigger fool if I have expressed faith rather than hope, and in the event that rain does not materialise. We could also say that hope is a wish, but faith is a belief; in fact, faith is often defined as a firm belief, or something a bit stronger than an ordinary belief.

Faith, it would seem, gains its major use in a religious context. To put our faith in God seems to be a stronger act than putting hope in God. In religious language faith seems to imply mystic connotations, whereas hope remains a more mundane expression. One example of the positive sense of faith, as opposed to the more neutral sense of hope, is seen in the statement, "I have faith in the fact that Jesus will one day return." To say, "I hope that it is a fact that Jesus will one day return," is obviously not the same statement.

Paul, in the New Testament, refers to the "shield of faith." Faith in Christ is, therefore, a protection against evil. To declare hope in Christ is not quite the same. Also, to have faith in someone or something and to be let down, seems far more tragic than to be disappointed in one's hopes not being fulfilled.

Not only religious people but others, can claim faith to be a greater certainty than hope by excluding a time limit. Much more confidence is placed in the statement, "I have great faith that the world will become a better place before I die," than, "I have great faith that the world will become a better place before next Wednesday." But we could confidently , "I hope that the world will become a better place before next Wednesday," because there is no real commitment, it is just a hope. We could respond to someone who says, "I hope to win the lottery before long," by saying, "So do I." But we would hesitate to respond in the same way to someone who said that they had faith that they would win the lottery before long.

To sum up, hope and faith are two different concepts.

John Brandon

Theo asked:

I've been wondering if philosophers consider mentally retarded individuals as humans.

My problem is that I have no idea what "philosophers" is. Has anyone ever met one? I could ask, "do politicians consider mentally retarded people as human?", and how would you answer? Well... there are lots of politicians, right? Which one(s) am I referring to? Well, there are lots of philosophers, all of whom, perhaps surprisingly, are human beings with their own opinions, etc., many of which differ from each other.

Speaking as a philosopher, I am not happy being lumped together with every other philosopher. And if that is not the intent of the question, I am utterly unable to answer it, since the range of philosophers' opinions and thinking on this (and virtually every other) question is quite wide. One might continue this thought and question Theo's considering of "mentally retarded individuals" as one category also.

Steven Ravett Brown

Toni asked:

"Outline and illustrate the role of justification in distinguishing between true belief and knowledge."

I have to answer this for my studies but I keep hitting a brick wall.I understand the basic idea but I cannot make the answer worth the 15 points I need to achieve.

Briefly (but this will not, I think, be enough to get you the 15 points, but only enough to get you started.) True belief is a necessary condition for knowledge but not a sufficient condition. Your true belief has to be justified. A good illustration of this is that a lucky guess is not knowing. If I think that Whirlaway is going to win the next race,then, even if it is true that Whirlaway does win the next race, it would be wrong for me to say that I knew that Whirlaway would win the next race. If someone asked me how I knew that, I would have to reply, well, I didn't actually know, it was a lucky guess. What I am saying, is that I did not have adequate reason to believe that Whirlaway would win the race. Which is to say, I lacked justification for my belief even though the belief turned out to be true.

By the way, there is good reason to think that even with the addition of justification (or adequate reason) for my belief, it does not follow that I know. That is, there is good reason to think that even truth, and adequate justification are not sufficient conditions (even if they are necessary conditions) for knowledge.

Ken Stern

Robyn asked:

How does one cultivate emotional indifference toward some people?

Well, there are bookshelves full of popular self-help books. There's always that. But actually there is a very old, tried and tested methodology for this... yes, I'm serious. Take up Buddhist practices. If you can avoid overdoing the religious aspects and beliefs of any of the multitude of Buddhist sects, you will find a core of practices which do help.

I'll clarify my position here. There are very many Buddhist groups, just as there are many Christian groups. Their teachings and beliefs are extremely varied, but most have a type of "sitting" meditation in common, which is different in type and aim from the meditation of Hinduism... at least in many Buddhist sects. In addition, many of these groups have beliefs about "rebirth" or "enlightenment" which are extremely varied. Further, in order to really understand Buddhism, just as with any other religion or social practices, one must either have grown up in or around its practitioners or thoroughly immerse oneself in it as an adult for a long period of time.

But if one approaches Buddhism as a set of practices designed to make coping with stress easier, one can, I think, reap many benefits without committing oneself to particular beliefs. Probably the best approach for a Westerner is through Zen... but some of the Zen sects are also very strict. You'll just have to look around for something fairly secular and relaxed, yet reasonably authentic.

There is recent research which supports the benefits of meditative practices, in general. In addition, Buddhism has been around for roughly 2-3000 years. One implication of this is that these practices, in general, are good for you. Another implication is that it doesn't matter too much which ones you take up, which implies that it is not necessary to subscribe to a particular set of beliefs to benefit from the practice.

Steven Ravett Brown

Vincent asked:

What would be the result if all motion in the universe suddenly ceased? Would time exist or ever have existed? Would matter or energy exist?

If all motion in the universe ceased instantaneously, you'd have one God-almighty Big Bang on your hands, Vincent. The question of time doesn't even enter consideration; there certainly would not be enough to call the fire brigade. You understand I put this silly joke in, so that you will realise that "time" is not an independently existing entity, but tied to periodicity: the phases of the moon, the rotation of the galaxy, the oscillations of an excited sulphur atom. If you've got none of these, no time.

Would matter or energy exist, after the big crunch? According to current physics theories, matter and energy always exist; they are two phases of the same thing and conserved throughout all changes. Without matter, no universe. Without energy, no matter. Without a universe, no energy. It is not, however, a concept easy to live with. No philosopher, no scientist has ever proposed a theory of "Nothing". Maybe you should ask the Buddhists. I believe it is a more familiar notion in their philosophies. On the other hand, they do not in this context admit of your and our concept of matter.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Felix asked:

Pardon me if this sounds unserious, I am an undergraduate philosophy student in a Nigerian university and I have to write an assignment on a topic I've not thought about before, neither have I the material. It is, "Discuss the theory of arts and aesthetics in relation to cognitivism and relativism."

I'd be glad if you can help out and there certainly will be more communication between us, I did not know of this site before now.

Well I'm not going to write your essay for you. But here's a short list of readings related to this subject:

Arnheim, R. Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1974.
 Arnheim, R. New Essays on the Psychology of Art. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986.
 Cohen, T., and P. Guyer. Essays in Kant's Aesthetics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
 Goodman, N. Languages of Art. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1976.
 Goodman, N. Ways of Worldmaking. 5th ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988.
 Gracyk, T. A. "Are Kant's "Aesthetic Judgment" and "Judgment of Taste" Synonymous?" International Philosophical Quarterly XXX, No. 2, no. 118 (1990): 159-72.
 Levinson, J. Music, Art, and Metaphysics: Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.
 Raffman, D. Language, Music, and Mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993.
 Sloboda, J.A. "Empirical Studies of Emotional Response to Music." In Cognitive Bases of Musical Communication, edited by M. Riess-Jones and S. Holleran. Washington, D.C.: APA, 1996.
 Sloboda, J.A. "Music Structure and Emotional Response: Some Empirical Findings." In The Psychology of Music, edited by D. Deutsch. New York, NY: Academic Press, 1991.
 Thagard, P. R., and J. Nerb. "Emotional Gestalts: Appraisal, Change, and the Dynamics of Affect." Personality and Social Psychology Review 6, no. 4 (2002): 274-82.
 Tsur, R. "Metaphor and Figure-Ground Relationship: Comparisons from Poetry, Music, and the Visual Arts." PsyART: A Hyperlink Journal for Psychological Study of the Arts 4 (2000).

You might start with Arnheim.

Steven Ravett Brown

Claire asked:

Who is Gerta? Gurtta? I am not sure of the spelling.

I am behind writing an essay on the ontological status of 'artifacts', using a cognitive approach (that is, referring to all the philosophy that abundantly relies on cognitive science); I am particularly interested with understanding how the human mind processes the conceptualisation of artifacts. Is there anyone who might suggest some clues (essays, articles and people) about experimental data and/or philosophical reflections related to such issue?

An interesting question which is just beginning to be seriously researched, after Heidegger's Luddite treatment of technology discouraged that. Take a look at these:

de Lon, D. "Cognitive Task Transformations." Cognitive Systems Research 3 (2002): 349-59.
 Imamizu, H., T. Kuroda, S. Miyauchi, T. Yoshioka, and M. Kawato. "Modular Organization of Internal Models of Tools in the Human Cerebellum." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 100, no. 9 (2003): 5461-66.
 Maravita, A., C. Spence, S. Kennett, and J. Driver. "Tool-Use Changes Multimodal Spatial Interactions between Vision and Touch in Normal Humans." Cognition 83 (2002): B25-B34.
 Narens, L. "The Irony of Measurement by Subjective Estimations." Journal of Mathematical Psychology 46 (2002): 769-88.
 Narens, L. "A Meaningful Justification for the Representational Theory of Measurement." Journal of Mathematical Psychology 46 (2002): 746-68.
 Pattee, H.H. "The Physics of Symbols and the Evolution of Semiotic Control." In Workshop on Control Mechanisms for Complex Systems: Issues of Measurement and Semiotic Analysis, Las Cruces, New Mexico, Dec. 8-12,1996. Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1997.
 Philipse, H. Heidegger's Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
 Philipse, H. "How Are We to Interpret Heidegger's Oeuvre? A Methodological Manifesto." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXIII, no. 3 (2001): 573-86.
 Tugendhat, E. Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination. Translated by P. Stern. Edited by T. McCarthy, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1986.

I believe that the Maravita article might be the most directly relevant to your question. Pattee has some very interesting things to say about how what might be termed "measurement" relates to sensory qualities.

Steven Ravett Brown

Benjamin asked:

I have been wondering about the philosophy of the mind a lot lately. I look at it first through the eyes of the materialist and say that brain states are identical to mental states and actions happen for causes not reasons. But this is does not seem quite right. In my mind I have a thing I call the self. So I separate a mind and a self and a brain. I am just trying to figure out if in classic thinking a mind and a self have always been two separate things or just one. If they are two separate things are either of them physical entities? If not then how do they affect the brain causing bodily actions? I guess I just have the classic interaction problem sorry.

You wonder whether mind and body are "two separate things or just one." Perhaps you should ask yourself whether, as your question seems to assume, the mind is a "thing" at all. Many philosophers, Aristotle for one, and Gilbert Ryle (much later) for another, have questioned this assumption. And, of course, it the mind is not a "thing" (like the body) then the issue "goes away." Perhaps the mind is not a thing (and so not a separate thing from the body) but rather the way the body functions, perhaps as is illustrated in one of Plato's dialogues, like the music played on a musical instrument like the lyre. The lyre and the music played on it are not, of course the same, but is it because they are not the same "things?" Is the music played on the instrument a "thing" the way the "lyre" is a "thing?" Suppose you are making music on an instrument, and you take the instrument away; does the music remain behind?

Ken Stern

Tiffany asked:

What does this quote by Andrew Carnegie mean?

"All honor's wounds are self-inflicted."

Try looking up: shame-oriented vs. guilt-oriented cultures and values. You might also think about the differences between inner-directed and outer-directed people and values. All of these can be found at the library or on the web. Then think about how those relate to your question.

Steven Ravett Brown

Malcolm asked:

I love to hear some answers to these questions:

1. I am confused about our language subject-predicate structure. Have some philosophers suggested this isn't reliable? Can there be other structures we could use?

2. Does Heidegger argue we cannot start from the subjective, personal first person certainty position and if so why? also does Heidegger say that fear frames the basis of all thought or consciousness to the world, and if so where?

3. In Being and Nothingness can you explain to me why Sartre rejects Berkeley's idealism? (I know what esse est percipere means, but can you tell me the precise meanings of the words, percipere, percipi?

4. What is the point of Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit argument?

5. What I don't fully understand is why saying 'unicorns don't exist' is a problem. Of course unicorns don't exist in the physical world, but the idea of unicorns exists in our minds in the physical world. Why don't people accept that we are referring to the idea, and saying something about it — which might be something like, 'the unicorn idea does not have the property of physical embodiment in the world?'

6. We do after all talk about ideas like this all the time, we often talk about the idea of God. If I said 'God does not exist,' is this a contradiction, do atheists contradict themselves all the time when they say this?

1. Not reliable in what sense? I believe all languages have the same basic subject-predicate structure or so the thesis of universal grammar has it. It is held to be a problem that while we use the subject-predicate form grammatically when we talk of things that don't exist, when this is translated into logical form a sentence like 'Pegasus is a flying horse' is false because the name fails to denote a subject which exists.

Philosophers have tried changing the logical form. Russell and Quine have taken Pegasus as a description and have re-arranged logical structure to account for cases of non-denoting terms. But this means that when we say grammatically 'Pegasus is a flying horse' what we really mean, under their form of logical analysis, is 'There is a thing and that thing pegasises', which is simply counter-intuitive. If logical structure determines our ontological commitment, we might say that it doesn't apply to talk of non-existents, but then logical structure would fail to reflect the structure of our language in a general way because a lot of our talk is of non-existents.

2. Heidegger thought that when thinking about being, or existence, we shouldn't withdraw from the world into a subjective state as Descartes did when he sought a foundation for knowledge. Rather we should recognise that we are immersed in the world and should look at what everyday experience is like to describe being and existence and dwelling the world. We are already in the world which opens itself up to us and likewise we open ourselves up to the world. This is what existence is like and a Cartesian approach falsifies thinking about being because it demands some proof of the external world. But we already live there.

I don't think Heidegger mentioned fear. He mentions dread and a being-towards-death, but this is because we are temporally orientated towards to the future in our being.

3. Sartre thought that appearance isn't given any more substance or reality by being supported by the fact that it is perceived by God, than that it just appears. There need be nothing beyond appearance since the way things appear to us is the essence of the way things are for us.

Well I'm not quite sure about percipere/percipi. I think percipere is the act of perceiving and percipi is that which exists or is seen. Sartre says that the percipere cannot affect the perceptum of being which I take to mean that the act of perceiving cannot change that which is perceived. The percipi is that which can be known, his example being a table.

4. Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit is an example of 'seeing as' or aspect-perception. We can see the duck rabbit in two different ways. Using the same sort of activity we can see a face in the moon or a shape in the clouds.

5. Yes, but isn't a unicorn a mythical animal? Is an animal an idea in the mind? If you have been reading Sartre, you will have seen that we think of the unicorn and negate its being. It is part of the idea of the unicorn that it has non-being. But this can't be right. It has mythical being as an 'animal' and mythical reality. There is more than the physical existent and the idea. When we think of the unicorn we don't create it. It is in some sense more than an idea, in that it has some sort of objectivity that enables us to think about it. It is available to be thought about.

But I don't think its existing in our minds gives the idea of a unicorn a place in the physical world. The mind isn't physical. The idea may have a particular place in the physical brain in which it is realised, but this isn't unicorn. It is just a part of a brain state.

But yes, we do say grammatically, in discourse, that unicorns don't exist (should someone suppose that they do), and the problem is at the logical level, as you note when you say 'God does not exist' is a contradiction.

But there is also the problem of what 'exists' means, because there is mythical or fictional existence. There are theories of possible worlds which attempt to account for fictional existences. For sure, it is possible that a unicorn might exist. We can imagine it. But this is all a very complicated area and you might look at Anthony Grayling's Introduction to Philosophical Logic.

6. Again, I'm not sure God is an idea. As far as I am aware, people who do believe in God don't share the same concept. If God is infinite could finite beings have an idea of God? What are God's properties? In any case the proposition 'God does not exist' is seldom used. Is this because we are guided by the fact that we aware of logic and contradiction, or is it because the concept or being of God is a matter of belief which it is inappropriate to assert? We say 'I don't believe in God'. My turn to ask you questions, I think!

Rachel Browne

Eleanor asked:

I'm a philosophy student in Poland. I just want to know what is the first philosophical question? Who is that philosopher?

Let me begin first, since this is a question about beginnings, about how to begin, and about the possibility of being to late to begin, by pointing out an ambiguity in the question "What is the first philosophical question?"

We can distinguish at least two readings chronological and logical: "What is the question that first leads us on the path (way) to our philosophical endeavours?" and "What is the proper starting point for our philosophical inquires?"

These two questions may give different answers, the first question provides as many varied answers, as there are philosophers, examples are: "Why am I me and not someone else?" "Do I have a soul?", "What happens when I die?", "Why is there a world", "Do I see the same red door as everyone else?" "Does the world really exist or is this all a dream?" My own view is that philosophy begins, we start to ask philosophical questions, when we witness or become involved in loss of equilibrium between our own self and the world, between the particular and the universal. That is, when an event occurs that shows a discrepancy between me and the rest of the universe we ask questions like the ones above. Philosophy starts in the strange space that is the intersection and gap between me and the world.

These may be the first question we ask, but they are not first in the logical sense, where first is understood as prior, original, foundational and structuring, in this case the chronologically first questions we ask would lead us (later) to the 'ultimate questions', the first philosophy, upon which the rest are built or derived.

Philosophy has always been (at the first) concerned with this discovery of origins, of this original base: "Philosophy is the courage to get to the final ground, the ultimate reason for all and everything...Philosophy is first philosophy in the double sense that it seeks the ground, foundation origin, arch', and then it anchors grounds, founds, everything upon that origin" (Cohen: Elevations 150).

What then is the first philosophy, what is the proper starting point and ultimate ground for philosophy?