Giles asked:

What is humankind's greatest achievement?

We have been adaptable enough to have survived, so far. Could we have survived without language, I wonder? But language is just one way of communicating meanings. Perhaps the ability to invest things with significance and to understand and explain meanings is our greatest achievement as a species. Without it we would not have culture and society — no collective identities, no art, mythology, religion, metaphor or symbolism, no promising, reconciliation, philosophy or humour...

Graham Nutbrown

The Ask a Philosopher web site.

Jonathan Ichikawa

Duunyia asked:

Well my question is simple but I don't think it is easy to answer. How can a person become a philosopher? If so, I do want to become one. But how?

This is a very good question. Recently I heard someone suggest that if we knew how to be a philosopher, that would be the end of philosophy. The point is that being a philosopher is a process of becoming one.

I think that you will find that in some ways you already are a philosopher — especially since you are asking questions like this. You are a philosopher any time you think about the fundamental questions of life that have no easy answer (or no answer at all). Why are we here? What kinds of beings are we? What's morally right? What is beauty? and there are many more.

But to be a philosopher, you need to think about them not in a way that would give you an immediate answer that you would immediately be satisfied with. You have to look for reasons for your answers and for the things that you believe, and to ask more questions.

To see how philosophers think, it might be helpful to read some philosophy. Try Plato, for a start.

You become a philosopher by reading philosophy and thinking about what you have read in a disciplined and rigorous way. This means you try not to take things for granted (of course, it's impossible not to take anything for granted, but at least you need to be clear about what you are assuming) but look for reasons and justifications. Eventually, you will come to your own idea about how one becomes a philosopher.

Alya Diarova

I'd say you must be one already, because philosophers are people who ask simple questions which are not easy to answer.

Tim Sprod

Adam asked:

Do philosophers think differently than political scientists or historians or writers or mathematicians or scientists? If so why?

Putting the question that way is not very helpful. It is better to think in terms of how different kinds of intellectual practitioners go about their trade. It is the kinds of questions that the respective intellectual disciplines take as their concern that holds the key to understanding what it is to be a philosopher, mathematician, scientist, historian. Different kinds of questions demand different kinds of responses if they are to be addressed successfully. What really sets philosophy (and hence philosophers) apart from other areas of intellectual activity is its second order nature. When a historian is making sense of some past event in those ways characteristic of doing history, he is being a historian. When he or she is reflecting on the nature of historical understanding (say) philosophy of history is being done. Likewise with mathematics, science etc. Philosophy reflects upon issues like what kind of understanding does history give us, and how is it possible, and how does it differ from the kind of understanding given us by the physical sciences. Is explanation in history as dependent upon causal generalisations as is so much of the natural sciences or does history afford us a different kind of insight into why events occurred as they did?

In the same way as there is philosophy of history, there is philosophy of maths, science, art, literature,education etc. The concerns are always the same: conceptual clarification, laying bare the presuppositions informing these important human concerns, vetting such presuppositions for consistency, plausibility. In that sense philosophy is a parasitic activity but this assertion needs to be tempered by the recognition that there is a canon of concerns — ethics, logic, epistemology, metaphysics — which is largely driven by professional philosophers addressing issues raised by other philosophers. But again the same distinctive clarificatory set of tasks.

Perhaps the philosophical task is not (quite) exhausted by the task of clarification, but it is a mighty important part of it. And the difference between so called analytic philosophy and 'continental' philosophy is the emphasis placed upon clarity, rigour of argument, the desire for consistency within the former tradition. All intellectual disciplines demand the hardest thinking. But not all kinds of thinking are the same. The object and ambitions of philosophical thinking set it apart from other (equally) important kinds of thinking. Philosophy is not history, is not maths, is not science. It is what it is even if so many of its tasks are set by these other areas of intellectual challenge.

Ian Gregory

Thien asked:

Who is the author of the philosophical phrase "If there is no GOD, I am God"?

Kirillov, a character in Dostoevsky's novel The Devils is one person I know of who says something like this. If you're scared off by this long (but wonderful!) book, check out what Camus says about Kirillov in The Myth of Sysiphus.

Berta Black

Kelvin asked:

Is murder of innocent people wrong according to classical utilitarianism? If so explain why or why not.

Any ethical theory that wants to be taken seriously will have the murder of innocents fall into the "wrong" column. This includes utilitarianism. But since utilitarianism doesn't give absolute prohibitions to specific kinds of acts, the technically correct answer is "almost always."

Classical utilitarians think that the right action is the action that maximizes the amount of happiness in the world. The murder of innocents will not maximize happiness, for two fairly obvious reasons (there may be more):

First, and most importantly, murdering an innocent person deprives that person of all of the future happiness of his life. Second, if people were permitted to run around killing one another, then everyone would live in constant fear of being killed. This, of course, is a pretty unhappy consequence.

Some people who have more deontological leanings (i.e., believe that things like "don't kill" should be absolute moral rules) aren't satisfied with the utilitarian account. They point out that under some circumstances, it might actually maximize happiness to kill the innocent person — for example, if by killing one person, we could save several innocent people's lives, or if by killing an innocent murder suspect, we could increase the deterrent effect on future potential murders.

This is a serious challenge for utilitarians. There are responses available, but it takes some fairly sophisticated arguments. The best source that's easily understood to follow up on the utilitarian response that I know is Chapter Four of William Shaw's Contemporary Ethics: Taking Account of Utilitarianism.

Jonathan Ichikawa

Alexandra asked:

Why are people skeptical?

This is a rather odd but very interesting question. First, is it a philosophical question? I'm not sure that it is. Certainly, it seems true that in the Western philosophical tradition, skepticism is a normal, even a preferred, stance. And this comes at least in great part from people like Socrates, who (as far as we know) preferred death to being prevented from questioning his contemporary customs and beliefs. For more on that, take a look at this recent book: Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson, by Jennifer Hecht.

This might conceivably answer a question about the origins of a skeptical tradition, but I don't think it answers the general question of why people are skeptical. One could cite animal studies showing that rats, cats, monkeys, and other animals seek out new and unfamiliar stimuli... in other words, that we all get bored and want something new; and that this might imply the beginnings of skepticism, i.e., the rejection of the old for the new.

But even more interesting, I think, are some recent results in human development relating to infant development and to moral development. First, you might look at:

Gopnik, A. and A. Meltzoff (1987). "The development of categorization in the second year and its relation to other cognitive and linguistic developments." Child Development 58: 1523-1531.

Gopnik, A. and D. M. Sobel (2000). "Detecting Blickets: How Young Children Use Information about Novel Causal Powers in Categorization and Induction." Child Development 71(5): 1205-1222.

Piaget, J. (1978). The grasp of consciousness. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Zelazo, P. D. (1999). Language, levels of consciousness, and the development of intentional action. Developing theories of intention: social understanding and self-control. P. D. Zelazo, J. W. Ostington and D. R. Olson: 95-117.

Zelazo explicitly relates development to increasing 'degrees', to use a metaphor, of recursive self-consciousness. That is, child development only occurs because children become more and more able to, in effect, not merely be aware of, but to critique, to criticize, themselves... and so to alter thinking, emotional responses, and behavior. Piaget might easily be read the same way, I believe.

As far as moral development goes, you might look at Dawson on Kohlberg: Dawson, T. L. (2002). "New tools, new insights: Kohlberg's moral judgement stages revisited." International Journal of Behavioral Development 26(2): 154-166. A fascinating paper, which among other things, indicates that 'an important prerequisite of moral development is direct and repeated experience with moral conflict in social contexts'. Thus to progress morally, it seems, one must be forced to question one's beliefs.

As you can see, then, skepticism is useful, perhaps essential, in intellectual, emotional, and moral development.

Steven Ravett Brown

Josaphine asked:

I'm a student in Thailand and I was wondering if you could help me with the question: "In order to find out how things really are, one must understand the filters through which one perceives the world. Discuss and evaluate this claim." I'm not too sure as to what they mean by 'filters.'

and Nazirrajput asked:

"In order to find out how things really are, one must understand the filters through which one perceives the world." Discuss and evaluate this claim.

and Christian asked:

I am of the belief that every person has a certain type of filter and that depending on this filter we perceive the world differently. Is there any philosophical text or quotes that can back this theory up?

"Filter" could mean anything from necessary structures of cognition (Kant) to physiological differences (e.g. human eyes and dog's eyes) to social and cultural conditions (e.g. differences in upbringing, different practices in different societies). In one sense it is obvious that all of us perceive the world differently. No two people's background and situation in the world is entirely identical. We all have our own perspective on the world. But the question is 1) How far these differences are significant, and precisely which factors are significant, and in what circumstances? 2) Is there such a thing as "how things really are" (e.g. Nietzsche would say that all we have are perspectives and there is nothing "behind" or "beyond" the possible ways in which the world might appear to human beings (but this is not a relativism, he does not say that anything goes).

Ultimately, I don't think that the world filter is very helpful, because it implies that there is or can be something like pure perception or a god's eye view of the world and a real world independent of any possible perspective on it but this seems to me to be the very question at issue.

Alya Diarova

Emmanuel asked:

How to we learn philosophy or understand it?

and Ady asked:

How do we learn?

and Bill asked:

Can you provide a brief dialogue (discussion) about "how we learn" from the philosophical positions of a rationalist, feminist and scientist?

On one level we "learn" philosophy in the same way as we learn any other humanities subject, by reading, thinking and rehearsing ideas in our own words. But there are differences. Whereas the student of literature, say, doesn't have to write novels, plays or poems to be a successful student, the student of philosophy does, to some extent at least, have to "do" philosophy. That is, s/he has to evaluate arguments, assess their cogency, attempt to justify opinions. You could argue that the student of literature is studying how to respond to literary texts in the same way as the student of philosophy is studying how to respond to philosophical texts, but the difference is that the focus for the literature student is the text itself, whereas the focus for the philosophy student is the philosophical issue dealt with in the text. The philosophy text is assessed by its success in elucidating the issue. So, how do we learn philosophy? By reading philosophy texts and evaluating them critically. There is no substitute for that.

How do we understand philosophy — or anything else, for that matter? This takes us straight to difficult philosophical questions (as well as to questions that are the province of psychology). What is the conceptual connection between the concept of learning and the concept of understanding? Can we have learning without understanding? This is likely to take us into normative areas, to questions of value, of relative worth. We can learn things by rote without understanding them. We can understand how items of information relate to one another without understanding the significance of the whole structure. So, neither learning or understanding are all-or-nothing concepts: in many cases, at least, we can be said to have learned something or to have understood something a bit, to some extent, partially, in a way, etc.

How should we think of understanding? As a psychological state, something going on in the mind or brain? Or should we think of it in more behavioural terms: you can be said to have understood something when you can behave appropriately or utter the right sentences? Can we ascribe understanding to others in the same way and with the same meaning as we ascribe it to ourselves? These are questions that take us into the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language.

To understand "learning" we would need to be clear about what we mean by "understanding". To be clear about "understanding" we would need to understand the meaning of "meaning", including the kinds of meaning that are conveyed by language and especially by sentences expressing propositions that such and such is the case, that point to external objects. We would then have to be clear about the relationship between the meaning of these sentences and the beliefs of the person who utters them, and then about the connection between beliefs, thoughts and whatever private experiences occur in the speaker's mind. From there we could think about the mind/ brain issues, and the ultimate connection between brain states and meaning and understanding.

There's a range of theoretical attitudes at each stage. Some people would be interested in establishing a scientific, physical, causal connection between external objects and internal brain states, and therefore in either explaining concepts like learning and understanding in physical terms (or in eliminating them from the discussion entirely, as remnants of a discredited "folk" psychology). Others would emphasise social and conventional factors, and might perhaps look at the different ways in which we can be said to learn and understand things, both within and between different cultures. For example, we talk about paintings, myths and sunsets having meaning, as well as words and sentences. They might be interested in not reducing meaning, learning and understanding to any one psychological or physical process. They might link scientific or reductive approaches to meaning and understanding to issues of ideology and power. Some feminists, amongst others, might take this approach.

As for rationalism, its perspective on learning and understanding would emphasise innate knowledge and cognitive capacities with which we are born, as opposed to the information that we acquire through our senses. This might be expressed in term of specific capacities of the brain. Even if we reject the notion of innate knowledge, we might still agree that the ability to learn and understand depends on such capacities. But this would not be equivalent to saying that learning and understanding were identical with them.

A rationalist perspective might also emphasise analytical understanding — that is, understanding the internal relations of ideas and the logical implications of concepts, and using deductive, rather than inductive, inference.

Graham Nutbrown

Rodette asked:

Do male and female managers think different ethically?

Well, female and male managers might think differently, and this might be an ethical difference, but it depends on your idea of the nature of ethics. I think ethics is about human relations and so that if there is a difference between female and male managers it would be an ethical difference.

If you take ethics to be about following principles, then I don't see why there should be a difference in the behaviour of men and women. There isn't known to be a difference in the ability to follow principles between men and women. If you take a utilitarian stance about maximising benefits for as many people as possible, again there would be no known difference.

Rather than looking at ethical theory the answer to your question means we have to look at accepted gender differences. Males in positions of responsibility are supposed to be patriarchal and authoritative and females are supposed to be more nurturing. I receive a leadership newsletter and the latest issue makes a distinction between a boss and a leader. The boss is said to have male authoritative qualities and the leader nurturing female ones. It seems there is a drive to make those in charge more female. According to this newsletter, the boss inspires fear while the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says 'I', and the leader says 'we'. The boss 'commands' and the leader 'asks'. On this view the leader/ female is more ethical in her concern for human relations.

Personally I don't believe in accepted gender distinctions. We are all individuals. My husband is probably a boss in terms of being authoritative but he also nurturing and sent his secretary on an assertive course when he found she wasn't easily able to cope with his authoritative ways. Though whether this is 'developing her' as a leader/female would do or 'using her' as a boss/ male would do is unclear.

If the ethical attitude is to treat someone as a unique individual we shouldn't be thinking that categorising people has anything to do with ethics.

Rachel Browne

Melody asked:

What would Immanuel Kant's views be on cloning? I would also like to know what John Stuart Mill's thoughts on cloning would be as well.

What these questions are asking you to do is to think of the general principle that Kant or Mill advocates for making moral decisions, and apply it to the issue of cloning. This should give you a determinate answer: this is what Kant (or Mill) thinks of cloning.

But there is a problem. Let's consider Kant. Is the act of cloning universalizable? Can I consistently will that everyone should make clones? It doesn't seem to me that there is any contradiction in accepting universal cloning, like there is in universal lying, for example, which would undermine all communication. But wait: maybe universalizing cloning would contradict respect for other humans (the alternative formulation of the Categorical Imperative). Doesn't this depend on what we are cloning for? And what respect means? And so on... This points to a problem with Kant's account — in order to apply the Categorical Imperative, we need to take into account the context, the particularities of the situation. So it is no easy matter to use Kant's views to come up with the morally right thing to do.

So, turn to Mill. Cloning would be right if it leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. So how do we calculate the amount of happiness that would flow from cloning? And are we talking about the general case of cloning (rule utilitarianism), or the specific case of creating just this particular clone (act utilitarianism)? In either case, the arithmetic looks hard.

In other words, I don't think that we can decide the answer to your questions, short of resurrecting them and asking them. This points to the weakness of both of their moral theories: they do not issue in straightforward answers to moral questions.

Tim Sprod

Gwilym asked:

Herbert Spencer, the now deeply unfashionable Victorian philosopher and social commentator, once wrote of the "seven great prejudices". I am trying to locate where he said this and what he thought they were. I have tried all the standard quotation books and the Internet. Any ideas?

Molly asked:

What's the term for a conclusion that is based only on its premise, e.g. "We do the things the way we do, because we do the things the way we do."

I know this is not a syllogism. I don't think its a truism, either, but I'll look that up while I await your reply.

A tautology.

It is also a syllogism (a valid deductive argument).

It is also a truism (something that is obviously and trivially true), but while tautology and syllogism are used as technical terms in logic, truism is not.

Berta Black

Jeffrey asked:

When faced with incalculable questions and thoughts, how does one maintain a sense of ground or stability? It's frightening to feel that I could think myself into madness. Is there a way to put things into a manageable perspective?

Well it's really quite simple... just reflect on the song below:

Title: Galaxy Song
From: Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine thousand miles an hour.
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at fourteen thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

Steven Ravett Brown

Veronica asked:

What is the first philosophical question?

and Rachelle asked:

My professor asked me to find the first philosophical question.

and Warwin asked:

Why is, "Who am I?" the first philosophical question?

What do you think your teacher was trying to do when he/she asked you this question? I'm sure he/she didn't want a factual answer, if such a thing could be found — how would you go about discovering what the historically first philosophical question was? Well, first of all you'd need to know what a philosophical question is. And I think that's the point of your teacher's question. He/she wants you to think about how philosophical inquiry might begin.

So, what is a philosophical question? They are usually very general questions about some basic aspect of reality and our existence. Why does anything exist at all? Is there a god? Who am I? Just look at the questions asked (and answers) on this site, and you'll know what a philosophical question is.

Then, think about how people could have begun asking such questions. Philosophy is about wonder, so what do you find most puzzling about the world? The first philosophical question is where philosophy begins for you, before you have studied any philosophy.

And you might also have a look at writings by presocratic philosophers, to see what kinds of questions the people who were the first (at least in the West) to start thinking about these things had. Are they similar to the questions you have? Why or why not?

Berta Black

The notion that there has to be a first philosophical question suggests that knowledge and understanding must be built up systematically from a foundation of certainty. For Descartes this was certainty about our own existence. The cogito ergo sum (I am thinking, therefore I am) argument was supposed to prove that as long as I am thinking I can be certain of my own existence. The problem then was to move from this private certainty about my own mental experience to certainty about the external world outside my mind. So, Descartes' question was not "Who am I?" but "What can I know for certain?" The "I" there was defined as a thinking thing.

If we take a reversed perspective, and assume the existence of the external world, the question becomes "How do I know what I think?" This is because the assumption that I have a certain and privileged access to my own mind, falters when we consider that our thoughts are at least partly individuated by the facts about the objects they refer to, i.e. facts in the external world. If we don't know enough about the facts to be able to distinguish between one object and another, or between one substance and another, then we could be having identical psychological experiences whilst having what must be two different thoughts or beliefs, whose truth conditions are bound to be different. The relationship between the propositions that express the thoughts or beliefs and the private mental experience is in question. In could be that what we mean by our mind is at least partially determined by facts about the external world. Therefore, the question "How do I know what I think" is very relevant.

Whatever we decide, it seems to me that the questions about the possibility of self-knowledge have to precede the question "Who am I?" because I might not be able to answer that if my self-knowledge is unreliable.

Graham Nutbrown

Plainly the first philosophical question is the first one you're asking. This would be your individual first philosophical question.

Historically it seems as if the ancient Greek philosophers started all philosophy by asking "What is the origin (Greek: arche) of all?", or as Nietzsche put it in his Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks: "Greek philosophy seems to begin with a preposterous idea, with the proposition that water is the origin and mother-womb of all things".

More interesting than the chronological aspect of this "first question" is its qualitative one.

If there is any justifiable "first philosophical question" in this respect, then I think we can agree with Heidegger to term the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", originally recorded (surely being asked much earlier) by Leibniz as the fundamental and widest possible question of philosophy (An introduction to Metaphysics, 1). It is the core of the branch of philosophy called ontology, or the study of existence and existence is undoubtedly the precondition for anything else, including asking questions.

Sunshine asked:

What is Kant's approach to morality? Is he in favour of the rational approach to morality or the virtue/ character approach to morality?

I had to write an essay entitled: "Discuss the difference between a rational approach to morality, and one that focuses on character. Is either approach better than the other?"

It is supposed to be 1500 words and it is only 750! I ran out of things to say! Could you give suggestions of good points?

Kant's approach to morality is extremely rational. According to Kant the main principle of morality is the categorical imperative, which says that the maxims (principles) on which you act have to be such that they can be universalised, ie that you can will them to become a universal law.

Someone's feeling, their character or the consequences of the action is completely irrelevant to assessing the morality of an action.

You might want to think about the consequences such a formalist approach has. E.g. an action could be morally right according to Kant's theory but have terrible consequence. Also, and this is more relevant to the contrast with character ethics, a person who follows Kant's rules might actually be a very unpleasant person. E.g. they could lack any kind of sympathy or love for anyone, they may not care about anyone's feelings, their actions might have horrible consequences, but they would still be considered a (morally) good person by Kant. Would you want to call such a person good? Character ethics is more about asking what makes someone a good person, and giving the answer not just in terms of the rules they follow, but also the kind of person they are, the qualities of their character. (And note that it may be difficult/ impossible to be a good person in this sense without doing at least some of the actions that the categorical imperative would prescribe, but this would not be the only or main thing that would count.)

Alya Diarova

Lynda asked:

I am currently taking a philosophy class for children. We have to make a manual for a children's book. The book is Rainbow Fish. Some of the topics I picked are Beauty — What makes something beautiful? Sharing — How much do we share? Friendship — what makes someone a friend? If someone is untrustworthy are they still a friend? I am having a hard time making up philosophical questions regarding the topics of friendship, beauty and sharing. Any advice?

I am a teacher in a Montessori nursery school, working with children from 2 years — about 4. They are a bit young for philosophical enquiry, most of them, but I did my degree in Philosophy and so am interested in Philosophy with Children.

Laura asked:

A young boy of eleven who was full of life and talent was tragically knocked down and killed the other day. Everything happens for a reason and I believe that. However, I am having great difficulty in understanding this reason. Do you have any answers?

I sympathise with your feelings, but find it difficult to understand what is meant by, "Everything happens for a reason". I hazard a guess that you are referring to some sort of spiritual reason, as the physical reason for the tragedy could probably be explained by the events and conditions leading up to the fatality. A long time ago my wife and I lost a daughter at the tender age of seven; the reason was obvious, she contracted a virus which attacked her brain and led to three years of deterioration until she died. No one could do anything about it, even the most advanced medical care at the time. Are we to say that all this was sufficient reason for our daughter to die? If we wish to close the book on it, the answer is yes. However, if our world view involves a spiritual or mystic dimension the answer is no. It is this latter view which I believe your question addresses.

The christian religion offers comfort through the belief that God is in complete control over all things, and can supply sufficient reason for anything that happens. You may say that there is nothing in this concept to allay concerns and grief, when an explanation is required for taking the life of a child. However, we are dealing with a spiritual matter, and to come to terms with spiritual matters we have to rid ourselves of preconceived secular notions received from the society in which we are brought up. One of these notions is the idea that all humans are entitled to a designated life span. Many derive this idea from the christian concept of three score years and ten; anything beyond this is a bonus, anything less and the person has, in some way been cheated: the terms 'unjust' and 'unfair' are often used. For example, why should David live to the age of ninety and Peter die at sixty, particularly as David was a chain smoker and heavy drinker, and Peter neither smoked nor drank. Of course, by worldly standards such a thing is grossly unfair.

Perhaps, then, when society draws a line in the sand, and declares that humans are all 'entitled' to reach the age of, say, seventy, people are likely to be disappointed or angry when a loved one, or close friend, is seemingly unfairly cheated out of their entitled life-span, and particularly when the victim is a child. As we tend to recognise degrees of fairness, the more years lost below the deadline and the more unfair the situation. Seen as unfair for a person to die at sixty, it is more unfair at forty, and grossly unfair at the age of eleven. This notion of receiving what we believe we are entitled to causes great confusion within society, and in the broader concept, between nations. The general beliefs are, that we are entitled to a roof over our heads, we are entitled to food, clothes, warmth, a comfortable retirement, a peaceful existence, etc.. A world view like this causes great concern and agonizing over reasons when a tragedy occurs.

Yet, people who hold secular views, as well as those who hold spiritual views, believe that we live within the bounds of natural law; stepping outside that law we suffer the consequences. My mother was killed on the road when she ran from the back of a parked vehicle into the path of a car travelling at 30 mph. The 'reason' for her death was obvious, natural law does not allow elderly ladies who collide with heavy vehicles moving at 30 mph. to survive. Followers of religion pose a strong argument when they point out that God, having given us the laws we live by cannot keep intervening to change them for specific events: when He does, they are called miracles. Why miracles should be granted in some cases but not in the majority of others is beyond me. But as many things that happen in this world are beyond me this is not unusual.

Perhaps this answer still leaves you confused, but it may help to bear in mind that we have still a great deal to discover about the world, our origins, the purposes of life, and whether indeed this life we lead is the be all and end all of our existence.

John Brandon

I feel for you, Laura, especially if you were close to the boy.

There are two ways that we can take the phrase "everything happens for a reason". It can mean "everything happens for a purpose", or it can mean "everything that happens is caused".

In my view, the second version is true, but the first is not. For everything to have a purpose, it all would have to happen under the guidance of a being that can have intentions and make plans. If one believes in a certain sort of God, then one can go along with this. But if one doesn't believe in God, or one believes in a God that does not keep an eye on every event in the universe and plan each of them towards some purpose, then it is not true that everything happens for a reason (purpose).

However, if one believes that all events have causes — one of the basic assumptions of science — then everything does happen for a reason (because it was caused). This tragic event had numerous causes, I imagine — inattention on one or more people's part, distractions, unusual conditions — I don't know exactly what they are. But the death of the boy was not planned by anyone or anything, and in that sense it is just a tragic and horrible accident.

The question you ask (although you do not mention God) is a very personal and particular version of the much wider question of evil. See Derek's question on this page for a wider version of it, and my answer there.

Tim Sprod

Kimberly asked:

What is man?

What are some criticisms to Descartes's evil genius argument?

Is it an argument? Surely it is a thought experiment, designed to get us to expand our imaginations in order to contemplate the implications of a world in which we could be deceived about absolutely everything (except our own existence). These days we would probably prefer a science fiction scenario, but in Descartes' day, inventing a powerful supernatural being served the same purpose. One criticism of the move could be that he might have been a bit bolder and just called it God — omniscient and omnipotent, but wicked. Introducing the evil demon allows him to keep the idea of God uncontaminated. If his version of the Ontological Argument (the one that "proves" the existence of a perfect, and therefore undeceiving, divinity) fails, as most philosophers think it does, he may have left us with the possibility of an evil, less than perfect God who would be all too happy for us to be fundamentally deceived.

Another criticism is that such widespread deception as that created by the Evil Demon, is not possible, because the concept of error and deception has to be defined in relation to a general background of authenticity and reliability. A forged bank note has to be identified against a background of publicly recognised authentic ones. It just isn't possible for delusion about reality to be the norm. What do you think of that argument? I'm not convinced by it.

Graham Nutbrown

Derek asked:

With so much cruelty and suffering in both the animal and human world, it makes it very difficult to believe in a loving, caring God. The insect world there are horrors where eggs are inserted into another creature and when they hatch they eat their victim alive from the inside. Why too are the poorer countries always victim of earthquakes, floods, hurricanes etc? Is it really just a matter of survival in a world of uncontrolled chaos where there does not appear to have a infrastructure of any lasting security and that the inevitable is oblivion? No religious superficial "God works in mysterious ways" answers please!

You pose the question of whether it is possible for both evil and God to exist. As you say, God has to be seen as loving and caring (benevolent or all-good) to get the problem going. He also needs to be all-knowing (omniscient) so that he knows there is evil in the world, and all-powerful (omnipotent) so that he could do something about it, for the problem to really bite.

So, one solution is to deny one or more of these attributes of God. He could still be loving and caring if he either didn't know about the things you list, or he knew but lacked the power to stop them.

Since your examples of evil are natural — not causes by human action — the defence against the argument that evil rules out the existence of God that relies on God having given people free will, which they can then misuse, is not available.

The "God works in mysterious ways" defence is not necessarily superficial, I don't think. If God is omniscient, it may be that he can see a greater good arising from the evil you mention, and the fact that we are very limited in our knowledge means that we can't. I don't buy this argument, mind, but I think it is a respectable attempt.

You probably won't like Leibniz' related argument any more either. He claims that God created the best of all possible worlds. That is, this world has evil in it, but there is less evil than in any other world it would have been possible to create, and more good (you need the last part to avoid the question "why not just create a world with only rocks in it?"). Voltaire's book Candide is an excellent fictional ridiculing of this idea.

Tim Sprod

Well if you want to approach it from the religious viewpoint, you might look up the literature on "the problem of pain". There's lots of it, from St. Augustine on through a millennium or so. But as far as I can tell, given that you assume a benevolent, "good", god of some sort, you either have to be a fairly straightforward sadist (and maintain that being a sadist is good), or say, one way or another, "god works in mysterious ways". The "mysterious" could be in its ultimate aim, in its the definition of "good", and so forth, but that's what it amounts to, given the assumption of "goodness" (which I have happily put in scare quotes).

Speaking as an atheist, I think that your picture of "a world of uncontrolled chaos where there does not appear to have a infrastructure of any lasting security and that the inevitable is oblivion" is not too badly off the mark, if a bit exaggerated. After all, to take just one example, the global warming which we're experiencing now is rather directly due to human efforts. So we are in a sense in control, and could be very much more so if we could get it together. I'd say that the sooner we stop relying on the "goodness" of whatever god happens to be at the top of the current opinion poll this century, and get cracking on maintaining our environment ourselves, the sooner we'll be able to reduce the amount of "chaos" (which of course will never completely go away) and clean things up a bit.

Steven Ravett Brown

The difficulty you refer to is known as the Problem of Evil, although it should really be called the Problem of Suffering. Part of the problem is reconciling God's various properties: omnipotence, omniscience, moral perfection, etc. If he could prevent suffering, why doesn't he, if he is morally perfect? Religious justifications of suffering are called theodicies. One theodicy argues that God gave humans free will so that we could be like him, autonomously choosing to do good rather than evil. But since he gave us genuine free will, without any biasing in favour of good, we can, and do, choose often to do evil. In the long run, the argument implies, humanity will choose the path of righteousness. There are several difficulties associated with this argument. One is that it doesn't deal with the suffering caused by natural phenomena, such as earthquakes. Another is that it implies that morality and God are independent: God is not the source of goodness. This undermines some of the arguments for the existence of God.

The "God moves in mysterious ways" response certainly is irritating. Could a morally perfect God be as devious (and slow) as God is often portrayed as being? Some of the theodicies imply that he allows mass suffering in order for a few people to exhibit outstanding courage and charity, and to inspire thereby. This suggests that God does not have a high respect for either innocence or life.

But perhaps we are wrong to look at the question from a short-term human perspective. Personally, I think we should not assume that the human race is as good as it gets. We are likely to be wiped out by a disaster event at some point, but some animal species will survive; eventually it is possible that a different highly intelligent species will emerge, also capable of morality (and philosophy). It might have no place for the idea of God, but it might itself be a little more angelic. Even then, it probably won't last!

Graham Nutbrown

Jane asked:

"What universal human characteristic is shown in the Apology?" — How would you answer something like that?

I like it that you're not asking someone to answer it for you but want to learn HOW to answer such questions. Here are some ideas....

1. Read the Apology. More than once, preferably.

2. Think about what a "universal human characteristic" is. Well, to start with, a characteristic that all humans have. Think of examples. Having two legs is a trivial one. But obviously here were are not talking about such physical characteristics. What other kinds of characteristics are there? Psychological? Moral? ....

3. Think about how what people say reveal what kinds of people they are. Think of someone you know. How would you describe him/ her? What has the person said/ done that makes you describe him/ her like this?

4. Now think about whether this person has any qualities that all human beings have. How is he/she similar to you? To other people you know? Are there things that are common to all of you? How is this reflected in your words and actions?

5. repeat 3. and 4. for Socrates in the Apology.

Berta Black

Sarah asked:

What does Strawson [in "Freedom and Resentment"] say about moral responsibility, and the claim that] no one is ever morally responsible for anything they do?

The "compatibilist" answer to the question of whether humans have free will or not is that all the freedom we need have in order to be said to have free will is the freedom to do as we choose to do — that is, freedom from external constraints. In order for you to be choosing to do as you desire, you have to be acting consistently, in accordance with your character. If your character, and therefore your choices, are ultimately the result of a causal chain stretching back through your desires and values to your past experience and genetic inheritance, so be it. Determinism of that kind is compatible with autonomy.

The problem is: if you neither create not control your character, why should you be blamed and punished for your actions? Strawson's position is that holding people responsible for their actions fits within a framework of attitudes that make possible our rich social existence and personal relationships. These include "reactive attitudes" such as resentment, as well as those more central to responsibility, such as praise and blame. They are natural, interactive and integral to our form of life. To hold people responsible for their actions is to accept them as full participants in this form of life. We can suspend our reactions when we excuse behaviour for some reason, or when we judge that it has the wrong kind of cause and an "objective stance" is more appropriate. In some cases we may see the person more as a patient than as a responsible agent — as being, temporarily, outside the moral frame.

Strawson argues that previous positions have "over-intellectualised" moral responsibility by suggesting that we ascribe it on the basis of a judgement that a theoretical or pragmatic condition (such as metaphysical freedom or social efficacy) has been satisfied. Rather, to hold someone responsible is to react to them as full participants at that moment in the moral community. The "threat" from causal determinism is irrelevant because being seen as someone to whom we can react personally is not dependent on your possession of autonomy or the capacity to self-create. To question the rationality of moral responsibility in the context of the truth of causal determinism is to overlook this point, and how deeply embedded in our way of life the associated attitudes are. I think Strawson also hints at the irrationality of giving up such a source of enrichment.

Three questions about Strawson's argument. 1. He maintains that we cannot criticise the reactive attitudes from a position within the framework: does he exaggerate the interdependence of the various attitudes? 2. What is it exactly that actually qualifies us for membership of the moral community and for the accolade of "person"? 3. Is determinism really irrelevant to the concept of responsibility, and would accepting its truth necessarily necessitate a universal adoption of the objective stance?

Graham Nutbrown

Vito asked:

What is holy?

We often think that holy means greatness, goodness, sacred, a tipping of the divine into the human, or as a way of understanding the glory of god. And yet the word 'Holy' finds it's root in the Hebrew equivalent kadesh, which expresses the notion of being separated from, or elevated above and at the same time a dedication to. Holy is the special (ultimately ethical) relation to what is separated from me.

But how is it possible to maintain a relation to something that remains separate? Isn't a relation a notion that implies a meeting a union (if only partial) of two terms? This is correct only so long as we confine ourselves to a thinking that maintains the reality only of what is immediate, of what is present, before us, a relation that holds between the is-ness of things. The concept of relation is one which applies to knowledge, we understand things through relations. Relations are a tool we use to comprehend. Whereas the Holy forces us to think about what is absent, that can never be present or fully before us, that escapes knowledge and comprehension. Hence the relation enabled by the holy is no ordinary relation, it is a relation that must maintain or even create make possible the difference and separateness of the terms.

The holy would be what Levinas calls a relation without relation, that is, a relation that does not have the characteristics or defining parameters of a relation. How is this possible? Levinas suggests that it is possible in ethical terms, which in his sense of the word is the meeting of two people face-to-face, without that other person being reduced into any prejudices or previous ideas I may have, but is encounter with that which is irreducible to me any knowledge I may have; in other words with that which is separate from me and maintains this status through our interaction. For Levinas, ethics is responding to this person's needs and wants, providing for their physical subsistence. The Holy is simply the responsibility for the other person, the Holy is ethics.

Brian Tee

An interesting question, which has been debated a fair amount. You might take a look at these:

Eliade, M. (1961). The sacred and the profane. New York, NY, Harper & Row.

Frazer, J. G. (1951). The golden bough: a study in magic and religion. New York, NY, The Macmillan Company.

James, W. (1968). The varieties of religious experience: a study in human nature. New York, Collier Books.

They are classics in the field of comparative religion.

Steven Ravett Brown

Michael asked:

I am an undergraduate philosophy student who hopes to attend a graduate school next fall. Last term I took up an independent study, and wrote a paper in which I presented a point that I couldn't quite convey to the two philosophy professors in my department whom I have developed relationships with. I think that they see my argument as an evasion, a sidestepping of metaphysics, and yet it seems to me that it is important and must be addressed. I don't imagine that my argument is original, but I would very much like to know what philosopher(s) have made it before or taken it seriously, so that I might explore the idea further and find a better way to express it (unless every sees it as an evasion!).

It is simply this: No one can deny a proposition that they do not understand. For example: If I encounter someone who maintains that square triangles exist, it can not be the case that they are referring to two-dimensional polygons that have both three and four sides, for that is a contradictory expression.

Well without seeing the paper it's hard to comment. Offhand, I'd say that if you showed something like that to me, I'd want to be (and you to be) very very clear on what you think "understand" means. If you're claiming that we (or the "genius") have direct access to the world, to truth, then perhaps you're saying something metaphysical... maybe. But on the face of it, all you're saying is something psychological, which is pretty trivial, isn't it. And even given direct access, you'd have to be very careful about simple mistakes, illusions, etc. Further, what do you mean, really? That no one can meaningfully deny such a proposition, right? Because certainly I can deny anything I like. Ok, now what does "meaningfully" mean? Something like, a denial is worthless unless you understand. Ok... now what? Is a denial meaningless? No. Then you mean something like, we should place no credence on it, it has no useful function, right? But all that is merely psychological, or at best has something to do with verification, which is an epistemological issue.

It seems to me that the only way you're going to relate this to metaphysics is to become a Platonist of some sort, so that you can say that in order to understand something you have access to a world of ideal forms or essences. Then you can make epistemology a branch of metaphysics. If you really want to go this route, you might check out Edmund Husserl; he felt somewhat the same way. But he spent a lot of time denying that he was a Platonist, without convincing many people. However, I think that his approach may be what you're really looking for. Speaking for myself, I think that he was radically mistaken, and I'm not the only one who has that opinion (really, I should say, "who has come to that conclusion"). But look him up.

Steven Ravett Brown

Luciano asked:

Descartes believes that animals have no souls, and presumably no inner lives. Yet one can observe behavior in animals which seems to suggest that they do in fact experience emotions. How might Descartes attempt to reconcile his theories about animals with empirical evidence that seems to refute them? Do you think he could do this successfully?

I agree that animals do seem to behave in ways that suggest they experience emotions. My dog certainly appears happy, ashamed, angry. He also twitches and yelps in his sleep, as if dreaming. If you take a dualist view of mental states, then we are in the same position with regard to animal mental states as we are to another person's: we may infer that their behaviour is in response to internal experiences similar to our own, but they might be zombies or, as Descartes said of animals, automata. Descartes, of course, associated the mind with the immaterial and immortal soul, and this prejudiced him against animals (also androids and aliens). By definition, there could not be empirical evidence for the existence of the soul — other than, in the case of our own, our private mental experience (which is the foundation of all empirical evidence, according to Descartes). I do not know how Descartes could have made a distinction between inferring other minds from human behaviour and inferring animal minds from their behaviour.

The mind-brain identity theory is the opposite of Cartesian dualism, but only in some ways. Most identity theorists and other materialists are, like Descartes, internalists. Internalists hold that mentaL states are located inside us (in the brain, for example) and are possessed by us in a way that gives us a direct, privileged access to them. There are many problems associated with this view, some of which were emphasised by the Behaviourists and by Wittgenstein. Your question implies that you are thinking of emotions as private, internal experiences.

An alternative view, externalism, holds that the meaning of mental state terms is at least partly located outside of the person (or animal), in objects in the world around us. If this view is correct, then when we say a person "experiences an emotion", the phrase indicates more than just a internal private experience. This mean, amongst other things, that we cannot reduce emotions, and other mental states, to brain activity (you cannot point to an MRI scan and say "That's anger"), nor to any kind of internal mechanism, human or otherwise.

We certainly do have subjective experiences. Does my dog? Yes, I think so. To me, he is person-like, and this means that I credit him with emotions and some at least of the other baggage that goes with believing that others experience emotions too. It would be hard to separate the external, behavioural, social and moral elements of emotion concepts from any subjective phenomena there might happen to be.

Graham Nutbrown

Aris asked:

We may both agree that something is red. But I cannot be sure if you see the same color I see. So we may both stop our cars or come to the conclusion that someone is bleeding but do we see the same thing? how can we know that there is such a thing as an ultimate nature of things even if we could perceive it and agree about it?

The short answer to your last sentence is: we can't. In fact the question as a whole touches on one of the great pseudo-issues that are clobbered to death in the literature for no really good purpose. The point is that our sense of vision does not deliver "absolute" colour values. There is a certain tolerance of variation in the frequencies and chromatic hues in what you and I (assuming we have more or less "normal" vision) would recognise as blood red or pretty much any other primary or secondary colour. Disputes only arise in the finer shades in between those. There are two further considerations: (a) that there is a very good evolutionary rationale for this supposed imprecision in our visual acuity, namely: that we must detect the "same" colour (e.g. blood) under many different qualities of daylight, room light, in semi darkness, under water etc. The second is that blood itself tend to have subtle colour variations from one person to another. So in the end, if a colour detector were programmed to deliver a "blood red" reading if it detected just one fixed "absolute" frequency, its success record would be very much poorer than our own.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Asad asked:

My question is not really a philosophic question but it matters a lot for me. I had a lot of questions about life, our purpose, myself and stuff like that, and philosophy seems to be the only field of study which even address that issue. I cannot join any college or school (personal reasons), but that should not be any hindrance in my zeal and love toward knowledge. That's why I started reading books on it. But now I am kind of lost in difficult and abstract books. I need guidance about the better course of study for me like where to start and list of books not to be missed. The main purpose is only to have the knowledge of right and wrong and my place in this rather difficult picture.

Quite admirable, if difficult. There was a book around at one point called College On Your Own, and it was pretty good. You might still be able to find it in libraries, etc. It gives reading lists for various courses, and so you can get a systematic introduction to subjects. In addition, why not simply ask people what they use for their courses? For example, if you want an introduction to ethics, go on the web, find some good schools, find the philosophers teaching there, and ask them what books they would recommend. I'd wager you'll get quite friendly responses, for the most part.

Margaret asked:

How are the ecstasies of time articulated in language (Heidegger's philosophy)?

Heidegger's Being and Time doesn't say. It essentially deals with ecstasies in terms of circumspection and the ready-to-hand (hammer).

As unities operating together is the past (reflection) an objectifying factor?

Heidegger does allocate a section of Being and Time to deal with language and time; it is the section preceding his discussion of circumspection. Section 68(d): 'The Temporality of Discourse'. He says there that discourse does not temporalize itself primarily in any definite ecstasis.

He identifies however identify three connections between time and language: (i) That language can discuss time, we can talk about time (ii) That discourse takes time, it is a temporal event (iii) That discourse in itself is temporal.

On these points take a look at Francoise Dastur's Telling Time — sketch of a phenomenological chrono-logy.

On the point of the past as reflection acting as an objectifying factor it seems to me that this would not really qualify as the past as such. It would rather here be a modification of the present, in the act of reflection or recollection (which is happening now). It is the now (in various guises) which acts as the unifying factor, for the past to be really past it would have to be beyond reflection and recollection, incapable of unified.

Brian Tee

Greg asked:

Philosophy is about investigation our world and seeking answers to certain of life's questions. In fact there is a philosophy fo just about everything (philosophy of science, of religion, of language, etc). But all of these disciplines and areas of study have certain things in common that make them all part of Philosophy. What do all areas of Philosophy have in common? What makes a question a philosophical one? What is the common thread that connects these?

Well, this is a deep question in itself, and I don't think I can cover it all here. However, I will offer one observation (with acknowledgement to Laurance Splitter, from whom I have pinched the idea).

All disciplines share one thing in common: they use concepts. Concepts are the life blood of thought, and hence of the disciplines. Philosophy explores concepts, and helps us to use them well. The concepts that philosophy is best equipped to explore have three features: they are common (they come up all the time — people use them a lot), they are central (they are very important in making sense of things) and they are contestable (while everyone uses them, when you look closely at what they mean, it is difficult to pin them down exactly — different views of exactly what they mean can be advanced, and each of them seems to have its strengths and its weaknesses).

The concepts across disciplines are not always the same, though there is some overlap. When there is overlap, it isn't always clear that the same concepts work in the same way in each discipline. A few examples of some concepts from the disciplines you mention. Science: proof, evidence, explanation, beauty. Religion: God, proof, evidence, symbol, faith. Language: meaning, symbol, intention, explanation.

Tim Sprod

Gonzalo asked:

I am enrolled in a class about Gender and Politics. In it we read books about people who use constructivists or postmodern methods of analysis to show how institutions create the concept of "gender", "natural," "male" and "female". I think that even though it is important to know the nature of those concepts, postmodernism can be taken to ridiculous extremes. Most of the writers insist that most, if not, all of what we think about ourselves is a social construct. I understand how this can be used as a tool to get rid of ideologies based on bigotry, but I also think it is damaging to blame psychology, and science in general as well as economics for the evils of society. As I stated earlier even though it can do good it can also harm by negating the possibility of real knowledge about our surroundings. If they insist in the use of the subject of social constructs then it reaches a point where everything is excusable, because there was no agency involved in the process of making decisions.

[...] I also wanted to know how, if is possible at all, one can reconcile the concepts of responsibility, the concept of good and bad and postmodernism. I would like to know if you could recommend a few critiques of postmodernism. I hope that my request is not too demanding. I hope to hear from you soon.

Your request is, actually, extremely demanding. I will answer you here briefly... but I cannot possibly do justice to this issue in this forum. Anything I can say here can only be a very rough approximation to what I'd consider a reasonable argument. But, given that caveat, I'll proceed. So... I agree with you about postmodernism as usually presented. That is, as "cultural relativism" for morality, ethics, construction of concepts, and so forth, it is, in my very strong opinion (and I'm not alone, as you will see) basically a form of nihilism. The problem here, that is, the problem for one, like myself, holding this position yet sympathetic to many of postmodernism's motivations, is that postmodernism is in part a response to very real inequities: toward women, toward minorities, and so forth... and it is certainly correct that social factors enter into, to varying extents, such concepts as gender.

But to address those inequities by claiming that the culture (let us say, as a rough categorization) which possesses them, or people within that culture, are motivated solely by considerations of power and of status (and there's no doubt that those are very powerful motivations for many) is to denigrate both the culture and those within it who are attempting to act morally. In addition, to claim that one can toss out one set of values and substitute others because all values are ultimately equal is simply to claim that there are no values, merely whatever considerations move one at the moment. This has been argued, indeed... and it is nihilism, or at best the reduction of values to those of animals. On the other hand, there is certainly a point to publicizing the inequities which do exist.

Thus, I regard such social constructivism not as philosophy but at best as rhetoric; and as such its proper venue is not academia but literature, popular magazines, works of art, and so forth. And indeed, many writers in the field employ those latter venues, quite appropriately, in my opinion. One might, against this, argue that art, for example, is a form of philosophy... and indeed that has been argued. However I don't agree with that viewpoint; but I simply don't have the space to follow that up here (and there are those who explicitly attempt to straddle the gap, e.g., Derrida, J. (1993). Memoirs of the blind: the self-portrait and other ruins. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press... a wonderful book; but I'd argue that it isn't philosophy).

So one problem with my point of view is of course to specifically state why I hold this position. Another problem is to present a reasonable alternative. Instead of doing those things, I'm going to give you some references that argue those issues tremendously better than I could in this limited space.

Why, then, deny cultural relativism? Well, what if we can show, or at least present a strong case, that there are some cultures whose values are objectively bad? What could that mean? Well, what if people in those cultures holding those values simply do worse than those who do not, and worse than people in other cultures who do not? Wouldn't that be a good argument that those values are just wrong? I mean, if people holding a certain set of values are poorer, more diseased, etc., than people in comparably wealthy cultures, with comparable resources, but different values, then we'd at least have to entertain the possibility that there was something wrong with the former values, wouldn't we? So look at these (and of course they have lists of references to lead you further):

Edgerton, R. B. (1992). Sick societies: challenging the myth of primitive harmony. New York, The Free Press.

Gintis, H. (2003). "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Altruism: Genes, Culture, and the Internalization of Norms." Journal of Theoretical Biology 220(4): 407-418.

Harrison, L. E. and S. P. Huntington, Eds. (2000). Culture matters: how values shape human progress. New York, NY, Basic Books.

Lopez, S. R. and P. J. Guarnaccia (2000). "Cultural psychopathology: uncovering the social world of mental illness." Annual Review of Psychology 51: 571-598.

Now, what alternative positions to relativism are there? Well, first, there's always my favorite book relating to truth: Kitcher, P. (1993). The advancement of science; science without legend, objectivity without illusions. New York, NY, Oxford University Press.

And here are some more readings on naturalizing morality:

Held, V. (1998). Whose agenda? Ethics versus cognitive science. L. May, M. Friedman and A. Clark. Cambridge, The MIT Press: 69-87.

Jackman, H. (1999). "Prudential arguments, naturalized epistemology, and the Will to Believe." Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35(1): 1-37.

May, L., M. Friedman, et al. (1998). Mind and morals: essays on cognitive science and ethics. Boston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Rachels, J. (1986). The elements of moral philosophy. Philadelphia, Temple University Press.

Annis, D. B. (1978). "A contextualist theory of epistemic justification." American Philosophical Quarterly 15(3): 213-219.

Clark, A. (1998). Connectionism, moral cognition, and collaborative problem solving. L. May, M. Friedman and A. Clark. Cambridge, The MIT Press: 109-128.

Dewey, J. (1988). Human nature and conduct. 1922. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press.

Flanagan, O. (1991). Varieties of moral personality: ethics and psychological realism. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

Gintis, H., S. Bowles, et al. (2003). "Explaining altruistic behavior in humans." Evolution and Human Behavior 24: 153-172.

Henderson, D. K. (1994). "Epistemic competence and contextualist epistemology: why contextualism is not just the poor person's coherentism." The Journal of Philosophy 91(12): 627-649.

Johnson, M. (1993). Moral imagination: implications of cognitive science for ethics. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.

Nussbaum, M. C. (1988)."Non-relative virtues: an Aristotelian approach." P. A. French, T. E. J. Uehling and H. K. Wettstein. Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press. 13: 32-53.

Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the limits of philosophy. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

All the above is just the tip of a huge iceberg of controversy and writings, pro and con, on this subject. This is why I started with my initial disclaimer.

Steven Ravett Brown

Amy asked:

This is my first time on here. Just started uni and studying philosophy for the first time. I was wondering if anyone could tell me sources to look in order to find definitions or explanations of the terms 'relativism' and 'absolutism'. I am struggling with absolutism. I have to write an essay contrasting and comparing the two and am struggling. So if anyone could help with ideas I would be extremely grateful.

You could be talking about moral, metaphysical, aesthetic or epistemic relativism. They share the key idea of something (values, reality,beauty, knowledge) being relative to a particular standpoint or conceptual scheme, whether personal or cultural, and they all deny that there is an objective means of determining that one standpoint is preferable to others.Absolutists assert the opposite.

For articles on moral and cultural relativism, you could try this link:

Derek asked:

I have watched the Movie 'The Grey Zone' about the Sonderkomandos in the concentration camps during World War II. There is one question that stands out from all the others: What is the destiny of mankind when horrors and man's inhumanity to man still exists today?

If you are asking for a prediction I can't give you one, and given what is important in your question is the issues it forces us to confront it is probably best that I cannot.

What are these issues? Let me try to unpack them. I haven't seen the film, but I believe the phrase 'The Grey Zone' originates with Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, it's a chapter title from his book The Drowned and the Saved, a chapter concerned with the Sonderkommandos (SK) or the Jewish groups who maintained the death camps, who while themselves prisoners were 'responsible' for the running of the ovens and gas chambers. Responsible is in scare quotes here because for Levi these Jews represent the crossing over into the grey zone, where our need and our ability to judge falters. Can we even ascribe responsibility to these people? Certainly they would have been killed if they refused but then they were killed anyway (so that they would not be able testify as to what had occurred) So why did they do what they did? why didn't they rebel, or face death rather than collaborate with the Nazis? Surely they were criminals just as much as the Nazis were.

Conceiving and organising the squads was however, according to Levi National Socialism's most demonic crime. This institution represented an attempt to shift on to others — specifically the victims — the burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of even the solace of innocence. The Grey Zone has subtle and shifting borders, such that ordinary black and white concepts of right and wrong fail to apply, to such an extent that Levi tells us: I believe that no one is authorised to judge them, not those who lived through the experience of the Lager and even less those who did not live through it.

But maybe the implications of the possibility of the SK are more worrying than placing us in a grey zone of moral judgement, in the face of the desolation of the holocaust maybe a revolution in our thought is called for:

The Holocaust demands interrogation and calls everything into question. Traditional ideas and acquired values, philosophical systems and social theories all must be revised in the shadow of Birkenau. Novelists and politicians, poets and moralists, theologians and scholars all feel compelled to examine their consciences with regard to the holocaust. Not to do so would mean to live a lie.

Elie Wiesel

That's the demand we are confronted with at the gates of the death camps: that Auschwitz and Birkenau could happen means that they can happen again, and they are more likely to happen, if things carry on in the same way they did before the holocaust. Of course, as you recognise the horror is still with us, genocides repeat themselves and with it repeat the demand of Auschwitz: Not to let this happen again. Maybe we are not trying hard enough to follow this new categorical imperative ( T.W. Adorno's phrase).

Given the fact that we keep repeating our mistakes, refusing to learn from the demand of Auschwitz may lead you to conclude that the destiny of mankind is to destroy itself. But this would be still to remain within the mode of thinking that we need to overcome. That is, if by destiny you mean some determinate history, some necessary outcome of human affairs, and a predictable conclusion. For this kind of thinking this idea of destiny is what drove (under various guises) the perpetrators of the twentieth century worst atrocities.

The Holocaust calls into question the sense of destiny; there are no longer any certainties. Further respecting the demand of Auschwitz i.e. rethinking our ways of talking about the world, of space and time, of interacting, of treating other people, of writing, of organising society, means that we cannot predict what will be the outcome. Right now we cannot say what a post-holocaust thinking would be. Auschwitz has shown us that anything can happen, and we have to be prepared for that. (This is one reason why I can't offer a prediction.)

Although exactly how we can be prepared for the unexpected seems like a contradiction, maybe that's just the kind of situation we find ourselves in after Auschwitz: to be alert, wakeful or to maintain what Levinas (an important thinker on these questions) calls an absolute insomnia toward a future which is completely unpredictable.

Levinas has argued that a person has an infinite responsibility to an other person, that is to whoever happens to come along. When faced with this Other I am obliged to help to give the Other what ever (s)he needs. Of course part of the risk in this ethic of absolute insomnia is that after Auschwitz, I can never be sure what the other is. After Auschwitz it is no longer possible to tell the difference between gods and monsters anything can happen but this time that's another reason why I can't offer a prediction, but what ever happens, this time we cannot escape our responsibility for it.

Brian Tee

Brandalyn asked:

What are your thoughts on the events of September 11th?

I'm not even sure that this is the right forum for this question. As a philosopher, I can say that a terrorist act like that is immoral, and feel reasonably sure that I'm correct. I'm not qualified to answer as a sociologist, which I think is really the most relevant field for this kind of discussion. I mean, once I say that I think it's immoral, where do we go from there? To my views of morality? But so what? And you're not going to find any philosophers considered decent who don't agree, not to mention that none — without exception — of the mainstream religious movements condone such acts. Overtly, at least. Recently, anyway. The question to ask, I believe, is not whether the wholesale slaughter of innocents and non-combatants is moral or not — clearly it isn't, whoever is doing it, whether it's small groups of terrorists, religions, or governments — but what can be done to prevent such acts in the future. And that's not a philosophical question. There is a book that's just come out; you might look at it: Jessica Stern's Terror in the Name of God.

Steven Ravett Brown

Vicki asked:

I was given an assignment to make a lesson that would teach students K-8 about philosophy....I was wondering if you had any ideas to throw my way.

In my view, the best thing to do would be to get the students doing philosophy. Of course, exactly how you do this depends on exactly what age you are aiming at — there is a lot of difference between kinder kids and Year 8s. Nevertheless, the basic approach is the same — read with the kids some story that raises philosophical questions, ask them what puzzles or interests them about the story, and then go into a whole class discussion, trying to answer their more philosophical questions. Once they have done that a number of times, you might discuss what philosophy is.

That's a very brief answer, and there is a lot more to the detail of doing it. There are many resources around from people who have already looked at doing philosophy with school children. I'm not sure where you are, or what access to resources you have, but a search in a catalogue on Philosophy for Children, or for names like Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp, Laurance Splitter, Gareth Matthews, Philip Cam, or myself would show if some of these materials are available to you. If you are interested in learning more, email me.

Tim Sprod

Edaw asked:

If we think of a ball bouncing, then we stop thinking about it, and then we think again of the ball bouncing, has the ball being bouncing the whole time?

Hopefully you mean "has the ball we were thinking about" been bouncing... Well I'm really not sure why I'm answering this... look. Suppose you think of (i.e., visualize, rather than merely, for example, read the first sentence above) a ball bouncing. Ok. Then you stop. For how long? A millisecond, a minute, an hour, a week, 10 years? What does "stop" mean? Completely switch consciousness to other experiences? The answer is: if you stop (in that sense) for a very short interval, then the neural processes realizing the experience you're having (visualizing the ball) may not have had time to completely stop, to dissipate, to realize something else. So if you switch back really fast, probably on the order of at most about 1/2 second, you might be able to claim that the "ball", i.e., the visualization of the ball, has in some sense continued. Otherwise, no.

Steven Ravett Brown

Suppose you ask me to think of a ball that has been bouncing for a while. It would be absurd to think that in order to do this, I have to picture the ball as it starts to bounce, then return to my mental image of the bouncing ball some time later.

When we consider the nature of thinking, we are tempted to think of it as simply picturing, using imaginary coloured pencils or paints on my mental drawing paper. But that can't be right. I can make the ball red by putting red in the picture, but I can't make the ball heavy or light by putting 'heavy' or 'light' in the picture. (As an exercise, think how you one actually might try to do this: picture a man, grimacing with effort as he holds the ball. What makes this picture, a picture of a heavy ball rather than a picture of a very weak man?)

Similarly, my mental picture of a ball that has been bouncing a long time might have paint flaking off, the surface of the ball badly scuffed, and so on. But these marks alone do not suffice to mean 'a ball that has been bouncing for a long time'. Obviously, there are other ways in which the ball could have been marked in this way.

What makes my image of the ball what it is, what gives the ball I am thinking about its qualities depends on the verbal description I would be prepared to give.

But here's a reason for second thoughts. While I was typing the last sentence, I started a tune in my head,

A very old friend
came by today
'cause he was telling everyone in town
of the love that he just found...

As I concentrate on continuing to write, did Elvis Presley stop singing or did the tune merely fade into the background? I stop writing and notice that I have now reached the second verse,

He talked and talked
and I heard him say
that she had the longest, blackest hair
prettiest green eyes anywhere...

This looks like an empirical question. How would one devise an experiment to decide, one way or the other? Come to think of it, why can't I start a mental ball bouncing to mark the passing seconds, '1 bounce, 2 bounce, 3 bounce...' and return to discover that it took just 12 seconds to finish this sentence? Doesn't that show that I can make my mental ball bounce when I'm not attending to it?

What does that prove? Nothing. All it shows is that to think about a ball bouncing is not the same as bouncing a mental ball. One can think about a ball bouncing without conjuring up any image of a ball, just as one can run a mental tape of a bouncing ball — or Elvis — without thinking about a ball or about Elvis.

Geoffrey Klempner

Vinh asked:

What do you think of the following question?

"Memory: Is there a more fragile human faculty? Without it, what are we? It is the only record we have of who we were and what we want to become. Take it away and only a spiritless machine is left, free of conviction, free of purpose."

Memory provides the narrative structure to our lives whereby we (re)claim and presume our identity. Take away the memories and the answer to the basic question of identity 'who am I?' is very hard to answer.

And of course in a wider cultural sense memory is an important reference point: forgetting our history or letting the past die is an injustice to the victims, sufferers of actions that have a direct relation to the present (wouldn't ignoring the testimonies of holocaust survivors give National Socialism a posthumous victory? Isn't there then a duty to remember?).

Memory is the capacity to carry the past in the present to unite time and identity in a consciousness in a 'now', such that my life is understood as a continuity of events, maintained in the container of the 'I'. Take this away and all we have left is as you say, a spiritless machine and yet it seems that I could have had any other memories and still be me. For example I have a memory of my dinner, but that memory could have been different if I had decided to go fishing today. My memories seem to be contingent, they could have been anything. How does this harmonise with the claim that memories make us who we are?

Is that account really what happens or all that happens? Doesn't the question of memory answer not 'Who am I' but 'What am I'?

Imagine a case of an amnesic asking us 'who am I?' we try to answer the person in terms of what they do, where they live, their family relations, there achievements. That is we try to answer the question of who by responding in terms of what, in terms of events, Memory constructs a life for consciousness. But is the who question saturated by the what? In other word 'Does consciousness exhaust the notion of subjectivity?' (This is a question raised by Levinas.)

Is there something about us that escapes the unity of consciousness, that is not continuous, in memory that escapes the confines of the present?

Levinas thinks so and he thinks he can locate it in the ethical responsibility I have regarding other people, a responsibility that cannot be transferred or assumed by anyone else. Levinas' basic idea is this: I am who I am due to the fact that there is no one else able to take my place in the world, a fact that is generated in being singled out to answer to the other person's needs and wants. It is this singularity that is essentially mine and makes me, me.

Being a subject for Levinas means being subjected, being held responsible, to the point of dying for the other. As a responsible subject I am not for myself, not enclosed in the structures of time and identity of memory and consciousness, but am for-the-other. Being for-the-other means that there is no self or I' of self-identifying consciousness. It means ultimately that I am not even at the origins (the base, the ground floor) of myself. What makes me me is beyond, outside the realm of memory of recall of any past that could be maintained in the present. the other precedes and makes possible my subjectivity.

Here we have a situation where meaning, purpose and conviction is entirely separate from memory we are no longer spiritless machines, at the mercy of contingent experience but the very embodiment of spirituality.

Brian Tee

Sagar asked:

What did the great thinkers think about heart and mind? How did they distinguish between subjects related to heart and mind?

This is an interesting question but one that can be taken in different ways. What is the mind? That is a long-standing philosophical topic, still very much debated. What is the heart? Well, on one level it is obviously a physical organ, and it's not more complicated than that. Unlike the mind, the heart isn't said to have an additional kind of property: it isn't thought to be conscious, and it is no longer thought to be the site of the emotions. So the heart is straightforwardly a physical object, no different in principle from the liver or the kidneys.

However, we do still talk about the heart in connection with the emotions, but only metaphorically. It is not to be taken literally. In this usage, the heart symbolises passions, especially love. That's why heart shapes are associated with love. In the middle ages some people believed that there was an image of your loved one in your heart. Anatomy (in the seventeenth century) put paid to that idea, but we have the remains of it in our use of silver or gold lockets to keep a photo of a loved one in. If the heart was for the passions, such as love, the mind was for the more rational, cognitive activities.When love is so important to us, it is somehow appropriate to associate it with the organ that keeps us alive and that pumps blood around our bodies in order to get oxygen to our brains. It represents how vital and central love is.

You asked about great thinkers. Well, the seventeenth century French philosopher Descartes was someone who helped to make anatomy respectable. By associating the mind with the non-physical soul, he left what was left of us, our bodies, as purely physical things that can be examined when we are dead and our souls/ minds have departed. Resurrection will involve just our immaterial souls/ minds, so it won't matter if our bodies are cut up.

For Descartes, the emotions that had once been associated with the heart are just mental states — in other words, they belong to the mind, not the heart. They are private, subjective experiences inside us — as are, he thought, beliefs, desires, intentions, sensations and all other mental states. This is a view that still causes debates in philosophy. Is it true that we know our own emotions first and best, that we have a special privileged access to them because they are inside us, in our minds (or, as materialists think, in our brains)? Or are emotions not so much private experiences as concepts, involving at least some reference to external things such as behaviour?

Take love. When we tell someone that we love them, are we simply reporting an internal experience (a feeling), or are we making a statement which means, in part at least, that we will behave towards them in certain ways? Aren't we implying all sorts of beliefs, intentions and desires (that will depend on the context of the relationship): e,g, that we believe s/he is nice, attractive, smart; that we intend to see him or her as much as we can; that want more physical intimacy?

It's a complex concept. That is why we have to be very cautious when scientists (on TV programmes and elsewhere) tell us that they have located love in the brain. That is just as absurd, really, as locating it in the heart. Just because certain brain chemicals and certain neuronal regions are activated at certain moments, it doesn't mean that they equal love, anymore than your heart going 'boom-didi-boom' does. The term "love" can be used in many, many varied situations ("I love my partner", "I love chocolate biscuits", "I love it when the teacher forgets to set an assignment") — do they all have the same brain state associated with them? It's hardly likely. Can't I love my partner even when I'm not actually thinking about her? Love is a concept, not any one kind of event. You won't find it "in" my mind (because you won't find my mind!), nor in my brain, nor in my heart.

If love was a purely private or internal experience, no-one could ever correct a partner who swears love: "I don't care what you say, you don't love me. I know because you don't phone, you don't give me flowers, you never give me compliments, you're just not there for me!" Surely, third person evidence of that kind can over-rule the first person assertion of love?

Graham Nutbrown

Carrie-Anne asked:

What is the Socratic maxim?

Descartes provides the following argument for Cartesian Dualism:

(a) I can doubt that my body exists.

(f) So Cartesian Dualism is true.

How would you explain why Descartes accepts each step of this argument?

(a) According to Descartes, I can doubt that my body exists for exactly the same reasons as I can doubt the existence of anything that I know about through the senses. My senses can be deceived. It is impossible to know whether I am perceiving correctly or hallucinating or dreaming. I could even be the victim of a systematic Matrix-like delusion about reality, brought about by an evil demon.

(b) I cannot doubt that I exist because, according to the cogito argument, in the very act of doubting I presuppose my own existence. Doubting is a kind of thinking: I am thinking, therefore I am.

(c) My body and my "I" must be separate substances, therefore, because it is not possible both to doubt and not to doubt the existence of one and the same thing. It would be a contradiction comparable to both knowing and not knowing that David Beckham is the captain of the English soccer team.

(d) So, if my body and my "I" are separate substances, "I" cannot be my body. My body is a physical thing; my "I" must be a non-physical.

(e) Therefore, the doctrine of dualism, that asserts the reality of the physical body and the non-physical mind or soul, is true.

We can question Descartes' argument at various points. Is it, for example, true that we can doubt the existence of our own body in exactly the same way as we can doubt the existence of other objects? Do we not have an awareness of our body, an inner awareness, that is closer to a mental experience than a perceptual experience? Against that point, however, we could point to phantom limb experiences, whereby amputees are still "aware" of limbs that have been amputated. We would, perhaps, have to class some types of mental experience as vulnerable, leaving only the more cognitive mental processes (essentially, thinking) as demon-proof, at least in so far as if there is thought at all then there must be a subject doing the thinking, an "I". Even this, however, is thought to be an unjustified assumption by some commentators.

Another problem with Descartes' argument is that it just isn't true that knowing for certain that "I" exist and not knowing for certain that my body exists means that they cannot be one and the same thing. We can know things under different aspects. For example, Victoria may know for certain that her husband David is the captain of the English soccer team, but not know for certain that David is the father of her sons, but that does not rule out the possibility that the captain of the English soccer team is the father of Victoria's sons.

In the same way, my ignorance of the brain compared with my knowledge of my own mental states (my thoughts) does not rule out the possibility that my mental states simply are brain states — in other words, aspects of one and the same thing. Therefore, Descartes' argument fails to establish dualism.

Graham Nutbrown

Karen asked:

What is the English translation of "arx axiom"?

Wow, what a question! Nice! First, it seems to have been the title for a now-defunct (as far as I can tell) Christian magazine, in which it meant something like the "original fortress".

This comes from "arx": (akra). A height within the walls of a city. The same city could have several arces, as was the case with Rome; but, as there was generally one principal arx, the word came to be equivalent to Acropolis (q.v.). At Rome one of the summits of the Capitoline Hill was especially known as the Arx, the German school of topography placing it on the northeast summit (Arx Caeli) and the Capitolium (q.v.) on the southwest (Palazzo Caffarelli). At Rome the Arx was the regular place for taking the auspices (Livy, i. 18; x. 7); outside the wall the haruspex turned towards it if it was in sight (Livy, iv. 18). See Haruspex.

And, of course, "axiom", which is a first principle, first assumption, or something like that.

So you see that one could loosely translate it as "first fortress", given that the highest point within a city is it's fortress... a debatable point, but anyway... this is supported by the following: "ARX IANICULENSIS" is the name given by modern topographers to the fortifications that were probably erected on the Janiculum, near the later porta Aurelia, when the first stone bridge, pons Aemilius, was built across the Tiber in 179 B.C. (see IANICULUM and literature cited).

There's also: "Arx": the northern part of the Capitoline hill, separated from the southern part, the CAPITOLIUM proper (q.v.), by a depression (v. ASYLUM) which was the citadel of Rome after the city had expanded sufficiently to include the Quirinal and Viminal hills-that stage of the growth commonly known as the City of the Four Regions (P1. 41-44). The height of this part of the hill was about 49 metres above sea-level, and its area about one hectare. This arx, also called arx Capitolina 1 (Liv. vi. 20. 9; xxviii. 39. 15; Val. Max. viii. 14. 1; Tac.Hist. iii. 71), preserved its military importance down to the first century A.D. (see Aberystwyth Studies v. (1923) 33-41, for proof that Sabinus 2 held the arx, and not the temple of Jupiter), though it had no permanent garrison. In the early days sentinels were posted here while the comitia were being held in the campus Martius, to watch for the signal displayed on the Janiculum of an approaching enemy (Cass. Dio xxxvii. 28). Another signal-vexillum russi co

Maryam asked:

Prove to me that you do not exist.

Tonni asked:

What characteristics does Ayer assign to ethical statements? How does his view of their nature affect the evaluation of traditional ethical theories? Assuming that Ayer's position is correct, is there need for any further work to be done in ethics? If so, whose task is it?

Ayer is an ethical noncognitivist. This means that if his view is correct, then ethical statements do not have truth values. He's committed to that view as a consequence of his larger project, logical positivism. Positivism states that meaningfulness only occurs in statements that are verifiable. Since there aren't any scientific experiments that we could run to test or verify the hypothesis that "murder is wrong", it follows that it, and other ethical statements, aren't meaningful at all.

Of course, he does recognize that people say things like that, and that they're not just spouting gibberish. Ayer's solution is to interpret ethical statements as expressing the speakers' attitudes about their subjects. For example, if I were to say "murder is wrong," I wouldn't be stating a fact, I'd be doing pretty much the same thing if as I said "murder!!!" with vocal inflection and facial expression indicating disapproval.

My opinion, which is a rather common one, is that Ayer's position is pretty unreasonable. After all, we take ourselves to be making statements of fact when we make ethical judgements — that's why it's possible to disagree. If I say murder is wrong and you say it's not, then I think you're mistaken. There's no way that Ayer can account for this; how could I think that your vocal inflection is inaccurate?

If Ayer's position were correct, then I think that normative ethics and metaethics would both have to be pretty pointless, so no, I don't think there'd be any more work to do there. But there are other fields in the same region as ethics that might still have some work to do. Ayer actually mentions a couple himself in Language, Truth and Logic. Moral Psychology might still be worthwhile. Given certain virtues that are generally considered desirable, it's still a useful (and empirical) question as to what kinds of lifestyles, etc. are conducive to those aims. Ayer rightly considers this to be more a matter of psychology or sociology than of philosophy, but it's probably all that's left of ethics, once Ayer's done with it.

Ayer lays his position out pretty clearly in Chapter VI of Language, Truth and Logic.. It begins on page 102 of the Dover edition that I have (with a blue spiral on the cover).

Jonathan Ichikawa

Andrea asked:

Assume, as some existentialists do, that there is no God. Does this make life absurd?

Suppose you're a creature with great powers, sitting in the middle of nothingness. Is your life absurd? Ok, now suppose that you decide you want company and you create a universe with conscious beings. You could control them, like puppets, but you decide not to. Is your life less absurd than before? The same? More?

Steven Ravett Brown

It wouldn't follow at all, just because of atheism, that life is absurd. Whether it is or isn't absurd needs to be discove