Shamil asked:

Is the all's God one or a lot, and differs according to men who believe?

If there is a God then he is the same (supposing monotheism is true) But there are several concepts of God, and many conceptions of God. First of all you must not confuse God (if he exists) with the idea or concept of God. They are very different. Just as the concept of a giraffe is different from a giraffe. The giraffe is flesh and blood. The concept of a giraffe is (at least on one view) something in the mind. A concept may exist without what it is a concept of (its object) existing. The concept of a unicorn exists. Unicorns do not exist. We can also distinguish between concepts and conceptions under a particular concept. There is a particular concept of God. This is the concept Jews, Christians, and Moslems all share. It is of a transcendental God, distinct from his creation. But Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all have different conceptions under this same concept of God. For instance, most Christians identify this God with Jesus Christ. No Jews do. And no Moslems do. But there are other concepts (not conceptions) of God. There is the God of Spinoza for whom God is not transcendental but immanent, and who is identical with Nature, his creation. This concept (remember we are not talking of God, but the concept of God) is very different from the concept shared by Jews, Christians, and Moslems.

Clearly, those who have different concepts and conceptions of God do not worship the same God. Everyone is an atheist relative to all the other religions, so even if you worship a particular concept of God, relative to all the many other religions, you are an atheist. Of course, if you worship some God under a certain concept, you are not an atheist in that sense.

Kenneth Stern

Sunil asked:

Hello, how are you ? I hope you are fine!

Can you tell me:

1. How does thought work?
2. Is there any truth to sayings "thought creates reality" and "we are what we think"?
3. Why are different people conscious of different things? how does consciousness work?

Hope you are fine! And I hope the following is the sort of thing you want to know.

It is generally held that the relation between thoughts is a function of the conceptual content. For example, if I think it will rain this afternoon it will be because I know the skies are clouded and I believe these are rain clouds. These thoughts, which are immaterial, will have an effect on my behaviour, such as picking up an umbrella. So a problem of how thought works, is how the immaterial acts upon the physical. We can try to give up the notion of cause, which is physical, or we can subscribe to a theory such as Donald Davidson's which identifies mental events with physical events so that for any thought there is a neural event in the brain, but this seems not to give enough force to the mental as it appears to us. We think it is our decision, not a neural event, which makes us pick up the umbrella.

Another problem is that, from our point of view, we don't seem to go through a process such as judging the nature of the clouds and consciously forming a belief these are rain clouds. We just have a quick look. But if it is simply the concluding thought that is causally efficient, the reasoning would have no causal effect, but my belief about rain clouds must have some bearing. The problem arises because we take relations between thoughts as based on clear cut conceptual relations and we think thought is linguistic. This has led artificial intelligence researchers to the quasi-scientific view that intelligence is unambiguously coded and that if a physical thing can manipulate codes, it can think. Since we believe thinking involves consciousness, this is highly counter-intuitive, because we also strongly believe that only biological organisms with brains are conscious. Furthermore, neuroscience has it that the language areas of the brain are not responsible for thinking so it is wrong to take thinking as a syntactic computational operation, as language itself is. Thought is prior to language, and although we have come to think linguistically it doesn't mean that being able to manipulate codes is sufficient for thought.

The example of the short train of thought above actually makes thinking look partially unconscious: We are only really conscious of our "having a look" and then picking up the umbrella. According to the neuroscientist Edelman in his recent book Consciousness: How matter becomes imagination, the stronger our knowledge becomes, the more it becomes unconscious, so eventually we don't have to wonder about the nature of the clouds. This is clear in the case of typing, for instance. As we learn, we are conscious of our fingers on the keyboards, but when we are proficient we are aware of what we write on the screen. The unconscious, then, has the function of providing us with an ability for intelligent development: We don't have to consciously think about everything and there is an enormous amount of activity going on in the brain at all times. My brain is guiding my fingers and thinking of what I am writing and I am perceptually conscious of what is around me.

It is difficult to say how consciousness works. The artificial intelligence view supposes that information is coded and can be programmed which assumes that as we perceive and learn language the brain learns new codes and signals and there be will be a determinate physical state for any particular thought or sensation. Edelman, on the other hand, says that the brain is active. Instead of being computational, the brain is creative, dynamic, associative and constantly changing. Essentially, a neural process is highly informational. A conscious neural process is associative and selectional, so that a thought is not isolated, and it can move in many directions. There is a "functional cluster" of relevant connections within the brain which changes all the time. It is difficult to summarise Edelman's theory, but the basic idea of a dynamic cluster reflects what thought and perception is like for us. We are never in a simple conscious state, such as "experiencing red". Rather, the mind is active and we perceive an enormous amount of visual information at any one time as well as experiencing bodily feelings and thoughts. Consciousness works because of our brain activities, though why and how our brain activities have the effect of subjective experience, we cannot really say.

It has long been held that "thought creates reality". Kant, for instance, argued that the way in which we perceive and understand what is given to us in experience moulds what we take reality to be. Actually, for Kant, "reality" itself is a concept introduced by our way of understanding, as is cause and effect. Concepts of the understanding, such as reality and causation, are needed for us to make sense of our experience. Our idea of the world as spatial and temporal, on the other hand, is held by Kant not to be imposed by our understanding, but is introduced by the very nature of experience. Our perceptual equipment must determine how reality appears to us. Because of our shared equipment, there are limits to the different sorts of things we can be conscious of. However, you cannot be conscious of things you don't know about. For instance, our grasp of concepts, such as clouds, say differs. You won't be conscious of rain clouds unless you know about rain clouds. Interestingly — for me anyway! — Edelman's claim is that no two informational states at the brain level can be the same. All your experiences of clouds have been different from mine so that when you think of clouds your informational neural process will be different. If you perceive differently, or more than another person, such as in listening to music, you are bringing knowledge and experience to bear.

I hope this is what you want. To find out more about the philosophical problems of thought and consciousness, there are accessible writers such as Colin McGinn (The Subjective View), Daniel Dennett (The Intentional Stance) and John Searle (Intentionality). The mind is generally described as intentional or relational between a subject and content which you might want to find out more about. You could, of course, send a new question, differently phrased!

Rachel Browne

Christine asked:

What is the phrase "Ptsosis Kneuton" in reference to? Someone told me if I read Plato "I would know what it was." Can you give me some general information?

Try this site:

Sam asked:

Is technology a double edged sword? Do it's vices outweigh its virtues?

Technology has vices and virtues, but how could we measure whether one outweighs the other?

Heidegger has written a paper called "The Question concerning Technology" (see "Basic Writings" edited by D F Krell) in which he claims that there is nothing bad about technology in itself but only in man's exploitation of the energies of nature. Man is not subservient to technology, which is a means to an end, but is subservient to the challenge, which he seems unable to avoid, to create technological advances. However, we are often not aware of our commitment to technology. The forester who cuts down trees may believe he is working with nature, but really he is subservient to man's desire for paper and ultimately magazines. Heidegger annoyingly speaks in a language which he creates for himself, but I think that what he is saying — and this is a vast simplification — is that when we recognise a danger to mankind there becomes a possibility of seeing how we can be saved. The creativity inherent in technology and art come from the same source and since art, but not science, fosters mankind's ability for reflection on his own nature, the saving power lies in art and, if we can see this, we can avoid a total entrenchment in technology. Because the source of art and technology is the same, we are not in danger as long as we continue to be in touch with the truth and maintain our ability to recognise how our understanding of the way we are can be falsified by ourselves. Our creative urge is not essentially directed to technology and we do not really want to exploit nature for our own ends. The artistic creative urge is a part of us and should not be smothered.

Of course, this is abstract and philosophical and was written before computer technology became so much a part of our lives. I would say that, in fact, we are subservient to technology. As soon as computers break down no-one can do their work! The internet has fostered a desire for immediate action and communication. It has now been realised that we are waiting for two whole days for cheques to clear the bank when this isn't necessary. Really, technology is feeding mankind's worst features of greed and impatience. But then it has it's good side too.

Rachel Browne

It is a double-edged sword since it has some problem: pollution and the like. However, it is clear that the advantages of technology far outweigh its disadvantages. Consider the world 300 years ago, and the world now. It is clear that this is a better world, and this is mostly due to the scientific revolution and the technological revolution. How would you like to have surgery without anesthetic?

Kenneth Stern

Peter asked:

This is not really a philosophy question, or not at the level I intend it anyway, but philosophers are good with definitions and meanings so I'll ask it.

If 'society' implies, or depends on, a shared culture (culture in its widest sense), as I suspect we all feel it must, and if 'multicultural' suggests a multiplicity of cultures, as I suspect we all feel it must, then is not 'multicultural society' an oxymoron? Has political correctness, or a well meaning attempt to be inclusive, led us into meaningless doublespeak and another example of the use of grammatical tricks to save us facing deeper issues?

More generally is it reasonable to say that a key task in philosophy, a key element in any definition of philosophy, is the rooting out of conceptual and grammatical conflicts of this kind, if such it be?

A key task for philosophy is rooting out and exposing fallacious arguments: yours is an instructive example.

"If 'society' implies, or depends on, a shared culture (culture in its widest sense), as I suspect we all feel it must...." For there to be such a thing as a society, there must be something that the members of that society have in common, in virtue of which they are able to identify themselves as members of that society. That is all you can reasonably claim to be self-evident, or, as you put it, something 'we all feel' to be necessary. But whether that shared factor is a common nature, or interests, or purpose — or, as you claim, culture — is far from being self-evident. It is a question that bears close examination.

In order to show that the argument you have advanced is fallacious, however, it is not necessary to give a full and complete answer to that question. That would require a book. It is sufficient that we can point out possible ways in which diverse cultural groups could perceive themselves as belonging to, having a stake in, a single all-inclusive society. One of the most important and obvious ways is through inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue. (An argument of exactly similar form to the one that you give could be used to 'prove' that the very idea of an inter-denominational religious service is a conceptual confusion. That ought to make you pause.) Another way is through political action on a local level. Think of what would be involved, for example, in a community consisting of diverse cultural groups setting up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme to combat burglary and street crime, or getting together to tackle problems with drugs and prostitution.

There are many persons of different ideological persuasions who believe in the possibility of a multi-cultural society as an article of political faith. I would include myself in that large and diverse group. I am not saying that we should not accept the challenge to provide arguments in support of that belief. It is healthy that we should debate the issue, and not allow it to become unthinkingly held political dogma.

Geoffrey Klempner

Deshal asked:

Hello, I was just wondering something about Buddhist philosophy and in particular rebirth. How could rebirth take place and yet we see a continuous increase in human population, particularly the sudden surge in the last 100 years or so?

Rebirth is a religious idea, that means it addresses a fundamental philosophical question of existence. Actually the idea of rebirth addresses a nexus different questions. It is a synthetic or integrative idea. The idea of rebirth is certainly not descriptive, as your question seems to suggest, nor is it 'explanatory' in the theoretical sense (that theory purports to explain things, which it only does for a certain kind of mentality). In other words rebirth is not a demographic concept, nor can it be said to 'take place' in the everyday literal sense of these words as you use them, as if about some 'thing'.

I am faced with a difficulty of saying something (explaining?!) rebirth. Rebirth presupposes every other Buddhist concept and can only be properly understood together with them. The abstraction of rebirth into the Western context conceives it in terms of our psychology and religious bent (which is basically monotheistic). In Buddhism, however, (this is going to be very rudimentary) everything is reborn. That does not mean every thing. It means every deed or action will give rise to other deeds and actions elsewhere. In this way everything is reborn. And even the first deed or action is itself a consequence of prior actions, it is a rebirth, including your question and my answer. You are not the source of your question and "I" am not the source of my answer. Scary hey.

Buddhists experience no suffering and no rebirth (they are one and the same) once they are trained in the Path that leads to them.

MG asked:

"'Be selfish and stay selfish' is my message. Wanting enlightenment is selfishness. Charity is selfishness."
U.G. Krishnamurti.

I have a question on the last part of Krishnamurti's quote and I don't quite understand how charity or altruism can be a form of selfishness. Can you please help me answer that question for me?

I know nothing about Krishnamurti, but I expect he confuses selfishness which is taking more than you are entitled to, and is morally bad, with self-interest which is taking what you are entitled to, and is neutral, but can be a good thing to do. If there are two pieces of cake, one for me and one for my brother, and I take both, I am being selfish. If I take one, I am acting self-interestedly. If I give both to my brother, I am acting altruistically. It would be bad to grab both pieces; but there is nothing wrong with taking just my piece of cake. And, I am certainly not obligated to give my brother both pieces and leave nothing for myself.

The English 18th century philosopher and divine, Joseph Butler, went to great pains to clear up the confusion between selfishness and self-interest, and went on to argue that much of the trouble in the world was caused not by people who acted self-interestedly, but rather by people who did not act in their enlightened own best interests chiefly because they were ignorant of what was in their own self-interest, since he believed that society would be a better place if everyone knew where his own interests lay and acted to promoted them. A similar view was held by Adam Smith who believed that by everyone acting in his own self-interest, the general interests of society would be served.

So, if Krishnamurti changed his advocacy of selfishness to a more sensible advocacy of self-interest, I could agree with him. Of course, if he did, he would no longer sound paradoxically profound and probably lose some of his audience who like that sort of thing.

Kenneth Stern

Krishnamurti is distinguishing here between relative and absolute truths, a convention in his Indian tradition. He is speaking absolutely. Wanting enlightenment and charity and compassion are 'selfish' because the real meaning of the self here is universal, not relative, not psychological. The absolute meaning of self is God. The identity between self and God is found in Western tradition in the writing that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Krishnamurti is trying to awake his hearers to this truth: the identity between human and divine. Not just Christ, he believes, but each one of us, is God incarnate, but very few are awake to this 'fact' and able to realise it. In other words, God's selfishness and charity are the uttermost limits of our own, that is infinite.

Irene asked:

Why do we have quotas and affirmative action in all businesses except professional sports? Would people watch the games if we did have this? Why isn't it required in professional sports? Why do they get a pass?

The short answer to your question is that it would be intolerable to the supporters of a soccer club, for example, that their team should lose a vital game, because the manager was not allowed to select the eleven players who, in the manager's considered judgement, were most likely to prevail against the opposition. By contrast, there is a certain degree of latitude in recruiting filing clerks, or chefs, or motor mechanics, or philosophy lecturers: the candidate has got to be good enough to do the job to the standards required. After that, other considerations may be relevant, for example, the need to promote good race relations, or religious or sexual tolerance, or the interests of women or the disabled.

That answer is not fully satisfactory. I don't think it is true in sport that winning is everything. There are sound psychological reasons why those who participate in sports at the highest level should believe that winning is everything. Self-belief, the desire to win and the belief that you can win are an essential part of the 'inner game'. It is also fully understandable that supporters and fans should go along with that belief. Of course, you want to see your team on the winners' podium.

However, it is also widely accepted that the desire to win can be taken too far. The sportsman or sportswoman enjoys a life outside of sport, a life where personal relationships are important. This is just one example of how we balance competing values. The optimal amount of practice and working out for peak performance on the playing field may not be optimal if it destroys your marriage.

If we look at the wider social context, then it is reasonable to say that although we want the quality of competition to be the very best that it can be, there are other things we value too. Groups who in the past have for political or social reasons had a hard time making progress in a particular sport deserve a fair chance. No-one would suppose that the inequality could be rectified simply by forcing clubs to recruit team members from those groups. The process has to start with the youngsters who are first attracted to the sport, by providing new opportunities for training and coaching.

Here is one notable example. In 1999, the South African rugby team, the Springboks, competed for the World Cup with a multiracial starting squad for the first time in their history. Coach Nick Mallett was quoted as saying, "There is stunning talent among our players of color. They're the future of South African rugby." Don't be fooled into thinking that this was just a happy chance. It was a result of a concerted political campaign to open up South African rugby to non-whites.

Geoffrey Klempner

Edith asked:

What were Socrates' comments (his definition) on "Justice"? Where would I find the appropriate reading material?

Plato sees the self (psyche) and the city (polis) analogously and his idea of justice (dikaiosyne) is part of it, like the oil in the machine which makes it function smoothly. The self has three levels. The sensual, which requires self-control or temperance (sophrosyne). The emotional, which requires fortitude (andria). And he rational, which requires wisdom or prudence (sophia or phronesis). Justice is the fourth cardinal virtue. The three parts of the self are not merely interrelated, but are modes of a unity. "Justice" is what brings about the harmony or good relations of the parts of the self. The City is the same. There are the people, the hoi poloi, the guardians and the philosopher/ rulers. The proper virtue of the people, the producers, is temperance, of the guardians, fortitude and courage, and of the philosopher/ rulers wisdom and prudence. These three classes of society maintain the balance of right relations through the medium of justice. Justice is the quality of human being that relates persons to one another and to themselves, both individually and socially.

The main texts by Plato on Justice are to found in the Republic (351d-352a; Book IV and Book X) and the Laws. In the Laws Plato's ideas are extended and enriched, although not systematically. The reader needs get the whole picture in order the see the part (justice) properly. Books I — V and VI are about human nature in its personal and civil aspects, in term of which one will grasp the elusive form of justice.

George asked:

I have been trying to write on and understand whether disorder can be a form of order. Sometimes I feel that even though a situation may seem highly chaotic, it may be still be looked on as an organized situation. One analogy I can put to example is the case of noise vs. music. Another one I can put forward is when artists tend to create an organized mess of some sort to add to the balance and composition of a piece.

I am not too sure yet and I'm hoping some of you can help me with this.

The issue of order vs. disorder is a very nasty one, because it is involved not merely with issues of causality, but also with how we perceive of, conceive of, and symbolize pattern. Thus answering this question to any depth must involved discourses not only in physics and math but in psychology of perception, cognitive science, and aesthetics. But your question seems to have to do with art rather than physics, chaos theory, or cognition, so I'll focus on that. One thing I would recommend is that you be very clear on what you mean by "disorder" and "order". For example, to take a musical case, when jazz was first introduced it was considered highly chaotic and disordered; yet today it is seen not merely as very structured but rather old-fashioned in that regard. Has jazz changed? Of course not, so our perception of what is "ordered" in music has changed. Why is that? Surely it is because there is now so much jazz and jazz-derived music we hear, from infancy, that we learn to extract, i.e., to hear, patterns in it easily. However, since our pattern-comprehension is very flexible when we are young and becomes more difficult for us to change as we get older (because, if for no other reason, we must alter much more later than when we start), when a new style of music is introduced we have trouble hearing it coherently. Thus atonal music was a real stretch when it was introduced; now we yawn.

What about "noise vs. music"? Do you mean noise literally, i.e., "white noise": what we hear in the wind, the ocean, running water, and so forth, that is, literal random vibrations in the air? Or do you mean something heard as noise, which as we have seen above can be almost anything that we are not experienced hearing the structure in? Again, when you say that an artist creates an "organized mess" you are not referring to literal noise but to an aural structure that is not easily comprehended, right?

There are two categories of "noise", then... one being literal random vibrations, the other being pattern whose structure we do not comprehend or have trouble comprehending. You can see, then, that the "organized mess" is probably not actually a mess except for someone not familiar with that composer's idiom. You might do a little reading in gestalt psychology: see Koffka or Kohler, for example. Arnheim has a book, Art and Visual Perception, on the visual aspect of structure in art. As for sound, there's a lot on music perception these days: Music and Meaning, edited by Robinson; Music, Art and Metaphysics, by Levinson; Listening and Voice, by Ihde are just a small sample.

Steven Ravett Brown

Sylvia asked:

Could you explain Hume's argument that it is beyond human understanding to know the causes of events, even the everyday ones.

You seem to be somewhat confused about Hume's views on causation. It is true that, according to Hume, our beliefs about causes and effects can never be rationally proven, in the sense which leaves no possible room for doubt. Yet in his Treatise of Human Nature Hume describes eight 'Rules to judge of cause and effect' (Book I, Section xv) which we would recognize today as the application of sound scientific method. We can be wrong about causes and effects, because the cause of an event may be unobvious. The apparent cause may not be the real cause. However, this is an error which the proper application of Hume's 'Rules' allows us to rectify.

Where, famously, Hume attacked the notion of causation was in the false metaphysical assumptions which the ordinary or 'vulgar' notion implied. According to Hume, all the evidence we have for any event or connection between events consists in successions of sense data or 'impressions'. On this strict empiricist basis, Hume asks where we derive the idea of a 'necessary connection' between cause and effect; for example, one pool ball hitting another, or a stone hitting a pane of glass and breaking it. The extra factor which is the actual causal link cannot be perceived. All we see is one event, then another event. So what can we possibly mean when we say that the first event caused the second event — for example, the impact of the white ball caused the red ball to go into the corner pocket; the stone caused the glass to shatter?

Hume's answer is profound and revolutionary. The truth of a statement of the form 'A caused B' consists in the truth of a universal generalization. In all places, and at all times, a state of affairs which fits the description of B will follow from a state of affairs which fits the description of A. The impact of a red and white pool ball, or a stone and glass will always produce the same result — provided that the speeds, weights and other surrounding circumstances are the same. We may never be able to duplicate these circumstances exactly. But this is what we mean when we talk of causation. Causation is nothing but 'constant conjunction'.

There are reasons to be worried by this account. Despite the great power of the idea of a universal generalization covering indefinitely many instances, you may feel that something has been lost in the analysis. The particular relation of 'bringing about' or 'making' between one unique event and another has been replaced by a relation between general descriptions. One thing happens; then another. All that we see, according to Hume, is all that is there in reality. The extra causal link that we believe to exist between the two events, consists merely in the fact that events of the first kind are 'constantly conjoined' with events of the second. Our intuitions ought to be affronted by that claim. However, it is no easy matter finding a satisfactory alternative to Hume's analysis.

Geoffrey Klempner

Greg asked:

Is it possible to objectively prove religion, faith, and other subjective ideals?

The short answer, Greg, is no. Otherwise it should have been done. The reason it is not possible is that the question is too biased and narrow for the phenomenon it questions. The question raises religion in terms of the subject-object dichotomy. But semitic root religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) cannot be understood in psychological terms of subject-object. They can be completely misinterpreted by psychological (or Cartesian) frames of reference, and often are. Western religion is based on neither the subjective nor the objective, but on the Other. The Other is a radical category which transcends (even while altering) the subject-object split in human perception. God is Other, neither subject nor object. The ideas of 'God in Search of Man', 'He Who Comes', 'Revelation' are all enunciated in terms of what is categorically Other.

There is a stronger sense of proof than that posed by your question, which is that religion proves us. However this idea is counter-psychological. But even on the level of the question you have posed, the idea that 'proof' about anything can be 'objective' in the strongest sense, is questionable. Even 2+2=4 doesn't prove the fact — as Wittgenstein pointed out, only that for this fact there needs to exist certain prior concepts of counting and numbers, without which the sum is unprovable. And where do these concepts come from? Such a question is one addressed by religion.

Bill asked:

How would Epicurus feel about pornography and why?

As far as Epicurus goes, his philosophy has been largely misinterpreted as being one of pursuing sensual pleasure as an end in itself. From my readings, what he actually proposed was much more sophisticated and more in line with the general attitude of the ancient Greeks: that pleasure was the result of living life in the most fulfilling way. Sensual pleasure was only one, and not the most important, source of pleasure. There was also intellectual pleasure, much more important, and various pleasures derived from social interactions. As I understand him, his notion of pleasure related to the general term eudaimonia, referring to a feeling of happiness and fulfillment coming from a life well-led, which thus would include but not be limited to sensual pleasure.

However, your question is interesting to me in that you do not define the term "pornography". That term, in the States, is usually associated with explicit sexual material. From the point of view of the ancient Greeks, as I understand it, since their notion of sexuality was radically different from our own, I suspect that what we commonly regard as pornographic would be in the main quite ordinary to them, and indeed desirable. My own take on the term "pornographic" is rather different from the norm: I take it to mean sexuality which is portrayed as bad or "dirty". In addition, sexuality which causes harm or suffering (and there's a fine line here concerning consensual sex and S&M, etc., which probably cannot be generally adjudicated, but must be judged case-by-case), however it is portrayed, I also regard as pornographic. Sex can be presented with any degree of explicitness without being pornographic, and pornography can have any degree of explicitness. Pornography, for me, implies misapprehension and misuse of sexuality. I think that this is actually more in line with the ideas of the ancient Greeks.

Steven Ravett Brown

Jonas asked:

I want to able to say something smart about ways to define HSM, high speed machining. I've got a hunch that there is no "what HSM really is". What would philosophy say about this?

If it is true that there is no such thing as 'what HSM really is', then the reason can only be a matter of fact, not a matter of philosophy. I suspect, however, that you have fallen under the false impression that one would be justified in asserting that there is no such thing as 'what HSM really is' in virtue of the fact that there is no precise definition of HSM. And that is patently false. (By the way, I don't think that the use of the word 'really' here cut's much ice. Just say to yourself, "There is no such thing as HSM", and listen to how that sounds.)

Even in areas of mechanical engineering and technology, many of the terms we utilize have a penumbra of vagueness, a resistance to precise definition. To take a simple example, consider what one means by saying that a component is 'flexible' or 'rigid'. How much does it have to bend to be counted as flexible? where do you draw the line? It would be absurd to draw the conclusion that no component is 'really' flexible or rigid. The terms are understood perfectly well for the purposes in hand. (Consider the exchange: "Is this rod really rigid?" "Try it and see!")

If you are looking for a philosophical background, the early paragraphs of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations are excellent on this.

Marek asked:

I'd like to ask one significant question that is deeply dwelling my mind for some time:

What lessons do you think can be learned from the development of computers over the last twenty years?

A lot has been learnt about the workings of the human mind within the field of artificial intelligence, and the most recent development is the creation of learning robotic intelligences, such as the Abo dog. Intelligence is not simply created by programming but also by environmental interaction. Whilst we knew that this is the way human intelligence develops, the importance of man as organic is giving way to a view of man as robotic.

Also the more recent development of the internet has shown us something about human nature. People desire the ease of being pandered to, of hiding behind a screen and playing unreal games to an extent that even the existentialists didn't dream of. It is not simply that there are people who are engaging in internet relationships which need not be genuine because there is no face to face contact, and that there are bizarre phenomena like cyber-parties in which participants pretend to be socializing, but there is a real movement towards a strangely onanistic form of communication. I gather that current technological advances have enabled computer scientists in America to develop computers which respond to the sort of person you are. For instance, a male computer-user will receive spoken instructions from a soft-voiced woman because he will find this most pleasurable, but an elderly lady will be spoken to by a middle-aged man which she will find comforting as this is the sort of person she take to know best about computer operation.

Hopefully, what we will learn from this is that this not what people really want. In the words of Karl Jaspers it is likely to lead to "an emptiness ... a loneliness that hides itself" and which seeks relief in the irrational until "it leads eventually to a deep comprehension of the importance of establishing communication between man and man". Genuine communication involves compromise, transference and an understanding of what others are really like.

If we look at human nature rather than the human mind, man doesn't seem to be robotic and so perhaps we should be a bit sceptical about what we can learn from computers.

Rachel Browne

Valentina asked:

I'm very much interested to learn about the "poetic of space". If you could give me some tips about this then I would be grateful.

the Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard is one of a series of books he wrote on poetics and nothing more authoritative and inspirational is found on the subject as far as I know. Bachelard was a famous professor of the History of Science at the Sorbonne in Paris and there is a bust of him on display in one of the corridors. I believe alongside the other great luminaries of French philosophy. It was only later in life that he turned to poetics out of a profound feeling for his language. All the tips you need and much more will be found in Bachelard's book.

Tom asked:

I am a recent graduate of a bachelor's degree in Philosophy. I studied some of the basic arguments of the free will/ determinism controversy of the great thinkers and the postings on this site. My current "allegiance" is toward a strict deterministic viewpoint because of the impression that science has given me, though I am not a professional scientist. I do not understand how so many thinkers say they are determinists and then talk about who should be punished. But more odd to me is how after just saying that everyone is under rigid causality they are now saying to not punish under certain conditions.

I think the most coherent angle is to say, "Punish...or don't..it doesn't really matter...it is the law of the universe that these things had to happen, even your attempt to talk about it, the philosophers to try to change it despite iron causality controlling them etc. It is also necessary that we should have spent time talking nonsense about it. A very great person is just as necessary as a base criminal. He has only tricked us into thinking he/she is great because we believe he/she could have done otherwise. In the material world which is us as well, there are no special people."

This seems to me the real last temptation of the philosopher, not pity as Nietzsche thought.

Let's assume for the sake of this discussion that the thesis of determinism is true. If it isn't, then we have the comfort of knowing that the future is not a foregone conclusion. But it doesn't make much difference so far as the free will debate is concerned. There is as little justification for punishing an act which has no cause, as there is for punishing an act that is determined by the agent's prior state.

In response to this challenge, the theory of punishment goes through several dialectical spirals:

Level 1 If it is determined that the agent acts, then it is also determined that we respond with sanctions. The force of calling this response 'punishment' can be explained in terms of its intended effects, as can the development of rules for deciding when it is, or is not, appropriate to punish. In the vocabulary of determinism, we learn to discriminate cases where punishment is effective from cases where punishment is not effective. Punishment is not effective for automobiles which fail to start, for infants who lose control of their bladders, for adults who are not in possession of their faculties, or for adults who, though in full possession of their faculties, did what they did as the result of physical coercion.

That primitive theory of punishment is refuted by the example cited by F.H. Bradley, of the Master of Hounds who gives his dogs a good thrashing before they go out on a hunt "just to show them who's boss". According to the Level 1 theory, there is no reason why we should not 'punish' those who have not committed any wrongdoing, but might possibly be deterred from doing so by being given a proactive thrashing.

Level 2 As an institution, the practice of punishment gains enormously in effectiveness from being combined with the natural, though in deterministic terms irrational, human desire to see the wrongdoer 'paid back' for their wrongdoing. This provides the motive for distinguishing cases where punishment would be effective, but not deserved, from cases where punishment would be effective and deserved. Rather than undermine this powerful institution, we forbear punishment of the innocent, even in cases where it would otherwise be very effective as a deterrent.

The problem with this theory is that distinguishing between the 'guilty' who deserve to be punished from the 'innocent' who do not can only be effective so long as those on whom punishment is administered do not reflect on the implications of the rationale supplied for making this distinction. For, if they do, if they realize that it was not possible, given the initial conditions, that either the 'guilty' or the 'innocent' should have chosen to have acted otherwise, they will refuse to accept that there is any real difference between the two cases.

Level 3 Punishment has to be seen within a wider framework of our interpersonal attitudes. The seminal paper is P.F. Strawson's British Academy lecture 'Freedom and Resentment' (reprinted in several places, including his collection Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays). For example, although you profess determinism, you submitted your question in the hope of a reasoned response. In pressing the 'submit' button you did not merely intend to bring about a certain effect (as would be the case, e.g. if the answers for 'Ask a Philosopher' were not produced by humans at all but by a AI program running on a supercomputer). The human world brought into being by our inter-personal attitudes — a world where arguments are 'valid' or 'invalid', where actions are 'right' or 'wrong', where punishment is 'deserved' or 'undeserved' — cannot be dismissed as an illusion merely on the grounds that it cannot be perceived from the fully objective standpoint. On those grounds, the passage of time, the world of our sense experience, consciousness itself are mere 'illusions'. An excellent book to read on these issues is Thomas Nagel The View from Nowhere.

That is not the last word on the subject, however. Even though we may accept the impossibility of discarding this 'double vision' of the world and our place in it — the world seen from the subjective and and from objective viewpoints — there remain reasons for metaphysical disquietude. We praise or punish people for the choices they have made. It is part of what it is to see a person as a person and not a thing that we do not try to 'get behind' the person to see the chain of causes leading back to the moment of their birth that accounts for their being the way they are, or for choosing the way they chose. Yet at the same time, we feel a keen sense of cosmic injustice that one human being has been 'chosen' by the world to do good, while another person has been 'chosen' to do evil.

However, cosmic injustice is the one injustice that cannot be righted by human efforts. To think that we can right it by refusing to make judgements 'good' or 'bad' is the illusion which, I suspect, continues to grip you.

Geoffrey Klempner

Aisha asked:

My question is twofold:

Music is coming to the stage where composers are continuously trying to find unique orchestration and instrumentation, to the point where the music no longer expresses either program music (music created for a certain emotion or situation) or absolute music (music for the sake of music). Instead, we are left with composers simply trying to be more unique than the next. This does not include those who actually are able to create music that the majority can relate to or view as an important work of art. Do you believe that the limitations of our western music simply do not allow any longer for any more pieces of as high caliber as that which was written by Bach or Beethoven?

Now, let's say that a child is left in a room with a piano, and this child has an innate talent for music (absolute pitch, and a natural ability to create tunes). If this child has no previous knowledge of the world of western music — not even that of simple tunes such as Mary Had a Little Lamb — do you think that he would "recreate" this piece? What about other pieces? In other words, are the songs that are a part of western culture integral to the way we think, or would he begin to compose songs that were, in our eyes, obscure and atonal?

I cannot think of what limitations on western music would restrict the creation of works of high calibre today, since if these are purely musical limitations, they would have existed in Beethoven's time. Furthermore, there is no reason to suppose that all great works have been written. As you say, there is now a search for unique instrumentation. In the past composers will have written with only classical instruments in mind but now composers can create with a wider choice. So really, classical composers were more limited than musicians today and perhaps the limitations on the kinds of externally produceable sound forces greater creative effort. With only a pencil the visual artist needs to be highly skilled, but with paints and textures he need not be.

Music, like visual art, is shaped by the nature of the times. Artists can display something surprising in a gallery — famous cases being a Duchamps' urinal and Tracey Emin's bed — and it becomes "art". As a result of this, it is now held that there is no such thing as real art: Art is something defined by what the institution stipulates it to be. However, there are still brilliant artists around and, as you say, there are excellent musicians, and only some seek to be unique. It is difficult to know why this is so but it isn't a phenomenon confined to music and art, it is also found in literature and film. I think one reason is that it is part of our idea today that to be creative is to be innovative and to move beyond the traditional and classical forms — this true of all art forms. Visual art has been intellectualised and it is no longer important that the artist displays skill in his work as long as it "signifies" something — and perhaps this idea is being taken up by musicians, but hopefully not!

We can only know what the child would do by empirical experiment. However, we do know that the child would be restricted in the sort of tunes it created by the piano which has a determinate range of notes recognised by Western culture. If it were a stringed instrument, there would be a possibility of creating new notes not recognised by us. Given the limiting factor of the piano, I think it is possible that the child would create music which we would find natural rather than atonal. The child will experiment with small phrases and will settle on a sound which resonates with him which, at this initial stage, will reflect tones and rhythms of his spoken language, as the sound of language probably underlies basic tunes. The foundation for this assumption is that Western speech, tones, notes and music differs totally from, for instance, Chinese speech, tones, notes and music. Beyond simple tunes, musical creations do seek to imitate, express or represent experiences or emotions and stories. We could say that initially music represents mere sound based on the rhythms and tones of speech, and because of the different nature of speech in Western and Eastern culture, the origins and hence the development of music is different. However, what is expressed, represented or evoked would not necessarily be different since most experiences and emotions are universal rather than cultural.

I don't think music is out there to be found and it is unlikely the child would re-create a tune we know.

Rachel Browne

Junaid asked:

What philosophical questions arise from prayer and why do you think God has ordered us to pray? If He is All-knowing and All-Seeing why must we pray?

Prayer is not so much an order as an expectation. In the Judeo-Christian tradition represented by the Bible man is shown negotiating with God. The Hebrew prophets continually do this. Abraham saved his nephew Lot and his Lot's family from Sodom, which God wanted to destroy, by bargaining with God (Gen. 18:23ff. "Will you destroy the righteous with the wicked?" etc.) Moses, Isaiah and Jeremiah all thought God had chosen the wrong man for the task but God gives each of them the power of prophetic speech and the courage of His convictions. Jonah refuses to follow God's lead in the destruction of Ninevah, but when God changes his mind, having seen that Jonah is probably right in shying away from the task, Jonah is quite put out. ("Should I not spare Nineveh that great city?" God asks him in a rhetorical question at the end.) Job forces God to meet his demands (that he is innocent and his fate unjust) over and above the best the Devil can do. Jesus prays in Gethsemane for the inevitable not to happen, but his prayer is not granted.

What philosophical questions arise? Is that which is ultimate qua Being not abstract but active? Can one communicate with the Absolute? Can the Absolute communicate with us and does it? When? How? Has our world history been formed out of this communication? To what extent? Is this a belief or an experience? Given this exchange with the Absolute that has gone on for so long, what does it mean for the question, 'how are we to live?' Is the essential existential? etc etc.

That God is All-knowing and All-seeing should be understood in context. "God is All-knowing and All-seeing" is not a proposition in the analytical sense and is misunderstood if it is taken as such (as is philosophy of religion). The context is one of language (in an ontological not merely linguistic sense) and myth. God is All-knowing and All-seeing like a Father over his children. The meaning is an analogous, not a totalising interpretation.