"As the child grows older, what wisdom can be imparted; and from which philosophers, which may give hope that he is not being raised in a world predominantly evil?"

Ok... let's assume that all children are being raised in a world predominantly evil. Now what? Should we all despair? Should we all become evil? Kill ourselves? Why not ask: "What is it that we can do to increase and maintain good?", and then go from there?

I know of no way to determine whether the world is "predominantly" anything... except polluted, maybe. Which it is, given industrialization. But "evil"? What does that even mean?

So I think that you might refocus on how to make things better, even in some small way, and not on whether to despair over the state of the world, which is probably not all that great... but who knows? And who knows whether it is improving or getting worse?

Steven Ravett Brown

Edaw asked:

If time has a beginning (when things started to change) does it have an end (when things stop changing)?

How is it possible for the universe to stop changing?

What is time? From the way you put your question, it seems to me that you think of time as something independent, some entity or process that runs its course, irrespective of the entities or processes comprising the universe. But this is not the case: time is dependent on entities and processes being there; and it is altogether appropriate to look upon time as their periodicity. So, for example, what we humans understand by the concept of "time" is tied to the physical processes which control our lives, from the periodical rotations of the sun and moon, which strongly affect the chemical processes of life on earth, to the small-scale (and sometimes imperceivably minute) activities of subcellular and even submicroscopic events that occur in these realms and (as it were) set the agenda for the larger-scale events which we call "living".

Even without going into the specialised meaning attached to the concept of time in physics, which is however an altogether analogous meaning — i.e. tied to the large-scale rotations of cosmic events controlled by gravitation etc. — it should be clear to you now that "time" is a human concept and has no independent existence whatever. It is merely a word with a specific meaning to us humans. Time itself is neither observable nor measurable; what we call the "measurement" of time is merely a gauge we put on processes developing in a monodirectional way. If you really want to confuse yourself, you might like to try this little logical exercise: we measure time today by the vibration rate of the caesium atom. This atom flutters something like 900 billion times a second. What is a second? Well, 900 billion vibrations of the caesium atom! There is merit, then, in the old wisecrack that God invented time to prevent everything from happening at once.

The question of the universe stopping is a little more difficult to answer properly. It depends in large measure on the theory of thermodynamics and the subsidiary question of whether that theory is accurate. We believe it is, but there are no guarantees. We cannot observe the universe, only a very small portion of it. So the current theory is that thermodynamic processes will "run down", that ultimately the fuel which drives all the nuclear interactions we can detect out there will burn themselves out. For example, an atom vibrates when it is active, and in doing so dissipates its mass. This dissipation is what we mean by "burning out". Like striking a match and watching it turning to ash. Ash is not renewable; so if the thermodynamic theory is correct, then at some time in perhaps 20-30 billion years, the presently known mass of the universe will have burnt itself out and everything will come to a stand still.

However, there is a countervailing theory, which assumes a "residual electric potential", like an "energy pump", which in fact continuously recycles these processes. You can understand this in terms of such phenomena as superconductivity, a state of matter where (because of the coldness) resistance to the dispersal of energy across the vast distances of an empty universe is practically nil; and these energy fragments are bound, sooner or later, to collide and build up the dissipated structures again. As they build up, heat is generated, resistance increases etc etc. Time resumes.

For the time being, these are the main theoretical alternatives. But which one you choose to believe is entirely up to you.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Olga asked:

Why has Heraclitus been called the philosopher of Becoming?

Only a few fragments of Heraclitus's thoughts and teachings have survived the two and a half thousand or so years since his death.

The most famous example is "You cannot step into the same river twice". Imagine you step into a river, then you climb out, then you step back in again. Between the first and second immersions, a great deal of water has flowed past; so you are stepping into a different body of water.

What Heraclitus is saying, in other words, is that facts about change entail that objects don't persist through time. Nothing just is; everything becomes.

Persistence philosophy has become a lot more systematized in the last hundred years or so. The default view is that objects do persist — Heraclitus is quite radical in this respect — however, the pro-persistence camp can be divided three ways, viz:-

Endurantists claim that objects are three dimensional things, wholly present at every moment from their creation to their destruction. I think this is probably what most people naturally believe. It's certainly the most popular position in philosophy.

However, endurantism is beset by the problem of change. Take my home, 'Dunroamin'. This morning it was immaculately clean and tidy. But suppose that this afternoon, loan sharks came and smashed all the windows. Then 'Dunroamin' this morning has different properties — unbrokenwindowedness — from this evening's damaged 'Dunroamin'. Now Leibniz's Law states that all and only objects with all their properties in common are identical. It follows that the two Dunroamins are non-identical, i.e. different objects.

Perdurantists recognize the endurantist problem with change. They think that objects are four dimensional things, not wholly present at each moment of their existence, but extended across time in a way analogous to the way things extend through space. For example, this evening's "timeslice" of 'Dunroamin' is to 'Dunroamin' the 4-D object as my spleen is to my body.

Finally, stage theorists (the classical example being Katherine Hawley, author of How things persist) deny that there are four dimensional entities over and above timeslices. They think that the timeslices are the objects, and that they aren't identical with eachother. You might think that means that objects don't persist. The endurantist Trenton Merricks would agree, according to his review in the Journal of Philosophy of Hawley's book. Hawley reckons that although timeslices or stages aren't identical with eachother, nevertheless persisting isn't a matter of identity across time, rather stages persist by means of standing in "non-supervenient relations" to other suitable stages.

Richard Craven

Colin asked:

What am I thinking?

What are you thinking now reading this response to your question 'What am I thinking?'? What are you thinking as I type this response to your question 'What am I thinking?'? What were you thinking when you sent this question to ask a philosopher?

If I say, 'Don't think about a red monkey,' it's a good bet that you have a thought about a red monkey. Similarly if I ask what are you thinking now, it's a good bet that you are thinking, 'what am I thinking?' but what is the thought 'what am I thinking'?

Right now I am thinking about what to type, that's the most immediate, the most pressing thought, yet the radio is playing and I'm singing along to the song, the window is open and I can hear the cars pass, I'm thinking about a play I want to see and if I can get a discount on the tickets. The point is that I am thinking about loads of things, I don't think this is unusual, you are probably doing the same, our thinking is a rag-bag of jumble. Perhaps a more appropriate question would be what am I attending to?

Attention is an interesting phenomena, but one I will not touch on here.

Yet it's still undetermined as to the temporal framework we are working with, if I say red monkey again you will think about a red monkey, is this the same red monkey thought, are you remembering the previous red monkey (you probably are now that I've mentioned it, but again is this the same red monkey or a new thought?).

Philosophers make a distinction between types and token thoughts, so for example there is a new model (type) of car, but many particular cases (tokens) of that car. Similarly with thoughts red monkey is a type of thought, and each instance we think it, is a token of that thought, so that it is possible for example for two minds to think the same thing. But I have a suspicion this is not correct, it is probably okay for dealing with the question how can two minds think the same thought, and for cases like red monkeys, but my suspicion is that the thought 'what am I thinking' escapes the type/ token distinction.

Let's go back to the three original questions, even if what you are now thinking is has same form as what you were thinking when you wrote your question, namely, 'what am I thinking' this is not the same thought now as then, it's a different 'what am I thinking'.

Why, because your asking now 'what am I thinking' changes each time you ask it.

This is the reason it escapes the type/ token distinction, it is essentially indexical, and self-referential.

Even if you can remember what you were thinking when you wrote 'what am I thinking' would you be thinking now what you thought then, no, because it is remembrance, it will have a different temporal structure, a different feel and therefore a different content, it will not be the same thought, similarly thinking now 'what am I thinking will be different in the future from thinking it now.

Time and thinking are tightly connected, I'm sure I've had that thought before.

Brian Tee

Jason asked:

Is defining consciousness possible?

This is a horrendous and nasty issue. First, what is a "definition"? Usually we take that to mean something like translating a complex term or idea into a combination of simpler terms or ideas; or substituting ideas or terms we do understand for ideas or terms we do not. Going on that rough idea of definition, we then ask what "simpler" or more "understandable" (whatever those mean) terms or ideas do we substitute for "consciousness" or for consciousness (think about the quotes). Well. I don't know of any, offhand. "Awareness"? Um... why is that simpler?

Ying asked:

What is meant by absolute truths, and what are the implication for knowledge of absolute truths?

The term "absolute" means independent, pure, unrestricted (from Latin, which in its migration into English gives you a hint: ab = un, solute = soluble, as in "insoluble"). Thus in speaking about absolute truth, we mean something which is totally pure, uninflected, unconditional, unchangeable, not influenced by theories and circumstances.

>From this, you might understand that such truths cannot be very many. For example, a scientific theory is the truth as currently understood; but theories do change and cannot ever be absolute. Similarly with many human truths, which may be influenced by the presuppositions active in a particular society. And now you could go through the whole gamut of truths and find that all of them, even the so-called black and white truths, are nothing more than truths understood as such for the time being. I'm leaving out of reckoning here such truths as depend on facts: for example the fact that the earth is a planet. You could say that this is a truth about the earth, but that's stretching the concept of truth somewhat, because a fact and a truth are not really the same thing (a fact is something that actually is or was the case, whereas a truth should be something that just is). I'm also leaving out of reckoning such truths as are dealt with in instrumental algorithms, where a memory chip may be loaded with a value "true" or "false", because again this is rather a thin type of concept referable to mechanical evaluation and in any case completely dependent on the prior understanding of the factuality (yes or no) evaluated by the device in question.

But this leaves us with very little, namely philosophical and religious truths. Now the latter qualify for an absolute state without question — if you are believer. That God is absolute Truth (with a capital T) is taken for granted in most religions, and if there is discussion about it, this is only in the service of understanding its absoluteness, not the "fact" that it is. In philosophy, absoluteness is essentially an Hegelian concept and refers to the spirit which endeavours, through the conquest of knowledge, to arrive a synthesis of the totality of existence. Other metaphysical thinkers, for instance Pascal, Spinoza or Spencer, have similarly embraced the whole of the universe or the total harmony of the cosmos under the idea of an absolute truth. The concept, however, derives ultimately from the late medieval philosopher Nicholas of Cusa, who coined it with just such a meaning in mind.

Now it is clear from the above that there is a certain amount of wishful thinking in all this. You don't have to take my word for this, of course (I'm quite irreligious). But if the idea of "knowledge" means anything at all, then absolute truths are not subjects of knowledge. Nor are religious ideas of Truth-and-God genuine knowledge — even the medieval thinkers acknowledged this, for they expended enormous amounts of energy to come to a concept of "knowledge" that enlists metaphor or analogy, because they knew that God cannot be known. I would say, then, that absolute truth is a metaphysical concept; hence the term "knowledge" is misapplied. Metaphysical truths are ideas we might strive for, that we struggle with and try to understand even against all possibility of truly understanding them. I would go so far as to say that in part, this is what philosophy is all about. Wittgenstein wrote at the end of his Tractatus that we should stop talking about things we can't express in unambiguous words; it was a kind of counsel of despair, and clearly ideas concerning "absolute truth" would fall under this stigma if Wittgenstein is accepted as having the last word on the matter. But he doesn't. Even his antimetaphysical utterance reflects a metaphysical attitude and he clearly understood this himself in just these terms.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Well let me give my PERSONAL opinion.

Juan asked:

What is the meaning of knowledge?

Your question is concerned with one of the major divisions of philosophy, 'Epistemology.' Any answer I can provide will certainly not be conclusive, and you will find that there are several alternatives. Much depends on the standpoint from which one approaches the problem. The starting point of the empiricist differs to that of the rationalist, the idealist, the materialist, and so on.

My favourite answer to the question is contained in the work of Bertrand Russell, who claims that there are two sorts of knowledge; knowledge of things and knowledge of truths. Knowledge of things is further sub-divided into knowledge by acquaintance, and knowledge by description. We can say that we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, and this is to understand what might be called a pure awareness, without the addition of other sorts of knowledge or any truths. In other words, knowledge we receive by way of the senses is given knowledge and remains the same to whichever mind it is presented. Hence, if I am in the presence of a chair I am acquainted with the sense-data that make up the appearance of the chair, such as colour, shape, hardness, smoothness, etc.. I strongly believe, but have no way of proving, that the very same sense data generated by the chair would be received by any other human mind to which it was presented.

Although I can claim to have knowledge of the sense data representing the chair, there is no way in which I can get beyond this sensa to the actual thing presenting the sense data. As I can only know the chair by way of the given sensa, I can only have beliefs and assumptions about the real chair. Russell called the received knowledge about the chair "knowledge by description." He further claims that all the knowledge we posses started off as knowledge by acquaintance (bare sensa), both knowledge of things and knowledge of truths.

Sense data then supply the most obvious and striking examples of knowledge by acquaintance. But if they were the sole examples, our knowledge would be very much more restricted than it is. Only the immediate data presented by our senses could be known, we would know nothing about the past, or even that there was a past, nor could we know any truths about our sense data. Knowledge of truths demands acquaintance with things which are of an essentially different character from sense-data, things which are called abstract ideas (Universals).

We all have the ability to remember things, so we can claim that most of our sense data is confined to memory. It follows that memory must refer to the past, remembering, then, is a further example of knowledge by acquaintance, memories recalled to mind is knowledge of the past, i.e. knowledge of things previously presented to the mind by acquaintance with sense-data, these would include memories of objects and memories of events.

The deeper one investigates into the meaning of knowledge and the more complex it becomes, so we should not be surprised when we find other layers of knowing, hence, we realise that we are aware of 'being aware,' when I see a tree I can be aware of 'seeing the tree.' This is a fascinating facet of Philosophy of Mind; does one part of my mind observe the actions of another part, or is there an 'I' separate from the mind which is aware of events in the mind? However, according to the present thesis awareness of being aware is another case of knowledge by acquaintance. Russell called this awareness by introspection. Our desires are things with which we are acquainted, as are our feelings and sensations.

Memory is concerned not only with the past but also with the future. Aware of things and events that can be repeated, we can extrapolate our experiences into the future, allowing us to anticipate, and to direct our actions towards a purpose. Introducing 'will' and 'interest' into the subject of knowledge is a further indication of the complexity of the subject. There are also variable approaches to life and expectations based on different modes of up-bringing and environmental conditions. The knowledge gained by a person brought-up in poverty and a restricted environment is 'coloured' differently to a person raised in privileged and well-off conditions.

In addition to our acquaintance with particular existing things, we also have acquaintance with universals, as previously mentioned. These are general ideas such as whiteness, diversity, relationship, etc.. Controversy about the use of language further complicates the problem of knowledge, however, the consideration of language problems are an essential part of Philosophy of Knowledge. The transfer of knowledge from one mind to another depends largely upon the proper understanding and use of language; as does our construction of concepts.

If you wish to pursue the subject I recommend the following reading:

The Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell, Oxford Paperbacks ISBN 0-19-888018-9.

The Problem of Knowledge A.J. Ayer, Penguin Books.

Mind and the World Order (Outline of a Theory of Knowledge) Clarence Irving Lewis, Dover Publications ISBN 0-486-26564-1.

John Brandon

Stephen asked:

Is fear the only evil?

I don't think so, in fact I think fear presupposes an encounter with evil and that fear is an appropriate response to evil.

If fear was the only evil then those who feared genocide would be evil, surely we don't want to say that those who died were evil. Of course it could be said that those who perpetrated genocides did so because of fear and this is certainly evil, so I guess it all depends on who is the fearful one. That's why I said fear presupposes evil. The Nazis were not evil because they feared the Jews (if you will allow me to phrase it like this), the Nazis feared the Jews because the Nazis were evil. In the face of the evil of the holocaust the Jews were justified in succumbing to fear, this did not make them themselves evil. Fear is a response to evil not the cause of it. Imagine what we would be like if we did not fear evil, if we embraced it... that would be the most evil of all evils. But of course fear alone is not enough of a response to evil, it's what I would call a negative response. However, evil cannot be overcome on its own terms. It's true to say that evil cannot be defeated by more force, because that just adds to the misery. I think formulating a positive response to evil is one of the pressing question of modern thought.

Brian Tee

Jules asked:

A problem for desire satisfaction theories of the (non-moral) good is that some desires are plainly bad. A desire to smoke, or drink excessively, commit crimes, lead to undesirable consequences lung failure, heart failure, curtailment of freedom. These desires seem to persist even when we have full information of their possible consequences. My question is what is the best way to make sense of desires that are harmful, and can evolutionary psychology help?

You might look up the literature on "acrasia" or the original (Anglified) Greek: "akrasia". There is also quite a bit of recent literature on prefrontal development, and how it is incomplete in adolescence until the early 20s. The prefrontal lobes are mainly responsible for self-regulation and ethics. As far as the EP perspective goes, you can clearly question the delay between the interactions between reinforcement and limbic circuitry, and prefrontal inhibitory effects. Is it advantageous to have such prolonged development? It may have been unavoidable, given the size of the human brain and head vs. the pelvic opening in women. Perhaps in addition the ease of misleading youth into becoming followers was functional for the preservation of tribes. But that's just speculation on my part.

Steven Ravett Brown

Ben asked:

Do you all think that so many of us are asked not to question or at least discouraged from questioning?

Think of the recent war. Many people thought that any form of inquiry into whether it was right or wrong was "unamerican." Is that really true? Of course not. Do people have a right to question leaders? Parents? Do kids have the same rights as adults? The educated as the uneducated? Should we all have an equal right to ask questions?

>At bottom, Ben, when you look at the issue of "rights" from a completely objective point of view, no-one has any rights at all. We are born without anyone asking us if we want to be born, and we die without anyone asking if we would wish to live longer or even forever. What happens in between is, equally, altogether up to chance, for if you happen to be born in a tent you'll be brought up according to the nomadic way of life or, if you happen to be born in a highly civilised country, you'll grow up as a scion of civilisation and will adopt its queer notion that as a result of this chance, you have "rights". If you were to look at this issue from the point of view of Robinson Crusoe, you'll see at once that this is purely a social issue, and consequently when philosophers or legal writers talk about "rights", they are of course adopting the presupposition that in a society, rights and duties are distributed according to some notion of fairness and/or justice, although they would be hard put to point to more than perhaps a dozen such societies in the whole history of mankind. Most of the time, it's the law of the jungle; even today (as you know) there are plenty of tyrannical governments which have not been touched by any concept of right other than that right is with those who have the power to exercise it.

Now this does not answer your question at all. Nevertheless it is worthwhile, every so often, to put the issue in these terms, to clarify a couple of central points in the debate about rights. Firstly, we are indeed constantly discouraged, even in so-called democratic nations. Wherever there are governments, there is secrecy and cover-up. To exercise rights, either individually or in a group, requires you to combat those whose interest is poised against your's. Simple fact. Secondly, however, the whole problem is strung up from the wrong angle, as so often happens with really important human concerns. Instead of rights, we should be talking about responsibilities. What is being left out of reckoning is this: Being born does not confer rights, it only confers responsibilities. Everyone of us, on reaching a certain age, is confronted with this plain fact. So are animals, which then go on to follow their instincts. But we pride ourselves in brains with which to think. So we think up the notion of rights and forget what we really should be thinking about and doing ...

Well, at least I've answered some part of your question and hopefully given you something to think about. There is of course a vast literature on "rights", on legal rights and social rights and natural rights and so on. You might like to dip into Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Sartre for the flavour of the thing. As for me, however, I'll now step off my soap box and let someone else take over. Still, I would be pleased if in reading any or all of this stuff, you bear in mind what I said about responsibility. It is amazing how such a simple thought can throw such a different complexion on the political and social questions which animate us all, and especially us "free" citizens of the "free" world.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Amanda asked:

Do you think that the existence of evil is problematic? If, so how would you attempt to resolve it? (Aurelius Augustinus)

The existence of evil is not just problematic, it is a fundamental threat to the intelligibility of the world and the pursuit of understanding.

To call an event 'evil' suggests that it cannot be situated in a narrative of our lives in the way a crime or misdeed could. The evil undergone or committed by someone sets that person apart; they lie beyond the limits of our understanding. What is characteristic of evil is that it is excessive, overpowering attempts of comprehension — this conditions its dis-order, evil cannot be appropriated into a scheme or framework of thought. Evil cannot be understood only suffered and this suffering is useless or meaningless. There can be no explanation or justification of evil. This means that even appeals to God's actions and/or plans are futile. In this sense the world must remain unintelligible.

This is the threat to the intelligibility of the world evil presents. There is also the threat to the pursuit of understanding. If evil lies outside comprehension, if we cannot understand why children tortured (to use Dostoevsky's Ivan example) then whatever else we do understand is worthless, it makes no difference to these children whether I can explain why planes don't fall from the sky or why 2+2=4. What's the point then of knowing about planes if it doesn't stop the torture?

Some may think I am committing a non-sequitur here: Just because some things are beyond understanding it does not follow that we should give up the attempt to understand anything.

This objection is based on a view that holds epistemology and ethics separate, after the holocaust, Hiroshima, and in the face of the power of evil I think this is a position we can no longer unquestionably adopt. I am not suggesting that every piece of knowledge has to have some use and be productive, I am suggesting that the pursuit of knowledge can no longer be separated from the threat of evil, we can no longer be satisfied with knowing for knowing sake, we can no longer comfort ourselves or hide in good conscience with the appeal: 'this work is for the benefit of mankind'. (See Badiou's Ethics: an essay on the understanding of evil for some — not necessarily convergent — development of these ideas.)

There is a second objection against this view, that by viewing evil as unintelligible, beyond comprehension I have given up any basis by which to confront evil: If we cannot understand the causes and workings of evil how can we ever hope to eliminate evil?

What adequate response can we make then in the face of evil? One response is to adopt nihilism, holding that because evil exists the world is fundamentally unintelligible and meaningless. However what I want is a response that does justice to the reality of evil and yet makes it possible to reclaim meaning.

From what will have been argued the answer will not be one based on cognition or comprehension, if only because such explanations seek to encompass all events of evil in one wholly satisfactory account, which it seems to me is wrong. Not allowing for difference and otherness in the world is one of the processes evil-doers promote, to adopt the same strategy in opposing evil seems doomed to failure.

The response then will be one based on action. I would argue however that opposition to evil couldn't be meet with forceful (physical) action since this would ultimately necessitate more evil, but only with what Levinas calls 'ethical resistance'. There are at least three kinds of ethical action: 1. Forgiveness of evil 2. The possibility of redemption by atonement or making amends and 3. the Levinasian concept of my infinite responsibility for the other, where my own suffering can be endured if it alleviates an other's.

I don't know which of these or any combination of these would be successful, but I know that none of them is an easy option.

Brian Tee

Elizabeth asked:

Is it morally wrong to drink alcohol which could harm an unborn baby?

You're putting that question in a form which virtually forces the answer of "yes". If you ask, "Is it morally wrong to drink alcohol which might (perhaps we do not know) harm an unborn baby?" then there is room to say, "perhaps it will not harm the baby, and so it may not be wrong". But even then, would you want to take a chance? And in fact, the likelihood is good that drinking alcohol while you are pregnant will harm the fetus, and thus the baby.

Is it morally wrong to do an action which will bring harm to an unborn baby? Really, do I have to answer that? How could it not be, unless you are sure that you will abort the fetus? And what would make you sure of that latter?

Let me make it clear: research strongly supports that there is a good chance that drinking, to any extent, during pregnancy, will harm the fetus, particularly neurologically. Don't do it. Period.

Steven Ravett Brown

Diego asked:

B.F. Skinner wrote a book called Science and Human behavior. I understood this as a philosophy book and not a psychology book. Skinner's ideas seem copies of the pragmatist theory. Any thoughts?

Simon Laplace wrote a book called The Mechanical Heavens, in which the philosophical principles of determinism are singularly well exhibited. But that does not make it a philosophy book. Laplace was a physicist and his book is a work of science. Ernest Mayr wrote a book This is Biology, in which a great deal of scientific philosophy is evaluated, but this does not make it a philosophy book. Mayr was a biologist and his book is a work of science. Both James Jeans and Werner Heisenberg wrote books entitled Physics and Philosophy, where the scientific ideas of philosophers are discussed; but neither of these books escapes being classifiable as a work of science.

The situation is more difficult to define when you come to academic and scholarly texts which occupy the shelves in the philosophy sections of libraries and bookshops. Are these philosophy books? One could put the argument that they are not; that instead we should call them 'works of scholarship' and reserve the title 'philosophy books' to those where an original and/or authentic philosophy is given. This may be too stringent a requirement, but the question is worth putting, in order to illustrate how tenuous a classification can be. So (as a final example) the works of Frege are nowadays listed as philosophy books, and there can be no doubt that Frege contributed fundamental and authentic ideas. But he was a mathematician, not a philosopher. So you might well ask your librarian and/or philosophy teacher to justify this strange rubrication.

And thus to return to Skinner: no, his book is not philosophy. Not by the most generous margin of permissibility can this book (or any of his writings) be allocated to philosophy. It is strictly the writing of a professional on his profession, and as you already stated yourself, that profession is (clinical and experimental) psychology.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Michelle asked:

What is wisdom?

Given that philosophy is 'the love of wisdom' you would perhaps expect philosophers to have an understanding of what it is they love, unfortunately they don't. Or if they do its in a rather limited way, my philosophical dictionary for example defines wisdom as 'a form of understanding that unites a reflective attitude and a practical concern'.

A reflective attitude here would be what is normally construed as the philosophical concern to understand the fundamental nature of the world and its significance for human life. The practical concern would be how to implement this concern ( both difficult and complex aims).

But I remember a quote (from an episode of 'Star Trek Deep Space 9' I think) that puts all this a little more poetically:

"Wisdom is the difference between knowledge and experience."

Brian Tee

Dennis asked:

What can one tell his 25-year-old son, who is incarcerated for one and a half years, to see the "up" side of the circumstance or to see the opportunity to take this experience and turn it into a positive life aspect?

Hard to answer without knowing him or you... he's in a situation where he's surrounded by criminals and about all he can learn from them is how to be a criminal, and maybe how to pass the time in jail. Not too useful outside. I assume the prison has a library; does it have internet access? Can he request books from outside? There is an old book (maybe updated) called College on Your Own which I highly recommend... it gives reading lists for various courses. In other words, what I'm saying is that in my opinion as a person who has never been in prison he needs a) to turn away, mostly, from what he'll learn from other people in prison, and b) to actively pursue learning in some area. Also, to try to keep up with current news and events, so that when he gets out he won't be too disoriented. You might tell him this: that even if he does only one half to one hour per day of learning in some area, that will add up over time to considerable expertise. Surely he has that much time he can read and study. He might

Steven Ravett Brown

Sporty asked:

Why is Greece the place of a few philosophers?

You may be surprised to learn just how many reasons there are. The first and most obvious is that Greece has always been a very hot and dry place; and as you probably know, the best way to assist the body with air conditioning is to open your mouth and breathe heavily. Now once a person has their mouth open, it seems quite a waste not to use it for its dual purpose, speaking, and so it came about that the Greeks, presumably from their naturally argumentative temper and inclination, became exceedingly garrulous. Nietzsche commented on this when he wondered why the Greeks invented tragedy: it was (he said) because they loved grand speeches; and the grander, the better.

Now clearly, garrulity helps with philosophising, if you've got a philosophy to argue about. The Greeks didn't at first; and so some of the older generation went about fossicking in the near East (Babylon, Egypt etc) for morsels of ancient wisdom, and since the patron saint of travellers and thieves was Hermes, it seemed a foregone conclusion that those travellers would pilfer on the grand scale, as indeed they did. Now one of the great scholars of the past, John Burnet, disputes this point by asking, where is the evidence that any of these people had a philosophy that could be 'borrowed' from them? There is, however, plenty of evidence from the Greeks themselves, in the commentaries to many of their philosophers, that Solon and Pythagoras, Plato and Democritus and others as well either went there in person or asked their friends to report what they had seen and heard.

Another factor that facilitated the rise of philosophy in Greece was the smallness of their communities. Athens, which was by far the largest state in Greece, had a population of less than half a million at its height, and that's obviously why Athens had to wait so long before philosophy took hold there. You probably know that it arose initially in quite insignificant colonial places like Elea, Miletus, Ephesus etc, before the greed for knowledge infected the Athenians and they decided to have their own philosophy. This occurred not long after Anaxagoras visited and taught many of the young lions of the city, including one Pericles, and he thereby set the tone for a veritable flood of foreign visitors, who brought a veritable smorgasbord of philosophies with them, so that eventually it was the Athenians who became the principal intellectual gourmands of Greece.

A fourth reason is that the Greeks, but especially the Athenians, were very adept at filling their pockets, and this means that their tummies were always full and they got bored waiting for TV and the Internet to be invented. But as Brecht said, you can't philosophise on an empty stomach, so from this piece of wisdom you can deduce quite readily that a full stomach is on the contrary very conducive to it. Philosophy then became a fashion; at first the philosophers taught in schools and academies, then in cafes and the market place; and later on they invented other means of making themselves noticed, for instance Diogenes lived in a tub in the middle of the street and told passers-bye not to disturb his meditations, whereas in reality he made this aggressive move for no other purpose than to be talked about. You might have heard of Cynicism, which was originally a philosophical trend; but you may not know that the term derives from a Greek word meaning 'dog': well, Diogenes was such a Cynic, and that's why he lived like a dog. — Incidentally, there is an anecdote that Alexander the Great once passed by the tub and exchanged a few "civilities" with Dio-what's-his-name, and was thereafter supposed to have said that if he wasn't Alexander, he would wish nothing more than to be Diogenes. I'm somehow a bit sceptical about the likelihood of this story being true, mainly because Alexander wasn't a Greek and much preferred sword play to tongue play.

Yet another reason (and let this be the last) that might be quoted is that the Greeks were inveterate drunkards. Again, you need not take this from me. Check their poems — with the sole exception of Pindar, who was a very sober person, all the poets of Greece wrote verses about wine swilling non-stop, and there's even a philosopher, Xenophanes, who did the same thing. I don't know of any other nation whose poets were so obsessed with grog, unless it was the Persians. And as you know drink loosens the tongue: 'in vino veritas' (so the Romans said). Here then you have a good reason why, in spite of their thievery and garrulity, the Greeks seemed to uncover a lot of truths about themselves and humans generally.

Anyway, this concludes my roster; maybe others can think of more reasons. For example, I haven't mentioned sex at all, but if the Lysistrata gives any indication, the Greeks were just as obsessed with it as with drink (of which Plato, by the way, gives an outrageously distorted account). And who could fail to observe that they were all colour blind (the men, at any rate)? But these items may have to wait for another day. Meanwhile I hope you've got enough ammunition to put an argument together; though in addition you might just reflect on how come that so many different tribes (albeit speaking the same language) all had these qualities in abundance and that all around them, in the same era, equally bright people didn't. There might be some truth in the old saw that 'it's in the drinking water', after all.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Bas asked:

I'm investigating the topic: boredom. I am now looking into this big human "problem" from an philosophical point of view. Many philosophers from the past have said something about boredom but till now beside some quotes I didn't find much study about this topic. If anyone can direct me further, and anything is helpful, that would be very nice.

The two discussions I know of are Schopenhauer and Heidegger, each is concerned with what and in what manner boredom reveals about the way humans exist.

According to Schopenhauer "boredom is a direct proof that existence is itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence" ('On The Vanity of Existence'). Elsewhere he argues that boredom is at the foundation of human society, this is because "The striving after existence is what occupies all living things and keeps them in motion. When existence is assured to them they do not know what to do with it. Therefore the (second) thing that sets them in motion is the effort to get rid of the burden of existence, to make it no longer felt, 'to kill time' in other words to escape from boredom...it causes beings who love one another as little as men do, to seek one another so much, and this becomes the source of sociality" (The World as Will and Representation vol 1, sec 57).

This is an interesting view, but I wonder if he is correct. When I first read your question I wondered why you called boredom a problem, if it reveals a fundamental fact about the way we live what's problematic about that? But then I remembered what being bored is like, boredom is it seems to me a paradoxical psychological or emotional state to be in. One the one hand there is as Schopenhauer recognises a desire not to be bored, it's not nice to be bored, we don't want to be bored, and yet on the other hand we don't want anything else either, and its not for lack of options or opportunity, there is always something else we can do. And yet if someone suggests something we just shrug our shoulders and moan 'nah, I don't think so'. So boredom consists of two conflicting desires. I think that is the problem we are confronted with. This might be an interesting approach for your studies.

There are two other properties Schopenhauer identifies that I think would be worthwhile pursuing. The first is the fact that boredom revels a desire to 'escape from existence' to make it no longer felt. One of my favourite philosophers, Levinas also uncovers such a desire in his essay appropriately entitled 'On Escape'. He does so in terms of pleasure, shame and nausea and although he does not discuss boredom, it would be an other interesting question as to whether it could be accommodated in his descriptions in that essay, especially given the second property Schopenhauer identifies , i.e. the temporal considerations bound up with boredom (one of Levinas's major concerns is to give an account of who we experience time): 'To kill time".

This is also where Heidegger's interest lies. In his 'The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics; World, Finitude, Solitude' he spends around one hundred pages talking about the various kinds of boredom and there temporal structures, which is a kind of 'being held in limbo by time as it drags'. Obviously I cannot condense 100 pages of investigations, descriptions and analysis here. But this connection between time and boredom is it seems to me the most interesting aspect of boredom.

Brian Tee

Andy asked:

Why is some people goin' to heaven and some goin' to hell? People become religious for various reasons, how they were raised may be stronger than their will to be religious, so is god fair making some headstrong people in every religion ...those who are right won't be doin' it for god.

I'll tell you what... go to the library, or on the web, and read about "the problem of pain". The general issue you address with specfics in your question has been debated by Christians for millennia. Since I'm not a believer, I'm not going to comment on it. But you'll find lots of material under that topic.

Steven Ravett Brown

Alex asked:

Has Zeno's paradox been solved? Or has it been shown that it's not a problem any more? I've only found information concerning the problem with nothing providing a (clear) solution.

There are two aspects to this problem, Alex, and it may be said that under one of these Zeno's problem has been solved while under the other it is essentially insoluble. Under one aspect, the solution was devised in the 17th century, when the calculus of motion was invented. The way it works is not easy to describe in words (a diagram would be easier), but if you can visualise a slope ascending steadily in accordance with the coordinates of Achilles and the turtle, you can see that we are dealing with converging fractions; what is missing from this is the time coordinate. But this is simple for us; so if you now add an arbitrary slope to represent time, all three lines will eventually intersect at one point which fixes the 'instant' where Achilles overtakes the turtle.

From this you can see that the 'defect' of the riddles, as they stood back in the Greek days, was a defect in their mathematics, namely the inability of the Greeks to account for irrational numbers (the point of intersection is such an irrational). We are more generous nowadays, because it does not matter greatly to us whether or not we can assign a precise numerical value to this point; it is sufficient to know that such a point exists and we can easily devise an algorithm to locate it, to any number of decimal places we wish to allow.

As a logical problem, however, the problem is not up for solution at all. It was originally devised as a 'visualisation' of the single-block universe of Parmenides. Zeno determined to show that all movement is an illusion under the logic which appertains to his master's philosophy, of which the main tenet is: 'What is, is.' Something that is, cannot not be. If you pursue this thought to its (logical) consequence, you can show that the idea of something coming into existence or even changing from one state of existence into another defeats our logical faculty. The same applies, naturally, to converging fractions. In logic, any two lines representing, as here, Achilles and the tortoise, go on forever without touching, although this assumes of course that there is no smallest possible quantity. But since logic is not concerned with quantity, the division involved in these fractions has no good reason ever to stop. Today we would of course dispute this, for in a quantitative argument the fractions would coincide at some point or other, because there must be an end eventually to divisibility. But with this argument we are back at cartesian coordinates.

As framed by Zeno, the riddle remains a riddle. The only option, if you are dissatisfied with its logical aspect, is to assert that logic is inapplicable to the riddle, that Zeno in fact proposed a physical argument and was using logic only because the state of Greek mathematics was such as to permit the riddle being posed in such a way. Personally I'm inclined to accept this point of view, but you might try the argument on others to see if they can think of something to dislodge this proposition.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Rajeev asked:

Should athletes thank God after victory?

Thank God for what? For the fact that they won, or conversely that others lost? Thanking God that others are worse of than oneself seems a little ungodly. The view that God favours oneself over others has lead to worse losses than victories. Perhaps it is the case that God is on everyone's side. God supports each athlete equally. But then why should anyone lose at all, why doesn't every one win, why don't they all cross the line at the same time?

If that were the case there would no longer be a race a competition, just God playing with his puppets. But if they are thanking him for winning what does this amount to? For including them in his game?

Isn't one of the main purposes for entering any competition the satisfaction gained from knowing the achievement one has accomplished? If so wouldn't that satisfaction be diminished if one found out that it wasn't due to oneself that victory was gained, but some external factors. If someone fixed the timing of a race it (Not only would it not be a real victory) wouldn't feel like a real victory. Similarly if God is the cause of me winning, then is it really my victory?

The other alternative is that God has nothing to do with the competition, he favours no one, and he just lets them run. In which case what do they thank God for, he didn't do anything? Perhaps just that Thank you God for not interfering, for letting me prove myself. In other words; Thanks for Nothing!

(Perhaps this is the best way to understand the old saying that god helps those who help themselves.)

Brian Tee

Liz asked:

Comment on the following statement: "Empirical science can prescribe nothing — since 'prescribing' must be done by a 'prescriber'.

You really want a "comment" on this? Ok... it seems silly to the point of meaningless to me. It seems to be a rhetorical device designed to discredit science and to set up an argument for religious authority, by creating categories which seem meaningful but actually aren't. How about that?

Steven Ravett Brown

Dennis asked:

I was wondering, how do we define real? Yes, I know, that's a direct quote from 'The Matrix'. It seems to me we're all slaves of senses and the way our bodies seem to work. It's all mechanics. But feelings seem to be more real, the reason you're feeling doesn't have to be real, but that you feel is a fact; because you feel it. But can we make up our feelings, aware or unaware. And if we make up what is true for us, is that bad, our just something you should adapt to?

'The Matrix' is a very fine and challenging movie; but don't forget that ultimately it was written for you to be entertained and only incidentally challenged in your philosophical beliefs. Moreover, it is heavily slanted in favour of an approach to the mind via the so-called cognitive sciences, whose presuppositions have yet to establish their credibility. Although, therefore, the dialogue is unusually intelligent for a movie, the action sequences in large part contradict their underlying theory. And if you've been unfortunate enough to sit through Part II, you'll probably have come to a recognition that there is not enough to carry conviction throughout a saga. It would have been much better to just 'put the question' than to attempt an answer, because the risk of triviality is overwhelming. QED.

Having said this, I will address only one other part of your question, namely the (unfounded and erroneous) assumption that 'it's all mechanics'. I invite you to redress this fallacy as a matter of great urgency, for as long as you (and anyone else who shares it) maintain this view, you will not come anywhere within zillions of the mere possibility of understanding what reality is. This is because 'reality' is a two-fold thing, firstly of the body and secondly of the mind, but there is no mechanism involved for either of these two. Consult a biological text (or even a picture book) and acquaint yourself with the entity called 'organism'. When you have done this, you will find a lot of reality in the way organisms make a living in the most multifarious circumstances and conditions, from the sulphurous furnaces near the molten core of the earth, where bacteria who revel in the fine nomenclatures of hyperthermofilia and pyrobalum ply their trade, to the icy wastes of Siberian winters, where psychrophiles engage in a strange altruistic suicidal ritual in order to save their fellow creatures from death by freezing. Neither here nor anywhere else in the world of living things can these activities be reduced to mechanical functionality. Throughout, a residue of irreducible faculty, a will to exert these functions, prevails, and most obviously in humans.

You said so yourself by pointing at feeling; and hence it is the exclusive emphasis in your thinking that is at fault. Feelings, too, can be described materialistically as a kind of 'chemical jugglery', a balancing act to provoke intentionality; but anyone who might be lured down this path to the conclusion that 'it's all in the chemistry' would find every relevant avenue towards a proper understanding of feelings barred. Feelings, like the mechanical whirring of muscles, tendons, cartileges etc depend on some faculty to move them, which is not part of the pull-and-shove causality of materialism.

Observe, in 'The Matrix', the window into 'real' reality, which is the mission of Morpheus and his followers to reclaim for humans and which on the strength of certain prophecies they believe to be a talent imbued in Neo. Note that in the film the parallel realities are mutually exclusive and that the characters can be coupled only to one or the other. What I criticised above concerns the (not very adequately founded) conception of the possibility of physical movement in the illusory domain concocted by the machines, which we are to understand as the creation of our manipulated nervous systems. This entails several weighty problems which are not glossed in the movie (the impact of the film results not from its dialogue, but from the stirring cinematography). Thus: the nervous system is not a standalone utility, but involved in the totality of all electrochemical activity of the body; to think otherwise — and this is how it is depicted in 'The Matrix' — is a capital error.

For consider that it might be easy enough to deceive the tongue to savour the taste of cheese, which in "reality" may be any cheese substitute you can think of (cork?): but this can not be the end of the story. For even your taste buds trigger appropriate chemical signals to the digestive system, influence the blood circulation and a thousand or million other correlated functions; and of course the stomach extracts nutrients and cannot be fooled to "sense" food constituents where there aren't any. In the end, the whole idea of mechanisms, epecially those which execute machine-like functions, is derived from the biological realm in the first place. Just think of the many interesting things you can do with fingers, hands and arms. What are our mechanical contraptions in their majority, if not imitations of body units, or of particular "worker" organisms? We feel contemptuous of mechanisms because they are cold and dead, but in extending this to biological functions that are not mechanical, we then profess to despise them for an ill-understood "mechanicalness" and blame them for something which they're not and don't do. And these are minor issues, because a sense like taste is relatively primitive compared to vision or hearing, which engage not merely our perceptive and hedonic faculties, but most especially the mind.

It is here, with this topic, where the movie makes its fundamental 'statement'. It assumes, and presupposes in accordance with certain present-day paradigms (all which are valid merely 'for the time being'), that mind is an emergent phenomenon of brain activity, a kind of software written by evolution to run on the wetware inside our skulls; but you need understand little more than the meaning of the term 'infinite regress' to see that thereby the problem of the homunculus or the 'ghost in the machine' which Gilbert Ryle sought to banish from intelligent discourse, has returned via the back door. This will not do; so much is evident. Depending on your own level of erudition, I would suggest you pick up one of Gerald Edelman's books: his scientific writings if you can handle embryology; if not his Bright Air, Brilliant Fire. These are written by a scientist who knows his facts and has a good appreciation of what reality means to an organism, from the instant of its birth to its moment of exit — from reality. In this traversal of life, the organism traverses reality. Non-reality is the state that exists before and after. It does not surround the organism. You might like to ponder this in the light of your remark of "making up what is true for us".

The issue of 'what is reality (to us)?' boils down eventually to this. Everything experienceable to an organism is reality; illusions, delusions, fears and hopes are part of this. But there are (I should say obviously) many layers of reality, and to some of these we don't have access or partial access only. It is the latter which are the subject matter of 'The Matrix'. Without producing a thesis, I can say little more now than that the 'manufactured reality' in which the humans live and work and play in the film is a highly improbable state for an organism to function in; it is evolutionarily speaking a non sequitur and would be 'found out' rather more quickly than suggested in the movie. We live and survive as bodies because we acquire and store concrete knowledge of forms of reality which comprise our habitat, and this reality tends to exert itself cruelly if offended against too long. Think of the comparison with drugs manufactured by the body as part of its endocrinal routine: if these are artificially injected, the result is inevitably hallucination, thus you see here an analogy to the "Matrix" scenario. But in their majority the hallucinations I speak of are (at least) harmful, and in many cases destructive or even fatal. So while omnilateral delusion may furnish a brilliant talking point and highlight certain common human dilemmas, it doesn't measure up to "reality" all that well.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Daniella asked:

What are the names of books that John Locke wrote?

The works of Locke can be divided into those that deal with exclusively philosophical themes and his political writings.

His main work is the monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding which you can probably find as a e-text.

Also important are his:

The conduct of the Understanding
Two treatise of civil Government
First letter on Toleration
Two tracts on Government
Essays on the law of nature
Some considerations of the consequences of the lowering
  of interest and raising the value of money
The reasonableness of Christianity
Thoughts concerning education

Clarissa asked:

What is the first philosophical question of Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, Pythagoras and Democritus? This is my assignment in my philosophy class.

'Is there a basic stuff from which everything in the world is made?' Mind you, they all proposed different answers, but you won't expect me to write your essay for you, so I cannot spare you the effort of researching this further. But since all these thinkers are known as 'Presocratics', you should have no trouble locating source material

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Edward asked:

A professor asked our class, one student at a time, "how do you eat strawberries." The "correct" answer is "one at a time." What does this mean?

Your professor is trying to be clever and to make you think about the meaning of "how". If "how" refers to the mechanism or actions of eating, then "one at a time" is one possible correct answer... I guess. Another might be something like, "by chewing and swallowing". He wants you to see that saying "with cream" or something like that does not tell us "how" we eat strawberries. He (I'm arbitrarily saying "he") seems to be doing a fairly good job of teaching this, since you're thinking about it to the extent of asking us.

Steven Ravett Brown

Patricia asked:

When I studied Philosophy at Surrey University in the 1970s, I remember our lecturer reading from a book which cited the case of a foreigner visiting Oxford who asked the question: "Where is the University?" I cannot remember the reply to the question or the title of the book or the philosopher in question. However, I am writing a book about sources of information for the construction industry. Not only are the relevant organisations diverse and fragmented but some of the established sources (libraries for instance) are becoming more distributed and virtual, with company libraries decentralising.

I would love to locate the answer to the philosophical question, its source, the wording and the philosopher concerned. It might make a suitable quote for the concluding chapter of my book.

The quote is from Gilbert Ryle's 'Categories' (1938), in which he tells of someone visiting Oxford and, having been promised a tour of the university, and having seen the lecture theatres, the sports hall the libraries and the administrative buildings, then asks "but where is the university". He uses this as an example of a 'category error', in this case the visitor is mistakenly thinking that 'university' belongs to the same category of entities as a 'building'. This was used to illustrate Ryle's argument that when we puzzle over what 'mind' is, we are making the 'category error' of assuming it is some sort of quasi-physical entity, leading to what he called The Dogma of the Ghost in the Machine- the view that the mind is some sort of ghostly entity independent of the body.

Glyn Hughes

This may be a reference to Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind. In Chapter 1 section 2 (see note), Ryle introduces and explains the concept of 'Category Mistake'. He gives the example of the foreigner visiting Oxford for the first time. He is shown the colleges, the libraries, playing fields, museums, registry etc. He then asks 'But where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live and work and where the administrators and the rest work. But I have not yet seen the University ....'

It then has to be explained to him that the University is not another 'collateral institution' or some 'ulterior counterpart' to the colleges and other buildings he has seen. The University is just the way all that he has already seen is organised and co-ordinated.

The visitor's mistake was to assume that the University belongs to the same class or category as Christ Church, the Bodleian and the Ashmolean. That it is just another member of that class or category of things. In simple, the visitor has made a category mistake.

Ryle's general purpose is to argue that people such as Descartes, who talk about the mind as if it were a non-material substance separate from the physical body and extra to it, commit a similar category mistake because really talk about the mind and mental states is actually just talk about the body and bodily behaviour.

He refers to the official Descartean doctrine as 'the dogma (or myth)of the Ghost in the Machine'. That now notorious phrase indicates the tone and style of the rest of the book which is written so engagingly that The Concept of Mind is one of the few philosophy books that even beginners can actually read through from cover to cover and enjoy doing so. It became known as 'Le style, Ryle'.

[Note: the precise reference is page 16 of the Hardback edition first published by Hutchinson in 1949, with many subsequent reprints.]

John Sartoris

The book you are after is: Ryle, G.(1949) The Concept of Mind. Penguin.

The quote you are after starts from a paragraph beginning on page 17.

"A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks 'But where is the University? I have seen where the members of the College live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University.' It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The university is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized." [Ryle 1949:17-18.]

Julian Bennett

Dennis asked:

This is a great service, so before I start using this way of asking more often, I would like to thank you because of this service. And please excuse my language failures, I'm not English!

Now, my question is: What about love? Defining reality and life is nice, but love... Love is the answer, like the Beatles said it best. And Philosophers seem to ignore or overlook the most important question of all: Is love the answer? It is most likely that I'm not aware of philosophers which do so, therefore I would like to know some names and if there aren't many, why?

I agree with you that Ask a Philosopher is a great service. Not only for those was ask, but as much for those who answer.

To start with your question: I think many good philosophers realize that love is very important. On the other as well there are many others who act like taking part in a competition of quarreling.

Your English is perfect, it isn't my native language either. So necessarily I keep things simple.

To define love is not that easy. But I'll try.

Let's begin wondering what means loving yourself. That seems to me accepting and liking your own approach to life (creativity). That bring us to loving others: accepting and liking THEIR approach to life. On a completely different level things play like sexual attraction (equally important but different).

Is love the answer? yes I think so, if seen as accepting EVERY approach to life (or system of thought). Seen that way 'love' is like relativism.

But mind that this also means that 'hate' as the dual partner of love is just as important. It means accepting a way of thinking, BUT disagreeing. It can't be missed in reinforcing self-love. Discussion, fighting, quarreling etc. helps to steer on the endless way to truth

Henk Tuten

Ian asked:

I was recently reading a piece suggesting that 'creativity is an adult achievement and that talk suggesting children can be creative was simply a kind of nonsense'. I am very tempted by the opposite conclusion: not that adults cannot be creative — they clearly can — but that it is easier for young children to be creative than we adults, unconstrained as they are by convention etc. anyone have any thoughts on the issue?

Assessing easiness isn't very easy! This would especially be the case if the nature of creativity changes through the life span, which it seemingly does. Jean Piaget, the child psychologist, concluding through research with children that fictional inventiveness begins between the ages of 2 and 7. So, this is just the beginning of inventiveness and at this stage creativity would hardly be at its peak. Piaget's finding was that abstract thought develops from the age of 11 onwards. The abilities of the mind develop and change greatly through childhood and adults have quite different capacities.

Kendall Walton in his book Mimesis as Make-Believe argues that art, or representational fiction, is an extension of childhood play. The urge to make-believe with mud-pies and playing with dolls gets transformed into the ability to create and/or appreciate art. It is a continuous development. It might be easier to create games as a child than to appreciate art as an adult, but it is difficult to assess because the nature of the creation is so different and the adult has more scope for emotional satisfaction, such as in sport rather than art. Also in some individuals there is probably is more of need for make-believe. Make-believe is comforting.

If Walton is right there isn't conventional constraint on creativity, but a natural development. As adults we would just rather write a novel or read one than play with dolls or play cops and robbers. Child's play is alien to most adults and doesn't satisfy any need at all.

What is interesting here is why it is that some people are artistically creative and others are mere appreciators. I have no idea why this is so, but it does seem that the more you appreciate a certain form of art, the more you are likely to produce one of its kind.

Since the impulse to creativity is the opposite of the impulse to destruction, creativity is a good outlet of energy we naturally have. I don't think there are conventional constraints but believe that play and art are both comforting and consoling. I'm sure Iris Murdoch once said that art should not be consoling. And very great art, perhaps, should not be. But if art and creativity function as extension of childhood play I don't see why it shouldn't be so.

Rachel Browne

If you get away for the moment from the sophisticated psychospeak of professionals in these areas and concentrate just on the concept of creativity (it would help if you had first hand experience of bringing up children, the more the better), then you would see at once that the activities of children are misnamed as 'creativity'. They are play and pretence, of which however it may be said that they represent minds gearing up for creativity. What many researchers miss here is a distinction quite elementary: that 'creativity' is a concept which relates to (a) making something new out of something that already exists and placing it into a bounded conceptual environment with the effect of conferring a new and integral semantic on it, or (b) making something ('inventing') by the discovery of connections and relations among existing things (including ideas) which had not been noticed before.

Now it must immediately be conceded that a great deal of grown-up's activities are also nothing more than play and pretence. One of the fashions of today is to call certain activities 'creative' for no better reason than they resemble in some ways the actual creative activity of actually creative people. There is a lot of wishful thinking in this, and one must wonder sometimes whether all this undisciplined pseudocreativity has any purpose at all. For instance, to encourage adolescents at school or mature age students to write 'poems' and fictions might have some didactic or paedagogic value, but hardly measures up to sponsoring creativity except in that very loose sense in which it is used in such situations. The fly in the ointment is not, essentially, the dispute over whether children are creative, or whether humans as a whole are creative, but what kind of conceptuality we associate with that term.

I might leave this thought for you to ponder on your own. Creativity is a potential, and on the whole (viewed over the whole evolutionary passage of homo sapiens) a clear distinguishing mark that sets us off, as a species, from other species. But this is no excuse for bludgeoning the concept to death with cardboard swords or trifling around with it by pushing it in front of everyone's nose as something you must do for 'self-expression'. That way, the more likely thing to happen is a complete watering down of creativity to just mucking around with the idle notion that every activity which does not directly serve our needs has creative potential and then you might wish to give a good reason for disallowing the term to gambling. The point is, that from a philosophical perspective, creativity is the single most important criterion to confer hope on us and a belief in the future of mankind on this planet, in spite of the catastrophic mess which we are pleased to call our 'management' of the habitat. But just as little as one swallow makes a summer, so a stanza or a splotch of paint or the playing of children do not comprise creativity. But like the swallow, they are harbingers.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Colin asked:

I have two questions:

1. Can anyone make a statement that is not either a statement of what is possible or what is actual or one that states what is necessary?

2. Is it the case that in responding to questions of a 'what is x' nature — e.g. what is love, what is a question, what is a car, what is philosophy etc. — the nature of the response (apart from I don't know!) will be either structural or functional or concerned with the origins of the thing?

Can anyone make a statement that is not either a statement of what is possible or what is actual or one that states what is necessary?

answer: 1. You mean, like: "triangles have four sides"?

Or do you want something like, "unicorns weigh 250 lbs"?

Or, "this statement is false"?

As you can see, there are many statements that meet your criteria. The above are three examples of types of such statements.

2. As for your next question... when you tell me what "structural", "functional", and "origins" mean, I'll answer it.

Steven Ravett Brown

Alain asked:

Does the infinity exist?

"When we say anything is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the thing named, having no conception of the thing, but of our own inability."

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan ch.III

If there is one thing that seems to characterise the philosopher's discussions of infinity, it is that the discussion, like its subject, seems to have gone on and on forever without even the remotest suggestion of a possible conclusion. Now, I have no intention of re-investigating the weird world of 'transfinite numbers' or debating the merits of 'infinity orders'. What you want to know is whether infinity is actually a valid concept.

What we do know is that we cannot, by definition, place a limit on infinity, which means that we struggle to offer up any precise word-image of the term. But that doesn't seem to have stopped even the most distinguished thinkers from invoking it. Much as I might wish to avoid seeming impious, I think we have to ask what sort of reasoning led Karl Popper to state that "our ignorance must necessarily be infinite"? Why was Aristotle so certain that "infinitely various are the incidents in one man's life"? What made Alfred Whitehead sure that "we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite" or led Leibniz to assert that God "selects from an infinite number of possibilities"? And so on. Has any great thought gone into the invocation of this ultimate pseudo-scientific substitute for 'god'? It seems not.

But who can blame them? When we're confronted with something which we know carries a range of possibilities, and we immediately see that the range is beyond ready calculation, it is all too easy to just throw in the word 'infinite'. What is all too tricky is to take one of those obviously infinite sets and try to rigorously check whether it does indeed present options without limit. If we're going to investigate this we'll need to find something, which is self-evidently infinite, which is clearly defined and which is known and understood by almost everyone. There are many possibilities, but I will choose to have a look at pictures. It is utterly obvious that the options available in constructing a picture, or a painting, or a photograph or pattern or piece of graphics is limitless. The number of possible pictures is infinite indeed. Or is it?

So, how many possible pictures are there? Let us begin with perhaps the simplest form of picture known to most people today; those austere little icons that litter our computer screens with their crude, and now very well-recognised images of a document, a printer a magnifying glass or whatever. It is clear that there can only be a limited number of such icons, because they are constructed within a bounded system — the abilities of the computer screen. In fact, the system is severely bounded in that, conventionally, such icons are constructed on a grid just sixteen pixels square. If we further restrict the possibilities by allowing the use of only two colours, black and white, how many possible different icons could be devised? What would your guess be? A few hundred? A few thousand? Perhaps a million or so? In fact the total number of possibilities can be calculated from the number of options per pixel raised to the power of the total number of pixels, in this case 2 to the power of 256. This is such an extraordinarily large number that it is probably worth giving in full:

115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,
269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936

Is this not remarkable? In just a tiny little grid, with so few options, the total number of possibilities is a number so vast that it is difficult to find some understandable way to express it. One might point out that the length of the list of possible sixteen-grid black-and-white images is roughly equivalent in size to 112 times the age of the universe in seconds multiplied by the volume of the universe in cubic millimetres, though that barely makes it clearer. Within that list is enumerated, not only every possible computer icon, but also everything which can possibly be expressed using the same system. So there is every letter of every alphabet, whether known, or lost, or yet unmade. There is every character which can be drawn with less than nine vertical or horizontal strokes, including virtually all in every pictographic script.

But where has this got us? The magnitude of the answer may be surprising, but it is not surprising that there is a clearly definable answer because we are dealing with a clearly bounded system. Surely, this cannot be true of pictures in general? No matter what picture is made, what photograph taken, what pattern formed or what arrangement of lines or colours, no matter how abstract, there is surely always the possibility that that picture itself could be subtly altered in colour, or viewed from a different angle, making a new picture. The moustache, it seems, can be drawn onto the Mona Lisa in an infinite number of ways, because the system within which it is drawn is not bounded by pixels or by anything else. This is not in fact the case.

A picture is, by definition, something, which can be seen by a human eye. It is very probably the case that dogs, or crayfish, see images of some sort. But 'picture' is the name we give to such images, and, as far as we are aware, neither dogs, nor crayfish nor any creature other than humans ever gives names to anything. "A picture", as Wittgenstein put it (admittedly in a slightly different context) "is a fact". So, let us try to see if the total number of those facts, a purely human thing, has an upper limit.

But the human eye doesn't resolve an image as definable pixels. Or does it? Visual information is collected through some 120 million rod and cone cells in each eye. But these are unevenly distributed and the information from them processed by the brain in such a way that exceptional differences or exceptional similarities between signals carry more weight. However, no neurology is actually needed to find out what the resolution of the human eye is — a simple home experiment with a large grid of coloured dots shows that we can resolve, at very best, about 3,000,000 pixels and about 1,000,000 colours and shades. So the total number of possible different images which could be seen is 1000000 to the power of 3000000. This is a staggeringly large number, but it is most certainly not infinite. In fact, you could say that it is almost infinitely less than infinity.

That figure of 1M to the power of 3M is the length beyond which the list of all the paintings ever made, and yet to be made, in every possible variety of combinations and colour varieties, can never go. It is the upper limit of the length of the list of all possible wallpaper designs, of every possible representation of every fractal. It has every frame from every movie, with subtitles in every language. It has every visible page of text, including every page, past or as yet un-thought of, on this website and the entire text of the as-yet unwritten e-mail demonstrating that this thesis is wrong, and that in every individual form of handwriting and in every colour and every language and every typeface. It is the list of all your, and everyone else's, holiday photographs. It is the size of the list of all possible sights.

But what if one of those pictures had some element in it altered by less than the resolution of the eye? It would seem that this would constitute a different picture and the validity of the assumption that there are indeed an infinite number of possible pictures could be restored. However, if the alteration, say adding a little dot, could not be resolved by a human eye, which is to say it is smaller than any pixel, then it would not, as far as a human is concerned, be a different picture.

Now, it may well be the case that an infinite number of images could be constructed, though I, nor any human, cannot know for certain, for that imperceptible alteration to one of them surely cannot be said in any meaningful way to exist for us? This is the old, old argument of realism versus idealism, yet with, I think for the first time, some numbers to suggest where the boundary between the two might lie.

I've only been using pictures as an example, because it seems so obvious that, whatever the picture is, you could always make a different one, so that the number of possible pictures is infinite. I hope I've shown you that this isn't true. There is an actual top limit to the number of possible pictures. And so there is an actual, numerable, top limit to everything — the 'top of tops' being the number of possible arrangements of all possible entities in the universe. That is so extraordinary a number that I cannot even begin to think what it might be like, but, as long as you believe that the universe is physically finite, then there must be an actual top limit of possibilities as well.

So, does the infinite exist? I think there's no objection to the use of 'infinity' as an abstract mathematical construct. But when it is taken out of the realm of pure numbers and is taken to represent things in the real universe then the simple answer is NO.

Glyn Hughes

If you think it does, then it does. There is a concept which you might have encountered, 'the space of all possible x'. This is an infinite space, the same space where your thought resides. But beware of the error lying in wait for anyone who takes these things literally: this 'space' is not real, but a conceptual space. There is no possible proof, because the only creatures known to us who are bothered thinking up such conundrums are humans. We do have this (seemingly ineradicable) tendency to believe that the only reality there can be is physical reality. This belief inevitably gets us into hot water when we then wish to rationally discuss what 'mental' reality is. For one, it is not physical. Is it not 'real', then? Others, following the same train of argument propose that mental reality is the 'only' reality. Well, which is what?

You can see the problem, can't you?

Now I'm not sure if with your question you also meant to ask, is the universe infinite? is God truly and absolutely omnipotent? But if you did, I would answer this in the negative. The whole idea of an infinite volume is based on our (very limited) understanding of extension. We only have experience of finite space, of a finite life span, of finite powers, so in such theoretical situations where we suppose those limitations to be transcended, we also suppose that we are talking about physical reality. Hence the conflict (as above).

Be aware that others might argue for the opposite.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Malcolm asked:

This is a great service, I could end up monopolising this site!

Could you clarify and answer some things for me:

1. In the Tractatus, does Wittgenstein hold the view that the logical structure of our language is misunderstood? And does he change this in the later Philosophical Investigations? Also in the Tractatus I would like to know why the picture theory of meaning is an improvement on the theories of his predecessors.

2. What is the point Nagel is making in "What's Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

3. In the preface of Human all too Human, Nietzsche refers to the problem of hierarchy, but what is it?

4. Would it be correct to say Descartes' dualism is a type of substance dualism? I was once told this was an unfair classification.

5. Where is it argued, and by whom, that man understands practicality before actuality, and not the other way around? I mean this as an existential question.

6. Does Ayer's, Language, Truth and Logic have or assume an ontology, even though it claims that metaphysics (ontology as well, perhaps) is meaningless? I ask this because I wonder if there is a link between meaning and existence? Surely anything that is meaningless does not exist, and accordingly, everything that has meaning must exist (that is not to say physically). Even if it is a lump of dirt or a rock, these things, even though perhaps insignificant and for many people not worth considering, still have meaning for us. That is when we see them, we see meaning with them simultaneously.

7. Could I also ask if anyone knows what this title is in English, Von den ersten und letzten dingen by Peter Heller?

1. Yes, he explicitly says so in the introduction and this is what the Tractatus is about. Wittgenstein was influenced by Frege and Russell.

Frege invented predicate calculus or formal logic which he thought this was hidden in the grammar of language. Russell also worked in symbolic logic but differed from Frege in his analysis of the logical structure underlying sentences. One reason for this was that he wanted to account for talk of non-existents to stay in line with a two-valued logic. I am not a logician and cannot give you the details, but as I understand it, Wittgenstein found formal logic empty and general. Formal logic and truth functions, for Wittgenstein, didn't tell us anything about the nature of concepts and objects.

Logic is concerned with the truth and the truth is about facts in the world we think about and Russell and Frege had failed to show how logic plays a role in our thoughts about the world. Wittgenstein thought that generalised propositions of formal logic showed the structure of an argument rather than mapping the way language is related to the world unless more is said about the mind as representational. A proposition in formal logic can be made to relate to the world by replacing the symbols for words in our language but unless we translate such propositions into an understanding of the world as a whole, each proposition is atomistic or self-contained. You couldn't understand 'The wall is red' without knowing more things and being related to the world. So for Wittgenstein, the world is a totally of facts and propositions are not self-contained, but internally related. You could not understand a formal proposition translated into a statement about the world on its own without understanding the symbols for concepts and objects and how these relate to other symbols.

Or so I understand it.

As such, I think that Wittgenstein's picture theory tied the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language tightly together and placed them in relation to the world and it is the world which makes statements and thoughts true and false. Frege was mainly concerned with logic and its relation to mathematics, as was Russell, and he held that a proposition which is true refers to the "true". Wittgenstein was more realistic than this and said that there is no object which is "the truth".

There isn't agreement about how much Wittgenstein changed his views. The Tractatus is concerned with the conditions of a logically perfect language but ordinary language is not logically perfect and is extremely vague. Also a lot of our talk is not about facts at all as Wittgenstein points out in the Tractatus. In the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein is not talking about logically perfect languages but ordinary languages.

2. Nagel is arguing that a reductive theory of the mind-body leaves no place for a theory of consciousness, since it is logically compatible with theories that reduce the mental to the functional or causal that there may be no consciousness.

So the point he is making is that consciousness, as the subjective character of experience is a fact but it cannot be represented. We believe that the bat has conscious experience but could not imagine what this is like without actually being a bat. Consciousness in general could never be captured in a theory because it essentially involves a point of view. Nagel says that phenomenological facts about humans form a common type and we can imagine the subjective experience of other humans but this cannot lead to psycho-physical reduction because the more a theory leads away from the human viewpoint, or subjective experience, the further away from capturing the mental a theory will be. You cannot capture the reality of the mental because the point of view, or the way things appear to a subject is just what consciousness is like.

3. Well, Nietzsche calls the problem of hierarchy 'our' problem referring to those who, like Nietzsche, have been able to separate themselves from common values and are masters of themselves. They have risen 'upwards' internally. Not a widespread problem. I agree that it reads as if it is more horizontal, like a personal history.

4. Well, Descartes claimed that he was a "thinking thing" and so he was distinct from his body which was essentially extended. If a thinking thing is not extended it need not be a substance but it is questionable exactly what it is. It looks like some strange ethereal sort of thing. But would the ethereal be a thing? A spiritual essence isn't what we understand by substance because it lacks physical spatial extension. For sure, Descartes can't be a property dualist because a property is not a thing but a quality of a thing. The decisive point is whether the thinking thing can exist/ persist/ subsist or whatever without physical substance. Then it is separate, but whether is it a "substance" or not is doubtful if we understand spatial extension by substance.

5. Well, Piaget thought children interact with objects before they objectify them as actualities and most child psychologists and psychoanalysts would take the same view. But Piaget wasn't an existentialist. Sartre, one of the main existentialists, saw consciousness as an activity which is a practicality, but then so did Kant who was not an existentialist. Actually, I don't understand this question. We don't "understand" practicality before actuality. Understanding comes with communication or language use. Only if you can express something behaviourally (not necessarily linguistically, but you will be communicating) or say what do you mean can you really be said to understand.

6. Well, Ayer was a verificationist rather than a realist. The realist assumes an actual ontology of things external to the mind, but for the verificationist you can only know what you can ascertain to be certain, such as sense data. But this is experience-dependent and can't be said to exist as a real ontology. Ayer thought you could have meaning regardless of the nature of ontology/ existence. Value statements were held by him to have "emotive meaning". In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein held that we cannot speak truly of that which is other than factual or possible fact. Values don't have truth conditions, and emotive meaning would have to refer to the subject rather than truth conditions in the world.

I don't see, and never have done, why truth conditions have to be something external to the mind in an ontology. There are different types of meaning. There are emotional value assessments which are true for us and aesthetic evaluations which we assert. There is a mind-world relation where meanings are in part determined by what is external to us but for other terms truth might be defined as correct use. The term 'true' is defined in many ways, and I don't see why meanings only have to relate to the physical world either.

But the mind has a part to play in creating meanings and what we are prepared to say exists. A 'lump of dirt' is the way we look at it. It is difficult to see it as a lot of individual grains. It isn't a matter of agreement or correct use for 'lump of dirt' but a result of the way we just do perceive things due to the nature of our brains.

7. This translates as 'Of the first and last things' which is metaphysics. Thanks to the bi-lingual Hubertus Fremerey for this!

Rachel Browne

1) I'll let someone who likes W deal with this one. I admire him, but I don't like most of his stuff.

2) Generally, that we have only first-person access to phenomenal consciousness. We don't know whether a bat senses sounds the way we do colors, for example. We can say a lot about what it's like to be a bat, in some ways... but not in that way. Does a bat have a mind? If so, does it, when it hears some particular frequency, have the same experience we have when we see, just to take an example, the color red? Nagel's point is that we don't know.

3) I don't know.

4) "Unfair"? An odd description. Given that Descartes attempts to preserve free will by arguing for a "soul", which surely is a mental substance, since it's not subject to physical laws (otherwise how could it bypass them?), and which is separate from the "body" (connected through the pineal gland, according to him)... substance dualism seems right on the mark to me. What else? Property dualism? So what is the common substance and how could it have such disparate properties?

5) Sounds like Heidegger to me... but you might go back to Aristotle for this one, I believe. Sorry for the lack of refs.

6) I don't know enough Ayer to answer your first question... but I can play with it. Yes I'd say he had to have an ontology, and also that he could not claim that he does not (which you do not seem to know). Given the normal stance of the functionalists, you still have to assume that there are objects which you can manipulate, even if you can only know about them through your manipulations.

But as for a link between meaning and existence, you really should read Heidegger on that one. In Being and Time he is, if I am understanding him correctly, quite definitely claiming such a link. I do not agree. Just because when we see something we assign meaning to it (and I do agree with that) does not as far as I am concerned imply anything one way or another about its existence. Think about robots, for example... they manipulate the world, so in a sense the world they manipulate exists for them... at least functionally. But they have no minds... so there is no meaning for them. One might also use the same argument for plants. Does the world exist for a plant? Surely it does, in some sense... plants are utterly dependent on an external world, and manipulate it continuously. But they are not aware of that world, and so it has no meaning for them. Now, we could say that the world had meaning for a plant... but that's our meaning, not the plant's.

7) "Of [or about] the first and last things". Really, you might think about using a dictionary. They can be very helpful in looking up meanings.

Steven Ravett Brown

I can see why you are threatening us with the intention to monopolise the service! To answer all this (and we don't want to be flippant, do we?) is going to require a team. Still, there are some questions here that can be answered reasonably quickly, No. 2 and (I think) No. 7, and so I'll give you answers to those, hoping that one or the other of my colleagues will tackle the others.

Q2 (Nagel) can best be answered by rephrasing the title. There is a considerable literature on this little essay, but ultimately it all boils down to this: 'If a lion could speak, he would not be speaking lion-speak'. Speaking, in short, entails a human-type consciousness and is grounded in the type of expressive faculties we possess. So a lion could not, in fact, speak like a human, even if the animal possessed a vocabulary. There would be an unresolvable conflict between its experience of the world and the manner of communicating it. The lion could not speak it, and we would not understand, try as we might. Likewise, we cannot experience the world as a bat does. Instruments may do (e.g.) echo location for us, but we have no access to what it feels like to see with one's ears. In a word, each creature or species is subject to the specificity of its own evolutionary patterns and experiences, and these are not willy-nilly portable from one to another.

About Q7: I don't know the book or if there is an English translation, but I assume it could only bear a verbatim title, thus: 'Of the first and last things', meaning 'of ultimate questions'. Unless intended sarcastically, the title would therefore reflect that the text is about life and death.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Michael asked:

Can one be aware that one is not thinking?

A simple answer to this is Yes. This is because we are not always thinking. When we go to bed we hopefully stop thinking (otherwise we will get a troubled nights sleep). Hence we an be aware that we are not thinking. To put it bluntly we can say that we are aware that we are not thinking when we are not thinking! Most of us from time to time cease to think about things and engage in other activities like listening to music etc.

I can't see why anyone would want to deny this answer unless they identified themselves with their thoughts for some reason. Maybe you are thinking of Descartes here?

Maybe you are thinking of the question of whether we can be AWARE OF not thinking, rather than AWARE THAT we are not thinking?

This looks like a stronger test because we may assume that we can be aware of things only if they are present, and so we cannot be aware of the negation of things. Since not thinking is the negation of thinking we might assume that it is impossible to be AWARE OF not thinking because not thinking can never be present to us.

The argument may go something like this:

1) Awareness is always of something i.e., I am aware of being hot, thirsty, tired.

2) 'Not thinking' is not something. It is the absence of something, namely thinking.

3) Therefore one cannot be aware that one is not thinking.

Even here I think that premise one can be questioned. Consider the scenario whereby you walk in the room and everyone stops talking. Here you may be aware of the silence. Consider the case whereby you come home to find your table missing. Here you are aware of the space in which you expect your table to be found. Hence we can argue:

1) One can be aware of silence or space.

2) Silence and Space are not things but the absence of things (noise and objects).

3) One can be aware of absences or non-things.

4) Not thinking is an absence of thought or a non-thing.

5) One can be aware of not thinking i.e., when one sits quietly and allows the mind to stop chattering, we can be aware of the silence of our own mind and so we are aware of not thinking.

Julian Bennett

Tere asked:

Can you tell me of any Maori philosophers?

Kia Ora!

Johannes asked:

I read an answer to a question (at this place) about blind people, especially all-life-blind ones, and their ability to dream in shapes and colours, hinting at a priori evidence and even spirits. It said that no such things exist.

I then found a site referring to a book (Mindsight) that had discovered that all-life-blind folk or the congenitally blind in near-death-experiences (NDE) — however you might think of them as mind tricks of some sort — suddenly have an all visual experience (like the normal NDE).

Now what does that tell you (anyone)? If there is no 'a priori' (and maybe anyway) does that not mean that all those NDEs must be real?

If all this is very well known to you, then do you know if the blind NDEs start REM-sleep? as they should, right?

Charlotte asked:

I am currently studying Lucretius' De rerum natura for A-Level. For the exam I am expected to know the main aspects of Epicurean philosophy: is this just what Lucretius wrote about or are there any major differences between the two men's ideas? Also I am slightly confused about Lucretius' belief in the infinite universe not having a centre: can anyone help to explain it?

I may not be the best-qualified person to enlighten you on the philosophies of Epicurus and Lucretius, respectively, so take the following as an opinion and judge it against other opinions. I happen to be of the view that the philosophy of Epicurus, whose authentic writings have shrivelled down to mere scraps in the course of 'all-devouring time', was largely rescued for us by the writings of his Roman adept; but when one engages closely with the latter's reasoning process and tries to reconstruct what genuine epicurean elements may be found therein, surprisingly little is left that can confidently be attributed to the Greek.

In case this sounds confusing, let me rephrase it as follows: Lucretius had a philosophy of his own, culled mostly from the presocratic philosophers, though taking cognisance of later thinkers (e.g. Aristotle). But what he was groping for, and did not find among these forebears, was a philosophical principle or idea which suited his own, namely that the gods do not and cannot interfere in the human realm; they're a different species and occupy a different habitat. He also wanted to combat the fear of death, and like many a modern proselytiser taught that this fear is irrational because we are all, in the end, just bits of matter somehow enlivened: hence his vast materialistic canvas. Eventually he discovered Epicurus, whose teachings revolved around just these ideas and who had adopted and adapted the corpuscular theories of Democritus; and in his exaltation at this discovery began rewriting his poem to make room for the required reorientation. This is the reason for, firstly, the abrupt transitions in some passages (he apparently died before this revision was completed) and secondly, the almost hysterical paeans in praise of Epicurus, which sound very strange to a cool observer who notes his lordly dealings with other philosophers, most of them of superior in calibre to Epicurus.

In short, the problem we face here is that beyond the few authentic statements from the pen of Epicurus himself, which would barely fill a 20-page leaflet, Lucretius represents for us the largest coherent text on that philosophy. However, it is one thing to acknowledge his indebtedness, quite another to then go ahead and surmise how much of Lucretius should actually be attributed to Epicurus. There is a case for saying 'nothing', if only to counter the blithe dismissals of Lucretius' own philosophy, as if no such thing existed. My argument therefore boils down to an opinion based on what little survives of Epicurus (including the doxography) and comparing this with the poet's own utterances, which seem to me to be far more original than anything that can sanely be attributed to the Greek just for one argument, he seems to be much better informed than Epicurus about the scientific details of his theories and indeed shows a considerable advance. Some of E's pronouncements on scientific matters must have sounded as ludicrous to his contemporaries as they sound to us; but much in Lucretius is apt to astonish us even today with its prophetic vision.

For example, your second question. Try finding such a statement in any Greek philosopher. You won't find one, for the simple reason that the Greeks did not acknowledge such a concept of infinity into their philosophical canons and had no term in their vocabulary to cover it. And this bears on the explanation I'm about to give you: Draw a circle and mark the centre with a point. Now construct a spherical shell around that point (or just imagine a football, which must have a central point). Now imagine an infinite volume. How? There is only one way: take away the shell. It stands to reason that an infinite volume cannot have a shell. So what happens to the point? Well, you must take this away too. If you've got no shell, then you can't have a point. Right?

Now if you were to suggest this experiment to Aristotle, he might quietly point a finger at his temples and rotate it on a little circle (or whatever gesture they used to indicate a 'luny'). This is one example of many why I find originality in Lucretius that cannot be exported back into Epicurus.

I don't know if this is going to help you; but it might at least serve for discussion. Break a lance for Lucretius if you can!

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Brad asked:

A question about justice.

I venture the belief that most people entertain a sense of justice. How often do we hear the expression: "I think that this is unfair?" Or; "What right have they to do that?" We seem to have an inbuilt awareness of an imbalance or injustice in a situation. As observers we can somehow see that if Tom gets five sweets and Mary gets four, there is an imbalance or unfairness about the situation. In one way, then, it seems that justice/ fairness is about balancing things out. Many of us, even just as observers, can get highly emotional at something that is glaringly unfair, particularly when there is nothing we can do about it. Basically, most of us, then, seem to be conscious of a rapid response to what we perceive as unfairness, so confident are we about this basic awareness of injustice/ justice that we feel entitled to act at once to put things right or make our feelings known.

Like morality in general, of which justice is an important ingredient, there is a suspicion amongst some philosophers that it is part of our mental make-up, something not actually taught us by experience or indoctrination, but, in a Kantian perspective, is a transcendental property. As you may be aware, Kant presented us with the notion that although we are aware of objects in a world outside the confines of our minds, by way of phenomena presented to us by our senses. We interpret this given objective knowledgein terms ofsubjective knowledge which we possess a priori, in other words knowledge not given to us by our senses, but intrinsically present in the mind, which includes as well as moral awareness things like cause and effect, and time and space. The addition of this subjective knowledge to the sensual knowledge we receive enables us to build up mind/ mental constructs. Thus the popular notion that the mind conforms to objects in the world is reversed and, according to Kant, objects conform to the mind. Thus when we observe an event involving fairness and equality,that event becomes inbuilt into a mental concept constructed in the light of justice.

Despite the fact that we may be intrinsically aware of what is just and what is unjust, this does not prevent our concept of justice being over-ridden by stronger emotions, such as desire, greed, revenge, misplaced sympathy, bias, favoritism, etc. Most of us are very good at providing excuses for unjust actions, but however good the excuses, the actions remain unjust. For example, in the light of current knowledge the Iraq war appears to have been unjust. The initial objective was supposed to be the desire to rid Saddam of weapons of mass destruction, it begins to seem that there are, and never were any. Yet a mass of propaganda was supplied to justify the action, However, whatever excuses are produced the basic injustice remains. The fact that a monsterous regime has been destroyed does not alter the premise that the USA and Britain went into Iraq to locate and destroy weapons of mass destruction; using a separate argument in hindsight does not remove the injustice of the action. It is unfair to accuse someone of something they have not done, even if that person is a monster. This seems to be at least one fundamental property of what we regard as justice, and begs the question for the absolute. If Kant is correct, then there is little reason to doubt the existence of absolutes, absolute morality including absolute justice seems ostensibly to be undeniable. However, if Kant is not correct this does not mean that an alternative argument cannot be provided for the existence of absolutes.

To come to the main point of your question, we can in the light of what has gone before conceive of the possibility of equal justice for everyone. After all, if justice is absolute then it applies to everyone and to every event. However, we must bear in mind what has been said before, our concept of justice can be over-ridden by emotions and feelings. To use examples from those previously mentioned, take the case of a person on a limited budget who cannot restrain the desire to purchase an expensive object which, if they do, will bring financial problems for the family. Their true sense of injustice to the family would probably be overcome by excuses and the probable conclusion; "If I had not purchased this, then I would be unjust to myself." This would, as well as desire, include selfishness. A person taking more than his/her share of a rationed provision, even though they know that it is unfair, is submitting their sense of justice and fairness to greed. I am sure that you can refer to cases where it is obvious that injustice has been done by carrying out acts of revenge, revenge can grossly over-compensate for perceived injustice, to such an extent that injustice becomes the result of revenge. Usually, cases of favoritism and bias are self evidently unjust, whilst misplaced sympathy for a cause or person can often be seen to be irrational and deliberately unjust.

Possibly, in all the cases of human failure and weakness injustice is the one most obvious to us. Despite our excuses the sense of an injustice we are responsible for stays with us by way of conscience, no matter what reasons and excuses we provide for ourselves, there remains the uneasy awareness that our action was unjust. What most of us are afraid of admitting is a feeling of regret, the reasoning and excuses are there to suppress this feeling.

The histories of politics and religion are full of injustices, as is the history of law, which is there to detect and punish injustice. The interpretation of justice in law leaves a lot to be desired. Where we would expect to find justice for all, has often been seen to be just the opposite. The failings of bias and revenge have often seen to be present in the so-called justice meted out. Wealth and position in society have always been seen to influence justice, so has corruption in the organisations which exist to uphold law and order. The present obsession with 'political correctness' often swings the alleged injustice from one side to the other. The present rather unfortunate habit of lenient sentencing creates a great sense of injustice in victims and the relations of victims. This also follows from the now rather common practice of seeming to dispense justice to the criminal at the expense of the victim.

Unfortunately, societies do not search for absolute justice, but are prepared to set the parameters within the alleged desires and preferences of the nation, establishing the subjective rather than the objective. As man makes laws to suit himself, justice is usually biased in favour of the ruling class. Most nations, then, present an artificial justice, which fortunately we are often equipped to detect and compare with the perceived absolute. It is in this light that the increased dominance of capitalism in an increasing secular world, strikes fear into the hearts of genuine moralists.

We are dealing here with a very extensive and complex subject, to do it justice we would require to write a book. To briefly demonstrate some of the complexity involved, where it is difficult to decide which of two opposing concepts is justified, take the parable from the New Testament, where a farmer desiring to harvest his crops employs a group of men early in the morning at an agreed wage. Later in the morning he hires more men at the same wage. After lunch he repeats the process, and just two hours before it is time to stop work he takes on more men at exactly the same wage. On the face of it there appears to be something very unjust, and this is quickly pointed out by the men employed early in the morning; Why should men employed for only two hours get the same wage as those who had toiled all day? The farmer's reply is that there is no injustice because this is the wage the early starters agreed to, they were quite happy to believe that they were being paid a reasonable wage until they learned that everyone was being paid the same. The farmer pressed the argument that having agreed what they believed to be a reasonable payment for the day's work, whatever he arranged with the others had nothing to do with them, and in no way affected their agreement. The early workers might claim that the farmer deceived them, if he had told them what he intended they would probably not have accepted, to them the farmer had acted unjustly/ unfairly by not revealing his intentions. I leave you to make your decision on this in the light of absolute justice.

John Brandon

Patti asked:

Where if anywhere in the Bible does it tell us that it is against Gods/ Jesus or the Church to gamble? I was hoping that you could answer that and also if it is also a sin to tattoo your body. This would help settle several family discussions.

Aaron asked:

I am lucky enough to have reached this stage in my short life where I want to know everything. I feel my mission is to be the keeper of wisdom and to understand everything in order to find "myself" in the end. However, I am finding that all I do is lead myself to more and more questions. The most confusing thing of it all now is that I don't even know what my original goal was. As a mini-philosopher myself, what is the best way to go about finding answers and drawing conclusions on my own (ie: music, religion, politics, etc.)?

Well off the top of my head I'd say you have two choices... three, really. One, which you don't seem to want ("on my own") is to go back to school. I'd consider it, for several reasons. First, you get to know that you know what others know, when you want to talk to them. Second, you get guidance from the occasional bright and interesting person. Third, you get a ready-made set of people to talk with.

Second, become a scholar. Get reading lists, and read, read, read. A good route if you know what to look for and don't mind isolation.

Third, go the Socratic route: seek out people who seem to be knowledgeable, and talk and ask questions. The advantage: you get lots of interaction. The disadvantage: usually, you don't know what you're talking about and won't understand what the person you're talking to means, unless you've already got a very good education. We've come a bit from the days of Socrates, in terms of knowledge, and in terms of building on others' thinking.

So it really depends on your background and inclinations, doesn't it? One way I've seen people go is to become associated with a book publisher, and attend conferences. You can talk to people who are interested in your books.

I've got to tell you, though... if you think you're going to "keep wisdom" you've got some hard times ahead of you. I don't know anyone wise, offhand, and that includes myself... but do I know lots of well-educated people. If what you want is to "know everything", then one or both of the first two alternatives are your natural choices.

Steven Ravett Brown

There are no best ways, only individual ways. But I can say something in answer to your question. I assume that to give life meaning (reach some kind of happiness) you need to acquire knowledge.

Knowledge is not to be obtained, like for instance money. The process of acquiring it makes you owner of the knowledge. In fact the two can not be separated (they form a mathematical unity). To posses knowledge you need to have acquired it, and after personal acquiring you automatically own knowledge.

That's why your question (luckily) can't be answered in general. For every individual some kind of finding knowledge feels best

Whatever you chose, try to get your satisfaction from HAVING new ideas (political, musical etc.). And adapt an attitude of wonderment about all happenings instead of getting annoyed by a lot of them.

Clearly you already have self humor. Try to keep it.

Henk Tuten

Yasmeen asked:

Objectivity in human sciences.

I'm a bit confused about the term objectivity, I've come across a lot of definitions for it, but what is objectivity in relation to human sciences?

What is an object? It is something given, an item among the furniture of the world which is not a part of any of us, i.e. of 'subjects'. Accordingly, when we are dealing with them by way of research, and we wish to study them as they are rather than as they appear to us or how they influence us, then we study them by way of exclusion of the human agent. We leave our emotions, attachments, interpretations, apprehensions and our motivations in regard to these objects at home and look at them (or at least attempt to) in the same way as another object might see them. By extension, then, any endeavour in which we might be engaged, and whereby we attempt to match this unattached and cold-hearted assessment, can be eligible for consideration as an 'objective' assessment.

In some instances, the use of this term is incorrect, because people have a habit of confusing the opinions of experts with objectivity, as if experts could not have an emotional affiliation to their pronouncements or research findings but this is just something to watch. The descriptive definition I gave is unaffected by misuse. An excellent example is the supposed objectivity of certain trends in literary criticism. Now you should have no problem from what I said above to realise that a work of literature is not an object and therefore cannot be assessed objectively. The only 'objective' features in (say) a poem are the number of words and stanzas, the sequence of rhythms and rhymes, the language used and so on. But the moment you begin reading you are involved and objectivity comes to an end.

One further comment. Why is objectivity so highly prized? Mainly because it permits us, to the degree possible to humans, to acquire knowledge unfiltered by opinion. A classic instance of the conflict between subjective and objective knowledge was Linus Pauling's advocacy of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) as a panaceum for most organic ailments, and especially the common cold. Pauling was a great scientist and an impeccable researcher, but his fetish about Vitamin C clouded his mind on one very crucial issue. For while all his objective arguments might be accepted as coming from the horses' mouth, yet the fact is that many human are allergic against acids and therefore ascorbic acid cannot 'objectively' put forward as a blanket recommendation for cure and control. His long struggle with the American health authorities did not, therefore, ever come to the conclusion he demanded. He left himself vulnerable on the score that (a) yes, most western diets are deficient in ascorbic acid, which is one of the principal chemical substances required by the body to combat illness, but (b) his recommendations were subjective in the sense that they lacked the rigorous objectivity we demand of a scientist in that they failed adequately to account for the rather numerous exceptions.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Jane asked:

What does philosophy of contradiction mean?

What does dialetheism mean?

Dialetheism is the view that there are true contradictions. Dialetheism opposes the so-called Law of Non-Contradiction: for any A, it is impossible for both A and A to be true — which has been nearly universally accepted since the time of Aristotle — though some, Hegel for one, have doubted it. The view is perhaps most associated with Graham Priest.

A logic is paraconsistent if it is not "explosive". An inference relation is explosive if a contradiction entails everything (for all A, if A and not-A then B, for any B). It is paraconsistent if and only if it is non-explosive — as Priest points out the Dialetheist will be believe that deductively valid inference is paraconsistent but the paraconsistent logician need not believe in dialetheia (that is, true contradictions). Also, the dialetheist need not believe that all contradictions are true (the view that all contradictions are true is called trivialism).

Why should anyone believe that there can be true contradictions? Well, the main argument for dialetheism begins from the paradoxes of self-reference — viz. the liar paradox and Russell's paradox. In turn, the liar paradox asks us to account for the sentence 'this sentence is not-true' and Russell's paradox concerns the set of all sets that is not a member of itself. The paradoxical nature of both is clear. In the liar paradox, if the sentence is true, then its false. But if its false, then its true. So its both either way! In Russell's paradox, the basic question is is the set of all sets a member of itself? It must be otherwise it cant be the set of all sets, but how can a set {a} be a member of itself? Though many have argued that the paradoxes of self-reference are open to solution, the solutions themselves do ask us to say very strange things about the nature of reference and set-theory — so maybe Dialtheism can get us off the hook.

Melanie asked:

I'm in year 11, and I'm doing an essay about the possibility of a 'God' or 'Higher Being' existing. I have already considered the argument that if someone believes a 'mind' exists, then the Big Bang couldn't have caused it, as it isn't a physical thing. But it is not necessarily the Christian god, but could be another 'higher being'. In my research, I have also come across the 'problem of evil', (I found some info on this site). But I'm not sure what other views I could take, and which Philosophers to research. There are many contradictions in the 'Bible' but I do not wish to pick on one religion, rather I want to argue against any 'God'. Which doesn't leave me with many arguments.

Melanie, you are very right to see that there are not many arguments left to you. In fact, wrestling against God leaves you with just six, and only six, arguments. Which, of course is precisely the same number as are available to argue for God. Here they are: (with the names of some thinkers who might well be worth looking into)

1: The Miracles Argument

FOR GOD: God runs the universe and controls all its physics, therefore the only entity who can alter the physics is God. Thus, by doing magic miracles which are beyond normal physics, God's prophets prove that He exists and that they carry His authority. (Thomas Hobbes)

AGAINST GOD: Reports of miracles always seem to come from uneducated, far distant, ancient people, so they are no more to be trusted than any other such stuff. If miracles prove religion to be true, how come religions which oppose one another (e.g. Sikhism and Shinto, Judaism and Hinduism etc) can all claim to be proved true by miracles? (David Hume)

2: The Ontological Argument

FOR GOD: Everything I know of comes, ultimately, from outside of myself. I know of the existence of a being greater than which nothing can be conceived, namely God. There is nothing in my experience which ought to make me know this, so it must have come from elsewhere, namely from God Himself. (Rene Descartes)

AGAINST GOD: The fact that you can conceive of something, doesn't make it true. You can imagine all sorts of infinitely great and perfect things — the perfect island, the perfect answer to a philosophy question — but that doesn't make them exist. Furthermore, 'existing' isn't a property of things. It isn't something which they might or might not have, like 'being blue' or 'getting hot', it is something which has to come first to make the concept real — you can't just tag it on after. Quite a lot of modern theologians, Don Cupitt being one, try to get round this by arguing that God doesn't exist as a being, but He does have 'real' existence as the abstract projection of our moral and religious ideals. Though how that differs from 'god doesn't exist' I don't know. (Immanuel Kant)

3: The Design Argument

FOR GOD: If you found a watch lying in the road, you would know from the perfect way all its little parts interact that it had not suddenly appeared by chance. You would know that some thinking creature had deliberately designed it. Look at the world around you, isn't it astonishing how all its parts fit and work so perfectly together? Such a magnificent structure must have had a designer behind it. That designer is God. (William Paley)

AGAINST GOD: I, Glyn Hughes, am by trade and profession a designer, so I think I can speak with some authority here. People with no experience of designing tend not to realise how the process works. They assume that the designer thinks out a grand plan, and then makes the thing from nothing more than the raw materials and his own genius. This is not what happens. Designers never can work alone — which would suggest, at least, a committee of several gods. They begin with prototypes, which are usually faulty. Objects which exist now do not mean that the designer is alive now (Guccio Gucci died in 1972, but you can still buy his watches.) Designers never begin from scratch, they merely make tiny modifications to existing designs. There never was anyone who ever designed a wristwatch. Dr Paley's watch would have been designed by someone who had copied almost every feature from previous watches, and they in turn from clocks, which copy a synthesis of milling equipment and water clocks, which might well have come about from the accidental breaking of a water jug. Such innovations as designers appear to make are invariably the result of either fortunate accidents, of synthesis with other designs. Consider that noted design icon, the Dyson vacuum cleaner. It is a synthesis of the upright vacuum cleaner with a device called a cyclone precipitator, invented decades before to remove dust from industrial chimneys, and itself the result of a chance observation about fans. James Dyson himself says that he 'stumbled' onto the idea, and took five years and 5,127 (yes, 5,127) different versions before the design was ready.

So, while, in philosophy, analogies are always suspect as arguments, the design analogy is an exceptionally poor one for God. In fact, if the design argument proves anything, it rather proves that gradual, blind, evolution is the better explanation for the harmony of the universe. (Richard Dawkins)

4: The Morality Argument

FOR GOD: Humans want to each grab as much as they can for themselves. They are naturally selfish, yet humans very often act with care and sensitivity. There is no logical reason why they should do this. Virtue, thus, must be caused by something outside of humanity which itself has a moral sense. This must be God. (John Henry Newman)

AGAINST GOD: Virtue is no mystery. It is quite true that humans each just want to grab everything they can for themselves, but the best technique for doing precisely that is to be as nice as possible to the people around you. Being moral is a good survival mechanism, it doesn't need God. In any case, what with all the earthquakes, diseases, pestilences, nasal hair and boils, God, if he did exist, doesn't seem to be at all nice Himself. (Matt Ridley)

5: The Experience Argument

FOR GOD: It just doesn't matter what anyone says, I just KNOW that God exist, and I prove that from nothing other than my own honest knowledge of my own mind. I have studied all the arguments, and I realise that God can't be demonstrated by science or logic. I have made the great 'leap of faith', I have chosen God. (Martin Heidegger)

AGAINST GOD: This could be a good argument for God, were it not for the fact that different people get totally different, and utterly opposing, inner experiences of God. And, funnily enough, such experiences seem to owe far more to each person's cultural and social influences than to anything outside of themselves. (William James)

6: The First Cause (or 'cosmological') Argument

FOR GOD: Everything which happens must have a cause. Everything which is moving must have been started off moving by something else pushing it. That means that there must have been some first thing, a 'prime mover' to start things off. That is God. (St Augustine)

AGAINST GOD: This argument is both illogical and unjustified. You can't begin by stating as an inviolable principle that 'all things must have a cause' and then use that to prove that there is something which doesn't have a cause. The fact that we don't really know how the universe started doesn't prove anything at all, it might have existed forever infinitely backwards in time for all we know. This is a 'God of the gaps' argument, where, when there is a gap in our knowledge, some people are tempted to slot God in. In any case, if all things have a cause, what was the cause of God? Another pre-God God? And what caused that God? (AJ Ayer)

That's about it for God. There is Blaise Pascal's 'wager', in which he suggests that it is better to profess a belief in God, as it gives you a better chance of eternal life. But that isn't an argument for the existence of God, just a reason why you ought to go to church. And not a very good reason at that; would a thinking God actually want to spend eternity with a bunch of sycophantic believers? Wouldn't an intelligent God rather spend His time with polite unbelievers — they would make for much more productive conversation.

As for arguments actually against the existence of God, they are few and poor. It is extremely difficult to prove that something ISN'T true, for to 'prove' generally means 'to bring forward evidence for', and it is usually impossible to bring forward 'non evidence' in order to disprove something.

There are the so-called 'fallacies of omnipotence', like 'could an all-powerful God make a stone to heavy for God to lift up?' But they are rather, shall we say, floppy, as arguments. There is the 'problem of evil' — that the horrid things we find thrown at us by the natural world show that a Good God couldn't possibly exist. But that doesn't in any way disprove the existence of God, it just shows that either He is either vindictive or uncaring, or that we don't really understand Him.

Then there is John Wisdom's 'Parable of the Garden', a sort of commentary on the design and ontological arguments, which might be neatly summed-up in this question:

"Could you please tell me what the difference is between:

1) A God who has no shape, no size, no location, no colour, no form, who cannot be heard, or seen, or smelled, of felt, or touched, who is invisible and unknowable...

and

2) A God who doesn't exist?"

Glyn Hughes

Edaw asked:

Does God know what it feels like to not know everything? If not than he doesn't know everything. But if he does know what it feels like to not know everything, then he doesn't know everything.

Being an atheist, a fortiori I do not believe that any god knows anything.

However, taking your argument on its own merits,

(1) I agree that if god doesn't know what it feels like not to know everything, then he doesn't know everything.

(2) I don't agree that if god does know what it feels like not to know everything then he doesn't know everything. I know my next door neighbour has brown hair. I can remember what it was like not knowing her, before I met her. So I know what it is like not to know she has brown hair; but that doesn't prevent my knowing that she does. So there is no principled reason why a god cannot both know everything and know what it is like not to know everything.

Richard Craven

Angie asked:

I am new to the study of philosophy and am not sure where to begin. The question that rings most predominantly in my mind is whether or not we are all here for a purpose, essentially, what is the meaning of life? I am currently reading Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics and do not know where to go next. Hell, I'm not sure why I'm even so concerned with this question.

If you were new to athletics, say triple jump, you might be well advised to learn something about the technique first before you attempt to set a world record. This might sound discouraging, but I'm trying to express with this comparison the thought that Heidegger is not the best way to gain an initial foothold in philosophy. Even experts are at loggerheads about where and how to 'place' his thinking. And this problem is possibly exacerbated by your uncertainty about the thing that drives you. Why do you want to know something about the meaning of life?

In such a predicament, it seems to me that the best advice I can give is to steer you in another direction. You need to have this last question attended to before you start reading in earnest, because if you're not sure of what it is you're looking for, you can waste a lot of intellectual energy on red herrings. I have in mind the following:

Decide what the phrase 'the meaning of life' actually means to you. There is no simple answer and that's why philosophers write books which attack this problem each time from a new angle. By this, they're really enriching rather than solving the enigma. This is fundamental. Beware of simple solutions.

Now you might like to read Bryan Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher. This is a book written by a thinker who has gone through such travails all his life, always asking questions of this kind whether he was engaged in politics, in theatre, or teaching at universities. He starts by recounting his childhood impressions of the 'strange' facts of life and death and so on. Magee's book gives you, as it were, a 'sample journey' from which you can learn where to look for at least tentative conclusions. In his case, it was Kant and then Schopenhauer who filled the bill, but you may find another philosopher's thinking more in line with your inclinations, and he gives you plenty to choose from. All you need to do is keep an open mind and discount his evident personal prejudices. That's not hard.

Another route you might follow is to read Camus little book The Myth of Sisyphus. This addresses the issue of 'the meaning of life' directly, though from the angle of 'justifying' it. He does this by asking, is there a rationale for suicide? Is life not an utter absurdity with its pitiful beginning and end and all the nonsense that goes on in between? As you read it, you will become aware of the influences he has admitted into his thinking, and if you find what he writes attractive, you can then follow up these sources for more depth.

You might, at the same time, read Descartes' Discourse on Method. This, too, is just 70 pages of text and written in very easy prose. The idea are pretty hard nuts to crack, but for a first impression of a metaphysic that has shaped and influenced European philosophy from the ground up, you can do no better. Don't be discouraged (I guess this is silly advice to someone reading Heidegger!), if you fail the first time around to plumb the depths of Descartes' arguments; the essential thing is to get a handle on the problems which disturb you and the stimulus to think about them with such a guide at your side.

Finally, a couple of smallish books written by Ortega y Gasset, What is Philosophy? and The Origins of Philosophy are highly commendable because they give you not merely an introduction to what their title promises, but a quite original and deeply considered message of the meaning of these issues. These books, in a word, do not offer you a predigested run-down, but a challenge to your thinking by opening up the whole theme from the angle of meaning what philosophy meant in the past and what it might mean to a modern citizen of the technological world we live in.

If you happen to find after reading these books that you're back in the same court where you began, i.e. metaphysics, no damage done. Because ultimately philosophy is metaphysics (as Heidegger says); but before you jump in at the deep end, ensure that you know you can swim and which direction you might wish to follow. These books will help you without throwing hurdles into your path.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Soc asked:

Can a moral right ever be justified? If so, what does the proof have to include?

This is a good question, sort of, but poorly asked. Notice that you say, first, "justified", and second, "proof". Is justification proof? Why? How do you know? What is justification? What is proof? In fact, justification is not proof. There are many many types of justification, some of which are based on a variety of inductive reasonings, some on feelings, some on logic. Very few on proof.

So let's just take this as asking about justification. Next, what is a moral "right"? One usually says that one has a "right to..." free speech, say. Is that a "moral" right, a "political" right, both, neither? How do you know? Do you have a "right" to cross the street when the traffic light is green? How about when it's red? Do you have a "right" to not steal? To arrest someone for stealing? To steal if you're hungry? But those latter are usually considered "moral" decisions and based on moral principles... so if they're not rights, then at least some morality does not relate to rights. I have a great deal of problems with the term "right"... I really have only the vaguest idea as to what it means, but I suspect it has very little to do with morality, and a lot to do with politics and culture, and implicit and explicit contracts we have with others and with various governing bodies.

What are we left with, then. Something like, "Can a moral principle ever be justified? If so, how?". I think that would be a better question, don't you? Unless you want to write another question and include a detailed explanation of what a "moral right" is. If you do want to ask about the political, then I'm the wrong person to ask.

Well when you come down to it, I'm not even going to answer this question. Why not? Because it's been debated for about 3000 years, and I really don't want to write a paper here summarizing that debate. There are various general answers... moral principles are justified by cultural norms; by an intrinsic "feeling" we have for morality; by various religious exhortations; by reinforcements of behavior and thinking based on pleasure and pain; by consideration of peoples' relative worth; by general principles of environment/ organism interaction... and on and on.

Here is a teeny itsy bitsy reading list to start you off:

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

Sommers, C., and F. Sommers. Vice & Virtue in Everyday Life: Introductory Readings in Ethics. 4th ed. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1985.

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

Williams, B. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.

But first, really, you have to ask what justification is, before we start using it, don't you. How, for example, do cultural norms, or feelings, or religions, or whatever, do this thing: viz., justify? How indeed?

And here is an eensy weensy reading list for this topic:

Annis, D. B. "A Contextualist Theory of Epistemic Justification." American Philosophical Quarterly 15, no. 3 (1978): 213-19.

BonJour, L. The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. 1st ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Hare, R. M. "Foundationalism and Coherentism in Ethics." edited by W. Sinnott-Armstrong and M. Timmons, 190-99. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

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

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

Williams, B. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Steven Ravett Brown

Luisa asked:

I know what miracles are but wondering how they play a role in justifying religious belief?

All religions require to show signs of a mystic content. A religion by its very nature must show that it is in contact with a spiritual world, from which the very power of creation derives. Having been more in contact with the Christian religion than any other, I am better placed to discuss miracles from the point of view of Christianity.

Miracles are a manifestation of spiritual power, those able to perform them reveal links with such a power. Jesus, portrayed by Christianity as the Son of God, had to be shown to have powers far beyond those of ordinary human beings; miracles are a way of making manifest such powers. The very entrance into the world by Jesus had to be seen as a miracle in itself, an ordinary birth entailing a normal father and mother would not have made any impact. Jesus' entry into the world was not only a miracle but also a drama.

Some miracles are more convincing and give better witness to spiritual powers than others. Changing water to wine and feeding the five thousand might still leave some doubt in the back of the mind that there is a possibility of some sort of conjuring trick; however, bringing the dead back to life, and healing the sick and infirm by touch or word, are the sorts of miracles that leave little doubt in anyone's mind that some supernatural power is at work.

The question is often asked, "Why did Jesus not step down from the cross to demonstrate the miraculous powers he was gifted with?" The simple answer is that the more powerful miracle is to rise from the dead, Jesus had to die to be resurrected, otherwise the purpose was defeated. Power over death is a necessary revelation in any religion.

The christian gospels reveal to us that the power to perform miracles can be gifted to anyone who dedicates their life fully to God, and prove to have undying faith. Hence we read in the gospels of the ability of Paul, Peter and other apostles who were capable of performing miracles. To prove that miracles do not just belong to the past events of the gospels, we find a continual history of miraculous phenomena alleged to be linked to certain pious persons and to the appearance of apparitions. Those thought to be responsible for miracles or unexplained phenomena are given the title of Saints by the Church.

To complete the answer to your question, miracles are fundamental to religious belief, they point to the existence of a super-power, or in the case of the Christian religion to the presence of God in our midst.

John Brandon

James asked:

What do you suspect is the origin of and advantage of sentience?

P.S. Please do not say this is a loaded question in that I am implying there is a direction consciousness must take. I'm just interested in your ideas.

The caveat in your question makes it relatively easy to answer. In fact, virtually any text on darwinian evolution would give you an adequate rundown, although the details might vary from one to another. Thus: the origin lies in the acquisition of nerves and the subsequent organisation of these (initially single-function) devices into faculties of perception. In advanced creatures such as mammals, these systems (nervous systems) continued to evolve into segregated modules devoted to the evaluation of perception; and finally in humans, this evaluative faculty progressed yet further by the development of what we call a 'mind'.

William James argued that the primary function of this last-named faculty is the handling of surprise. That's as good an encapsulation as any; and we certainly do not know much more than this about the supposed advantage of sentience. It does invite the counter-question, however, why and for what evolutionary purpose we write poetry and music, why we solve crossword puzzles and aim our telescopes at the stars, why we laugh and why we believe in God (or refuse to).

Not much philosophy here, then; although in saying this, I do not deny that potentially there is a great deal of scope for philosophising. Just playing on the quasi-mechanical aspects of this evolutionary pattern says nothing about the meaning one might wish to discover (i.e. is there a teleological drive behind it?). Nowadays it is out of fashion because of the methodological stance required by science, which has the greatest influence on our thinking to even consider aspects of biological developments that do not fall into the category of weighable, measurable, determinable phenomena. The recent rise of e.g. fractal geometry is beginning to leave question marks all over this scientifically ascertainable knowledge, but it will take at least another generation before it seeps into general consciousness that the binary categorisations of which we have been so fond over centuries of speculation are severely limited. Until we are in a position to positively recognise in (for example) 'free will' a fundamental criterion of everything that lives, we will miss out on many if not most of the relevant features of sentience and its development.

Interimistically, therefore, let me reply that the framing of your question, for all its plausibility, is trapped in that same materialistic mindset which seeks to solve human problems by recourse to measurable characteristics. But you will not get an answer to such a question from anyone that is going to ultimately satisfy your thirst. Knowledge is ineluctably of two kinds, viz. episteme and cognition. Science knows next to nothing of the latter. But a comprehensive answer demands nothing less than a fully formed idea of what cognition is. Many philosophers, from Plato onwards, have proposed their answers as problems, and this in turns demands from us, if we are to retain a philosophical aspect on it, to acknowledge that the pursuits of science are a means towards the acquisition of knowledge that might aid us in a greater understanding of the origins and advantages of sentience. But it is nothing more than tomfoolery to maintain that epistemic knowledge is all the knowledge we can have. So for the time being, the idea of 'Dasein' (Heidegger) and the entailments of that concept exposed in his book Being and Time are the best answer we can give.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Tajamul asked:

I have started new business. I'm very much terrified. The challenges are enormous. I'm in panic most of the time. I want to calm down. Any suggestion?

For the most part, these 'Ask a Philosopher' pages represent the tradition of European Analytic Philosophy, which is a very wonderful philosophical tradition for dealing with science and understanding, but a quite appallingly bad one at offering comfort and calm. If I guess correctly from your name, surely your home traditions, whichever side of the border you are on, are much better suited to soothing?

Having said that, the analytic faith does have a trick up its sleeve which never seems to fail. I suggest you get yourself a couple of books by our more abstruse and idiosyncratic philosophers. Descartes is good, so is Heidegger. Nietzsche is excellent, and so are Hegel and Kant. Don't bother reading them. Just, whenever you are troubled, open one of the books at random, pick a paragraph, and spend fifteen minutes trying to work out what on earth they are talking about. After that, by comparison, all the problems of everyday life seem minuscule, petty and incredibly easy. It works for me.

Glyn Hughes

Nicholas asked:

Using the Oxford dictionary definition of democracy (government by the people) can societies with great disparities in wealth legitimately call themselves democracies?

I fear they can. I think your definition is along the right lines. However, in most democratic systems government is by most of the people, not by all of them, otherwise everyone would need to agree about everything all the time, and that ain't ever happening. Moreover, in the UK, where we have universal adult suffrage, our use of the first past the post system means that government is quite often by a minority. This leaves ample scope for some members of the polity to oppress other members, including in the matter of wealth disparity. So, as long as you don't think democracy is only exists in an unattainably ideal world of perpetual unanimity, then for practical purposes, many societies with hideous disparities of wealth can legitimately call themselves democracies. Not, I hasten to add, that this legitimizes the disparities.

Richard Craven

Almode asked:

Is it possible for one to know oneself? to be aware of all the processes?

It depends on what you mean by "know oneself". You can know yourself to a very great extent, if you make the effort, in the sense of knowing a lot of your motivations, emotions, etc.

In the sense of knowing "all" the "processes", for example, the processes underlying your reading this sentence, understanding the words, etc... or the processes involved in speaking the same sentence... no, it is not possible to be aware of those processes. In fact there are enormous research programs attempting to find what those processes are.

The situation seems to be that when you are first learning something, you are aware of a great deal, but probably not all, of the processes that are involved. After you learn it, you lose awareness of those processes, and in addition they change as your skills increase. Also, usually, when you learn something like reading or walking, you are too young to be completely aware of what you're learning, or to remember those details later.

Further, if you think about it, it would be extremely disconcerting if you had to reconstruct all the mechanics every time you took a step, for example. So doing most things unconsciously is an advantage which more than offsets the loss of awareness.

Steven Ravett Brown

On the whole, and without delving into great depths, it is not only possible but mandatory for each of us to 'know' ourselves. But this 'knowing' is an incredible complex faculty, and it would be idle to say that anyone truly understands what's involved. I've been studying the subject for 15 years now, but the best I can report in the interim is that I have learnt only to comprehend the vast extent of the problem, without being able to say at the same time, I can see where it ends!

We are not, however, aware of all processes. Awareness is different from being aware of processes. Awareness is part of the process. This is one of the greatest obstacles to researching the subject of mind and brain. And I would say that there is good reason for this enforced ignorance on our part (and indeed part of the set-up is to keep 'us' out of it). A body is an incredibly fine-tuned aggregate of billions of organisms; we are in a sense a huge living planet ourselves, where all these organisms (cells, bacteria etc) ply their trade, and if we were aware of their work, we might unwittingly interfere and cause large-scale disruption. We do this, of course, any time we take drugs; but on the whole, this affects only the machine-like aspect of our somatic existence and usually the body has ways and means of exercising its own control and effect compensations (or say 'thank you' if we're sick and take drugs to assist with 'germ warfare'). Anyway, I could go on forever, but I prefer to recommend some light, yet informative reading to you: Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire and Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens. These are state of the art reports on brain, body, mind and emotions, but they are written with non-expert readers in mind, so you'll get a lot out of them, including answer to what we can at present know about your questions.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Roy asked:

Is the word 'Exception' a contradictory term? In every example I could think of a contradiction occurs. For example, All human beings are Americans, except those humans in England, Germany, France, (etc.) is contradictory because the quantifier 'All' was used. Certainly humans who live outside of America prove 'All' is the wrong term — 'Some' is the correct quantifier. I always think that a person who chooses to use long winded words and includes 'except' is being deceptive to cause confusion or cause a person to make a poor judgement (as a rhetorical effect.) Instead the person should use a simple term to express a statement if possible. Legal documents are full of long-winded sentences with the word 'except'. Should the word 'Only' be the proper term instead; for no contradiction occurs and is more specific?

All humans are American except those in England, France, etc.

The logical form is going to be

For all x, IF x is a human THEN:

x is an American, or x is British, or x is French, or x is etc. etc.

AND it is not the case that x is both American and British, or x is both American and French, or x is both American and etc. etc..

Exclusion is a property of disjunction: a or b is inclusive if a and b can both be true, exclusive if only one can be true. The above example is a example of exclusive disjunction. To make this clear then you need the "and it is not the case that ...". An example of an inclusive disjunction would be a case where I say 'you can have sugar or milk in your tea': Clearly, I would be lacking in etiquette if I meant this exclusively!

Rich Woodward

Clewley asked:

I would like to know if one can be examined to find out whether or not one has freewill. All my choices seemed to depend entirely on my emotional state at the time of choosing or fear of the consequences if I choose wrongly. When there are no consequences in my choice I just choose randomly. Is there a scientific test that could prove, for instance, that I have a freewill? How would you go about it? Or is it purely an introspective assumption that others have freewill? I am determined to know!

You are asking a question which has been debated for thousands of years. If you want a scientific/ philosophical approach to this question, which, by the way, I am in sympathy with, the best text I know of at this point is one which has just come out: Freedom Evolves by D. Dennett. I highly recommend it.

Steven Ravett Brown

There is a long and a short answer to your question. I'm going to keep it short: for more info, check any of the 1000's of books and papers written on the subject!