(66) Gonzalo asked:

I have recently become interested in reading the works of L. Wittgenstein and I would like to know if you could be so kind as to recommend to me a book of introductory nature that would perhaps allow me to understand what he is trying to get across in the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations.

---

No unfortunately, I can't. There are a few good books about Wittgenstein but they are as difficult to understand as Wittgenstein's works. Wittgenstein is a philosopher's philosopher and by that I mean you can only hope to understand Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations if you have an expert knowledge of Western philosophy and philosophical problems.

Some things are really difficult to understand and there are no simple introductions. For example there are no beginners books on to how to design a nuclear power station.

There are many works about Wittgenstein that are just completely wrong. You could try 'Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth Century Philosophy' by P.M.S.Hacker. However this book is as difficult to understand as Wittgenstein's own works. You need to accept that there are many difficult things in the world that will make your head hurt when you try to understand them. Not everything can be understood from a simple introduction or even explained in a simple introduction. A degree in philosophy would be a good place to start but failing that just read Wittgenstein's books and ask questions about them.

Shaun Williamson

(67) Laura asked:

Explain and critically evaluate the ways in which it might be said that Plato has an otherworldly or nonmaterialist view of reality. How is this otherworldly view reflected in the treatments of the soul, of learning and knowledge, and of ethics in the Apology, Meno, and Phaedo.

---

As essay questions go, this is an interesting example.

1. It is actually two questions.

2. While the first question appears to give the student room to formulate a view of her own, the second question in fact assumes an answer to the first. Consequently, the student is warned off imagining that Plato does not have an otherworldly view, on pains of being unable to address fully half of the question. This would seem to prejudice issues controversial in the literature. For example, to M.M.McCabe Plato is 'anti-empirical'. To Iris Murdoch 'there is no Platonic elsewhere'. If you want any view of the variety of Plato exegesis a helpful survey is Melissa Lane's 'Plato's Progeny'.

3. Also, the question as a whole controversially assumes (in contradiction of a very great deal of literature) that 'otherworldly' is a synonym for 'nonmaterialist'. A bright student could be tempted to base their answer entirely around the large difference between 'otherworldly' and 'non-materialist'. But in that case they would be failing to answer both halves of the question, and instead rejecting it. Rejecting the question is often a good move in philosophy, but not in getting good marks. Question setters should be mindful of this, and, so far as possible, not set questions that ought to be rejected.

4. Thus, while awareness of the dangers of the leading question is gestured towards in the use of the expression 'could be said', the question could hardly be said to have successfully avoided them.

5. A slightly more open question might be:

'Consider the treatments of the soul, of learning and knowledge, and of ethics in the Apology, Meno, and Phaedo. It might be said that Plato has an otherworldly view of reality. Does he?'

6. Yet it seems to me that even that question is pretty large for undergraduate essay — a question to attract the ambitious.

David Robjant

(68) Keshov asked:

If first event caused the universe to happen (ie the trigger of the big bang) what caused the first event to happen ? How do you defeat the infinite regress related to this question ?

---

The traditional theological view was that God is the first cause (God being self-caused). This avoids the regress if you can make sense of a self-caused being.

There are two ways of avoiding the regress without appeal to the supernatural:

1. No first event. The universe has an infinite past. Kant famously held that endless past time is contradictory. But there was no rigorous account of mathematical infinity in his day. There is no logical or conceptual barrier to the notion of infinite past time. It's a popular idea with physicists. The earlier version was of an endless succession of Big Bangs/ Big Crunches so that one universe succeeds another indefinitely. More popular nowadays is the Multiverse idea of a boundless foam of universes endlessly budding off new ones which go on to do the same, with variations in the constants of nature and in natural laws from one to the next (perhaps even random variation with natural selection of universes best fitted for budding). It's speculation but solves the 'fine tuning problem' (naturally we must find ourselves in one of the universes in which constants/ laws allow emergence of life), and may be testable (among range of universes fit for life, ours is statistically likely to be an average one so that we expect constants to be a random sample within the ranges allowing life, not absolutely spot-on optimal for all of them which would be suspiciously like design).

2. First event uncaused ie no cause for (single) Big Bang. Why accept 'every event has a cause'. It's easy to conceive of uncaused events. Also, science (quantum mechanics in its currently most widely accepted interpretation) tells us that uncaused events (involving fundamental particles) happen all around us all the time. So why couldn't the universe be an uncaused event ? Indeed the Big Bang view suggests just that possibility (well, there are issues about whether some sort of quantum laws must first exist for a Big Bang to occur in this way, but that's another story)

Craig Skinner

(69) Hunter asked:

If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into ?

---

It is not expanding into anything. There is no pre-existing void. Rather, it is space itself which is expanding. All of the space is within the universe (if ours is the only universe) or within our bubble universe (if there is a multiverse). Don't think of the Big Bang as an explosion starting at a central point. In the early universe, expansion occurred at every point, and indeed every point still seems central because the galaxy clusters are all receding from whatever point you choose in the universe. Note that gravity holds things together on scales less than clusters of galaxies so that there has been no expansion in the space between me and the door since I started typing this, no expansion of the solar system or, indeed, of our galaxy since its formation. It's difficult to visualize expansion of the universe, just as it's difficult to visualize a particle going through two holes at the same time, our brains being adapted for thriving and surviving in the biosphere,but the mathematics of relativity and of quantum mechanics handle such matters nicely(and we invented the maths so we're not doing too badly)

Craig Skinner

(70) Jenna asked:

In Meditation 3 what is the reality of the things that Descartes calls the formal/ inherent and the ideas he calls objective or representative reality ? I don't quite understand how these prove the existence of God.

---

We tend to forget Descartes wrote nearly 500 years ago because we (or at least I) read him in modern English translations,so that his prose seems modern, whereas we read, say, Hume, as he wrote it (in 18th C English). Descartes was no fan of scholastic philosophy (he aimed to replace it) but inevitably he sometimes uses scholastic terms and notions that were current in his day.

His argument for God's existence in Meditation 3 is replete with such terms. Two types of reality are distinguished regarding ideas. The mere existence of an idea (as with the existence of anything else) is its formal reality. The content of the idea is its objective reality. Here 'objective' refers to the object contained in the idea (eg a tree in the case of an idea of a tree). The word is used rather like our modern use of 'subjective' — it refers to the tree (say) in the mind, not the tree in the garden. Descartes then introduces the notion of degrees of reality. Ideas all have the same degree of formal reality (all existing as states of mind) but they differ in degree of objective reality — lowest in a 'mode' (a modification of a substance eg shape), intermediate in a finite substance, highest in an infinite substance.

So far, only unfamiliar terms explained, nothing asserted, nothing proved.

Then comes the key assertion (the Causal Principle) on which the proof of God's existence rests.: the degree of formal reality of the cause must be at least as great as the objective reality of the effect. This leads to the conclusion that an idea whose content (objective reality) is infinite (such as my idea of God)cant have its cause in a finite being (with less than infinite formal reality) such as me, only in God, so that God exists.

To me, the Causal Principle is simply an assertion. No evidence is given for it. To assume that an idea in a finite mind needs an infinite cause begs the question as to God's existence. Some claim that the Principle is little more than the commonsense 'something cant come from nothing'. I don't feel this is an adequate statement of the notion, and even if it were, it is questionable. I agree with the point made in the 2nd Objection that animals/ plants (greater) derive from inanimate causes (lesser), contrary to the Principle. Descartes replies, unconvincingly to me, that animals lack reason and so have no perfection not found in inanimate matter, or if they do, it comes from some other source. I would generalize this objection to say that simple things plus simple rules can lead to complex tings eg simple initial conditions in the early universe plus simple laws of nature has caused atoms, compounds, life and minds, so that the Causal Principle is false.

So, whether couched in scholastic or modern terms, Descartes argument fails to prove the existence of God.

That's how it seems to me, although I am no Descartes scholar.

Craig Skinner

(71) Cari asked:

Philosopher Peter Kreeft presents us with an interesting thought experiment. He discusses what a huge impact the idea of God has had on the world, and then he ask you to imagine what the world would be like if no one had ever conceived of the idea of God. Would humanity as a whole be better or worse off? What do you think?

---

By way of responding to this question let us begin by asking what concept should we take as the definitive understanding of God? Is it that of Vishnu or Hari, the Superior Reality, the all-pervasive Lord who expands into everything? Is it the Greek God Zeus, God of gods, who thought nothing of copulating with mortal women and who, through the midwife Maia, produced Hermes, messenger of the gods, and from whose head emerged Athena? Is it Aristotle's 'primum mobile immotum' ,the 'first unmoved mover': the roi faineant, the nothing king who reigns but does not rule: a god whose only occupation is to contemplate the essence of things? Is it the God of Islam: a god who rewards those warriors who die so that others might know the true way with maidens who save their honour for this worthy cause? Is it the pantheistic God of Spinoza, or the God of Moses and the Old Testament: the all powerful jealous and angry God who demanded complete allegiance to his whims and commandments? Or is it the God of the New Testament, the God of Jesus who, whilst seemingly benign, still insists that the only way to salvation was through him?

Whilst all these divinities are revered in their own way by their own adherents, for Peter Kreeft it is the God of Catholicism — the God of the New Testament — for whom he is an apologist. Now while Kreeft's position may be admirable to those who share or are persuaded by his views, to the philosophy his 20 ways of proving the existence of God are little more than a rehashing of the same arguments extended by Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes and others -all arguments, that is, that have been found to be rationally or philosophically unsustainable. Although Kreeft accepts that science cannot prove the existence of God, he argues that it is possible to just know something without necessarily being able to prove it. This, of course, places him in the company of flat-earthists, and those who insisted that the earth is the centre of the universe.

Let us pause for a moment to consider what recent history tells us of this world of Kreeft's God. By coincidence I have just returned from visiting the graves of those slaughtered on the battle fields of Flanders during the 1st World War, in this God's world. In my lifetime I can recall the horrors that humans perpetrated against other humans during the 2nd World War, in Kreeft's God's world. I have lived at the time of the Vietnam War, of the genocide of the 'Killing Fields' of Cambodia, of Chechnya, Rwanda, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, East Timor, and many many more troubled lands, all which have taken place in Kreeft's God's world. I live in a country that, over many centuries, has been constantly torn apart by religious differences of people who, paradoxically, all believe in the same God; I have grown up in a country whose indigenous people still carry the emotional scars of a famine that reduced its population from 8 million to little more than 3 million in less than 3 years; I have learned of the misery visited on this God's creatures by earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and other 'natural disasters'; I have visited 'Ground Zero', site of the place where the planes destroyed the iconic Twin Towers in New York; against this act of terror, and I have witnessed counter acts which, rather than punishing the perpetrators, have terrorized and destroyed the lives of innocent men, women, and children — all in Kreeft's God's world. I have watched those close to me struggle and win their battle against cancer and other terminal diseases, and I have seen others close to me fight the same fight and lose — all in Kreeft's God's world. And I have seen how leaders of the Catholic Church have for too long not only ignored the cries for justice of victims of child physical and sexual abuse by its own clergy, but also how they actively moved to protect those guilty of these crimes by moving them to parishes and/ or institutions where they were free to continue their heinous practices — in Kreeft's God's world. And you ask if the world would be better or worse without such a God.

So let us return to the question at hand. It should not come as a surprise to learn that there are systems of beliefs that do not look to other worldly entities for social values and moral guidance. Buddhism, for example, whilst its adherents follow strict ethical guidelines, is known as the religion without a God. Secular humanists, who espouse reason, ethics and human fulfillment, make the case that humans can be ethical and moral without religion — or God; and believe it or not it is actually possible for atheists and agnostics to live perfectly moral lives without seeking direction from religion and its gods.

So what do I think of a world in which values are grounded in common sense rather than superstition? What do I think of a world built on reason rather than the imagined whims of an imagined transcendent deity? What do I think of a world in which humans, rather than attempting to conceive that which is unconceivable, would be better occupied addressing themselves to the study of the human world: the laws, institutions, customs and practices that are germane to this world rather than the next? And what do I think of a world built on pragmatism, tolerance, pluralism, and mutual respect? You know what, not only do I think that it couldn't be worse, I actually think that it might even be better.

Tony Fahey

(72) Sydney asked:

I had my first class in critical thinking earlier today and my professor was unable to tell me if instinct was epistemic luck. I was wondering if you might be able to help answer this question?

---

(73) Keshov asked:

If first event caused the universe to happen (i.e. the trigger of the big bang) what caused the first event to happen? how to you defeat the infinite regress related to this question?

---

That's easy! You deny one of the premises to the argument.

(a) Deny the premise that the Universe had a start. Perhaps the Universe is infinitely old and the Big Bang might be simply a highly improbable quantum fluctuation that was inevitable given the infinite extent of time which was available.

(b) Deny the premise that the Universe was caused. Perhaps the universe was uncaused (in the same manner as the decay of a radioactive nucleus is uncaused — statistically predictable, but individually uncaused.)

(c) Deny that there was a 'first event'. Perhaps our Universe was caused by events in a prior universe that spawned our own. Some physicists speculate that black holes might be the spawning of new universes. And that chain of parent universes might be infinite, so that there was never a 'first' event.

(d) Deny that there was any spacetime before the Big Bang. If there was no spacetime, then there was no place and no time for there to have been a first event. If the Big Bang created spacetime, then there would be no sense of a 'cause' for the Big Bang. One could say neither that the Universe was caused, or that it was uncaused. Both concepts require spacetime.

There are likely other alternatives that I have missed. These are merely the options I have seen most frequently explored. Each has had its defenders in both philosophy and in physics.

Stuart Burns

(74) Dan asked:

I have a question pertaining to why someone would think 'free will' would be incompatible with determinism. (according to W.T.Stace) After reading and thinking about the only answer I can think of is that those that believe they are incompatible have the wrong definition of 'free Will'. Any thoughts?

---

My suggestion is not so much that they have a 'wrong' definition of free will, as that they have a 'wrong' conception of what it is to be a person with free will. Most incompatibilists maintain a notion of 'free will' that demands that a choice, decision or 'willing' is free if and only if it is not caused by the totality of preceding circumstances. But in order to do so, in my opinion, they have glossed over the problem of what constitutes a person under such conditions. As a person, am I not the totality of my character, experiences, beliefs, hopes, and dreams (etc.)?? And are not those things the product of the totality of my past experiences and my genetic constitution? Hence am I not the product of the totality of preceding circumstances?? Whatever conception of 'free will' is brought to this understanding of what it means to be a person, then that conception must be compatible with determinism.

The only alternative that I can envision, involves the denial that as a person I am the product of the totality of my past experiences and my genetic constitution. Which to me, doesn't make any sense. Some free will libertarians draw upon some sort of randomness to escape the deterministic horn of their dilemma. But it seems to me that inserting some sort of 'randomness' into 'self-forming actions' does not make them my actions. So how can it be that random events form part of me in the sense required by their notions of uncaused 'free will'.

It does not matter, of course, on which side of the argument you position yourself — it is self-evidently obvious that those on the other side have the 'wrong' definition of both 'free will' and 'personhood'. And therein lies the basis of the argument. Each side is not so much as arguing their position against the opposition as arguing past the opposition by using terminology and concepts that the opposition would not accept. The only way to resolve this sort of conflict, is to retreat to more fundamental concepts and establish a common foundation there before attempting to progress to free will. Unfortunately, my own reading of the proponents of each side suggests to me that so far neither side seems interested in attempting this sort of approach.

Stuart Burns

(75) George asked:

In Ayn Rand's egocentric philosophy we have every right to pursue our happiness but do we have an obligation to concede something for someone else's happiness if it does no harm to you?

---

The brief answer is No!

The highest good within Rands system of ethics, is living the life of Man qua Man. Rand is less than clear as to what this means. But she is explicit that it involves the use of reason in the pursuit of ones own best interests.

Rand does not mean this in the narrow minded, short-sighted, ego-centric sense usually associated with the pejorative adjective of egotist ie. a selfish self-centered person with an exaggerated sense of his or her own importance. Rand views a persons rational self-interest in the same vein as Aristotles eudaimonia an inclusive, and enlightened, and fore-sightful appreciation of ones longer term and wider scope best interests.

Randian ethics is therefore the diametric opposite of Kantian ethics. Kant argues that one should never treat other people as means to your own ends. Rand argues instead that one always must treat other people as a means to your end. But Rand also argues that voluntary cooperation with other people in the achievement of mutually desirable ends is the best means (by far) of achieving your own best interests. Hence a fundamental principle of Randian ethics is that initiating the use (or threat) of force (or fraud) is never the best means of efficiently pursuing a life of Man qua Man. In other words, dealing fairly with other people is the best means of achieving your own interests, and a respect for the interests of others is a necessary requirement for dealing fairly with other people.

One has only the obligation to oneself to pursue ones rational self-interests to the best of ones capabilities. But this obligation may necessitate paying proper attention to the welfare of ones family and friends, ones social, cultural, and economic environment. Hence, the welfare of ones family and friends, etc., are key considerations for a proper view of ones rational self-interests. And this may entail secondary obligations as a means to the ultimate end of ones own rational self-interests.

Stuart Burns

(76) Brittney asked:

Why is it reasonable to think that the future will resemble the past?

---

Can you think of a better idea. When I go into a dark room I reach for the light switch. Of course the light switch won't always work but going into a room, clapping my hands and shouting 'Abracadabra' doesn't seem like a better idea.

We assume that in some ways the future will be like the past. If it isn't then we wouldn't know what to think or do.

Shaun Williamson

(77) Kunz asked:

Can philosophy liberate Africa from underdevelopment?

---

No of course it can't. Only the African people themselves, by their actions, can liberate Africa from underdevelopment. Philosophy can make people think about the world and about truth so it might inspire people but liberation is about political action, not just about thought.

Shaun Williamson

(78) Michelle asked:

This is not a school question I would really like an answer me and a few of my friends are studying this and that's why im asking... looking at the philosophical disciplines of Epistemology and Metaphysics. Aristotle is our strongest example of a pure metaphysical philosopher, although there are many others in the history of philosophy. Philosophers such as Descartes and Hume were radically skeptical of any attempt to discuss the reality of things in itself. Where do you come down on this issue? Do you think that the nature of reality can be known in some fashion, or do you think that human knowledge is fundamentally incapable of knowing in this way? What are your reasons for holding this position?

---

Well it is possible to reject the whole question. Wittgenstein wrote 'Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our own language'. For him Western philosophy is a 2500 year old mistake. Getting to see clearly that it is a mistake is the only thing worth doing.

Wittgenstein rejects realism, scepticism, metaphysics, idealism empiricism, logical positivism and any other philosophical ism you care to mention. So it is possible not to come down on either side of the dispute. I discuss things but I never discuss things as they are in themselves and I never fail to discuss things as they are in themselves.

In philosophy you must always question your assumptions and the most persuasive assumption is that the question makes sense.

Shaun Williamson

(79) Louella asked:

Kindly explain the saying,

'NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS.'

or does REALITY exist?

thanks...

---

Louella has struck a nerve with her question. On the face of it, it looks like a beginner's question, the sort of thing that someone who hasn't had much exposure to philosophy would think about. 'Nothing is what it seems.' We know that isn't true, don't we? Some things are what they seem (e.g. the half-drunk cup of luke warm coffee on my desk is a half-drunk cup of luke-warm coffee), and some things aren't what they seem. We sometimes get the wrong impression of things. We correct that wrong impression, and then we see things aright.

(80) Stephen asked:

Is mathematics discovered (synthetic) or invented (analytic)?

---

If you believe in the reality of eternally existing abstract entities such as numbers and sets (Platonism), then we discover these (and their properties/ inter-relations). No problem as to why maths is such a good way of describing and understanding the world. We have a handle on real entities.

If you don't believe in such real entities, then we invent them.We invent systems comprising entities and rules (axioms)and then discover the logical consequences within the system (theorems). Example is Euclidean geometry with its points and lines, and rules (postulates, axioms) from which we can deduce (discover) many interesting and previously unknown theorems. It turns out that actual spacetime is non-Euclidean and better described by Reimanian geometry. That's a different sort of discovery, not a mathematical one but an empirical one.

If we invent maths, how come it's so 'unreasonably effective' in understanding the world ?. Well, our brains are part of the natural world so we would expect evolution to have achieved a mesh between how they work and how the world works. Ah yes, say the Platonists, then how come the best fit between maths and the world is with quantum mechanics, relativity and astronomy, matters far removed from the selection pressures that made our brains what they are. I suppose we can say that these esoteric areas are governed by the same natural laws as everyday phenomena, indeed are simpler (the movements of the planets are predictable for thousands of years, but we cant predict the weather for more than a week or two).

Also, we retain what were once thought to be ridiculous inventions if they turn out to be useful. Irrational numbers were incomprehensible to the Pythagoreans, negative numbers later thought nonsensical, zero took centuries to be accepted in the West (how could nothing be a number ?). Imaginary numbers (square root of minus one etc) the last straw, till we found them essential for the maths of quantum mechanics.We sometimes discard inventions which prove useless. Infinitesimals (much ridiculed by Berkeley) have long been given up.

I am not a Platonist, and so think mathematical entities and systems are invented. We then go on to discovery in two senses. First, discovering the theorems provable within the system. Secondly, whether the real world instantiates the mathematical model (an empirical discovery about the maths, not a mathematical discovery).

Your equating 'discovered' with 'synthetic' is problematic. Your question is clearer without the words in brackets. There is of course much to say on the analytic/ synthetic, a priori/ a posteriori and necessary/ contingent distinctions and their relationship/ overlap, but I don't want to start on that.

Crag Skinner

(81) Hugo asked:

Is Schopenhauer a realist or idealist?

---

Given that in his famous essay, The Emptiness of Existence, Schopenhauer refers to 'the flitting present' as the only manner of real existence' one can understand how Schopenhauer might be seen as a realist. Indeed his preparedness to dismiss 'the fleeting present' as 'unimportant 'cannot itself be dismissed so offhandedly to a philosophical position which he insists falls under the rubric of transcendental idealism. Perhaps his unique concept of transcendental idealism is made a little clearer towards the end of the same essay where he states that 'it is only Ideas which exist, and the shadow-like nature of the things corresponding to them' — by which he means noumena. Notwithstanding what might be deemed as the ambiguity of his position vis a vis idealism and realism in this instance, there is no doubt that Schopenhauer saw himself as a transcendental idealist: a position he set out as early as 1813 when, in his doctrinal dissertation, The Fourfold Root of the Principles of Sufficient Reason, he argued that all representations for a knowing consciousness or subject must stand to each other in a lawlike way according to four principles of connection which can be identified a priori.

These are the four forms of the principle of sufficient reason: those of becoming, being, knowing, and acting. [N.B. the principle of sufficient reason states that anything that happens does so for a reason: no state of affairs can obtain, and no statement can be true unless there is sufficient reason why it should be otherwise]. For Schopenhauer, the principle of being had to do with the arrangement of representations in Space and Time, which, following Kant, he saw as a priori intuitions. The principle of becoming had to do with causality, one of Kant's a priori categories. The principle of knowing has to do with reason and truth, because Schopenhauer believed that truth was the reference of as judgment to its ground. Judgment involves relations between concepts (which are in turn abstracted from perceptual representations by reason, not the understanding); but no judgment can express knowledge unless related to a ground or reason a priori. The principle of acting claims that its one object — the subject who wills — is always determined by motives, which are causes seen from within, and therefore also a priori.

Schopenhauer, then, identified himself as a transcendental idealist. He described transcendental idealism as a distinction between phenomena and the thing-in-itself, and the recognition that only phenomena are accessible to the human mind because we only know both ourselves and things in themselves as they are perceived by the mind. Describing his position in his Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), he says, Transcendental is the philosophy that makes us aware of the fact that the first and essential laws of this world that are presented to us are rooted in our brain and are therefore a priori'. Thus, Schopenhauer believed that the world, considered as representations, was transcendentally ideal whilst empirically real. What he meant by this, following Kant, is that while he accepts that there are 'things-in-themselves', we can only know them as phenomena: as things as they are perceived by the mind.

Whist there is still some debate on Schopenhauer's philosophical position as a realist or idealist, let me finish with the opening section of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea (1844), in which he clearly sets out his position in regards to this matter:

THE world is my idea':-- this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this: for it is the expression of the most general form of all possible and thinkable experience: a form which is more general than time, or space, or causality, for they all presuppose it; and each of these, which we have seen to be just so many modes of the principle of sufficient reason, is valid only for a particular class of ideas; whereas the antithesis of object and subject is the common form of all these classes, is that form under which alone any idea of whatever kind it may be, abstract or intuitive, pure or empirical, is possible and thinkable. No truth therefore is more certain, more independent of all others, and less in need of proof than this, that all that exists for knowledge, and therefore this whole world, is only object in relation to subject/ perception of a perceiver, in a word, idea. This is obviously true of the past and the future, as well as of the present, of what is farthest off, as of what is near; for it is true of time and space themselves, in which alone these distinctions arise. All that in any way belongs or can belong to the world is inevitably thus conditioned through the subject, and exists only for the subject. The world is idea.

Tony Fahey

(82) Ana asked:

The verificationist principle says, in effect, that a statement is meaningful only if you know what would verify it and what would falsify it. If correct, this principle would classify as meaningless many statements in metaphysics. Give some examples of statements that would have trouble passing the verificationist criterion. Explain why they would not pass, and defend them if possible.

---

One example is the verification principle itself, which can neither be verified nor falsified. Two other examples are the existence of minds other than one's own, and the continued existence of empirical objects when no one is perceiving them; these also can neither be verified nor falsified. The principle was first enunciated by the logical positivists, who wanted science to be meaningful but not metaphysics and theology. Verification was later abandoned by Popper on the grounds that a theory could be falsified by empirical evidence (modus tollens) but not verified by empirical evidence, since that would always be the fallacy of affirmation of the consequent. So he argued that statements can be meaningful only if falsifiable in principle. But he was wrong, as my second and third examples show. Philosophers have been trying to verify these throughout the history of philosophy, without success. I'll leave their defense to you.

Helier Robinson

(83) Michelle asked:

looking at the philosophical disciplines of Epistemology and Metaphysics. Aristotle is our strongest example of a pure metaphysical philosopher, although there are many others in the history of philosophy. Philosophers such as Descartes and Hume were radically skeptical of any attempt to discuss the reality of things in itself. Where do you come down on this issue? Do you think that the nature of reality can be known in some fashion, or do you think that human knowledge is fundamentally incapable of knowing in this way? What are your reasons for holding this position?

---

First of all Descartes was not a radical sceptic like Hume. Descartes' hyperbolical doubt was a method of searching for indubitable truth, and it led him to his famous cogito ergo sum. I would claim that the nature of reality can be known to some extent, in the form of theoretical science. Theoretical entities cannot be perceived ('theoretical' means 'non-empirical') but evidence for them can be perceived: for example, you cannot perceive electricity but every modern kitchen provides plenty of empirical evidence of its existence. Theoretical science is never certain, but most of it is highly probable. Note that philosophers who talk about thing in themselves do so because they are taking the view that every empirical object is composed of sensations, which are manufactured by the sense organs, and as such these objects are only images of reality, not reality itself. And, also, every empirical object is somewhat illusory and therefore an image of reality, not reality itself. (If you doubt this see if you can point to an empirical object which is wholly free from illusion; if you can, how do you know it to be so?) If these point are correct then we only ever know images, not the real objects that give rise to these images. These real objects are what is meant by 'things in themselves', as well as by 'theoretical objects'.

Helier Robinson

(84) Maria asked:

If X might exist but we have no reason to suppose that it actually does exist, then as metaphysicians we should not concern ourselves with X. Is this true?

---

No, it is not true. We might suppose it to exist if only to discuss what the consequences of its existence might be.

Helier Robinson

(85) Drew asked:

I have heard it said that 'Science is not the only way of knowing'. Typically the speaker is arguing that rational thought can be a path to knowledge.

If we exclude learning from others, under what circumstances can we reliably know about things without using some variant of scientific method?

---

Saying that science is not the only way of knowing makes it seem as though science has failed to meet all our expectations of it and as though there are alternative ways of knowing things that can be used in place of science. This is just a confusion.

Scientists study the external material world. They try to find the laws that describe the behaviour of the material world. Science is something that humans naturally do. Cavemen wanted to find the material that would make the best point for their spears, that is what led us from the stone age to the bronze age and the iron age.

It led us to discover electricity, television and the computer. It led to medicine, antibiotics and the discovery of DNA.

However there are other things in the world that are not part of science. The study of poetry and music are not scientific studies although science can help even here.

If you want to know about the material world then you study the material world (that is what science is) and there can never be any alternative way of studying the material world, fortune telling and religion won't help and neither will philosophy. The study of the material world (science) is the only thing that can give us knowledge of the material world.

If you want to know about other things then study them. The study of poetry is the only thing that can give you knowledge of poetry. If you want to study mathematics then get a maths textbook, looking at the external world won't help. Counting sheep is a practical application of counting but it won't teach you how to count or what counting is.

Shaun Williamson

(86) Dumebi asked:

THOSE WHO SEE WITH THEIR EYES ARE BLIND!

---

Well that is obviously not true as any optician will tell you. I suppose it is an example of hyperbole. There are higher truths that cannot be seen with the eyes. However no one ever imagined that they could. There are also optical illusions.

Suppose someone says I only believe what I can see with my eyes then we could ask how this helps with the study of mathematics. However we should beware of those who seek to persuade us that there are mystical roads to true knowledge, they are often confidence tricksters trying to sell mumbo jumbo or snake oil. If you want to know if its raining then looking out of the window is the best way to tell.

Shaun Williamson

(87) Heather asked:

Using Aristotle, Kant, and Mill's philosophies, apply their theories to the following case:

Six months after San Diego native Natalie Dylan graduated from Sacramento State University, she received a letter from the Direct Loan Servicing Center notifying her that the deferment on her student loans had expired and she would soon be required to begin repaying the loans. Never having taken out a student loan, Dylan was stunned to learn that she was nearly 100,000 in debt. Apparently, Ms Dylan's stepfather used her personal information to obtain fraudulent student loans and then absconded with the money. While it remained unclear whether Natalie Dylan will be held responsible for repaying the loans obtained in her name, the government subsidized financing she was counting on to fund her graduate degree was no longer available to her.

To pay for graduate school, Natalie Dylan made the decision to auction off her virginity to the highest bidder through the online auction site eBay. Not amused, eBay removed the offering soon after learning about it. Undeterred, Dylan turned to Dennis Hof, owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel near Carson City, Nevada where her sister already worked. Hof thought the idea was tremendous and agreed to conduct the auction on the brothels website, offering his establishment as the site for the deals consummation. He asserted that it was better for women to use this particular asset to pay for education rather than to give it away in the back seat of a car.

Dylan, who holds a degree in womens studies and plans to begin work soon on a masters degree in marriage and family therapy, doesn't believe what she is doing is degrading. Rather, she described her unusual auction as empowering in that she is using what she has to better herself. Dylan stated she would undergo to a gynecological exam and a polygraph test to verify the authenticity of her offering.

Dylan explained that the highest bidder might not necessarily win the auction, as she wanted to find someone with whom she had some chemistry. Hof said that bidding had topped 3 million and that Natalie was talking by telephone to some of those hoping to win the auction.

Afterword:

It now appears that Ms Dylan will have to relist her virginity for sale. The winning bidder, an Australian businessman, backed out and requested that Dylan refund his 250,000 deposit because his wife did not want him to go through with the purchase. Ms Dylan returned the money and suggested to the man that he return to marriage counseling.

Case 3 Question

Was it morally justifiable for Natalie Dylan to put her virginity up for auction on E bay?

---

No, it wasn't morally justifiable. Ebay's terms and conditions specifically forbid people from offering sexual services for sale. Natalie had already signed up to these conditions so it was dishonest of her to try to circumvent them.

Her suggestion that the businessman return to marriage counselling is ridiculous. This man certainly needs his head examining but I don't think marriage counselling will be enough for him.

Natalie, her father and her sister are shallow, unintelligent people with no moral sense so I don't think Aristotle, Kant or Mill could help them nor would they want such help, its best to leave them alone to mess up their own lives. Also I don't believe that Natalie is a virgin, no matter what your teacher says about her.

Shaun Williamson

(88) Kerry asked:

What is a critique on Mill's idea of higher and lower order pleasures?

---

One possible critique associated with Mill's idea of higher and lower pleasures has to do with their method of judgement or evaluation. According to Mill, a specific kind of pleasure was intrinsically better than another if it was preferred over the other by at least a majority of what we might call 'competent rational judges'. By a competent rational judge Mill appears to have meant a person who satisfies three conditions: that of having experienced both sorts of pleasure in question, being talented in introspection and self-knowledge, and being capable of cool, reflective and unprejudiced or disinterested comparison and judgment.

Mill's suggestion here is probably, in part, derived from Book IX of Plato's Republic, after all Mill was familiar with the Greek philosophers from his earliest days (it is reported that he had read at least six of Plato's dialogues by the age of 7, and had read them all by the age of 12).

In this section of Book IX, Socrates tries to prove that the just man is happiest, and the unjust least happy, and one of the ways he tries to do this is by showing that the philosophic life is pleasanter. This attempt takes the form of arguing that each part of the soul has its appropriate pleasure; that each type of person would exalt as pleasantest the pleasures appropriate to his dominant desires. And so we get the lover of the pleasure of philosophy, the lover of the pleasure of honor and the lover of the pleasure of money. The proper tools, Socrates goes on, for deciding which will be pleasantest are experience, understanding and reason. Since these are the privileges of the philosophers, the latter will be the best judges, and their judgment will be authoritative; not only are philosophers governed by understanding, they also have experienced the two other kinds of pleasures from childhood. The other two, meanwhile, might know each other's pleasures, but they never attain, as Socrates says, the 'delight that the contemplation of reality brings'.

In any case, what are we to make of Mill's competent judges? At least one worry that many of us may have about these judges is whether or not they can be sufficiently impartial. To be a competent judge of the relative values of, say, reading Plato, a so-called higher pleasure, and drinking beer or getting a massage, or whatever, -lower pleasures, it is not enough that these judges have simply experienced both -they must have enjoyed them, and, this is the key, enjoyed them properly or in the right way. But, we might think, that the characteristics of these judges needed to evaluate the value of higher pleasures are in some sense fundamentally opposed to those required in the case of the lower pleasures. That is to say, can, in this case, a philosopher who is at base an uncommitted sensualist actually properly evaluate the enjoyment of certain sensualist activities, and, on the other hand, can the sensualist who takes some time to flip through Plato's dialogues actually properly evaluate the pleasures of philosophy? The person, in other words, of an intellectual bent or leaning may find it difficult to properly appreciate the kind of enjoyment to which he or she is not naturally inclined; and the same goes for the person of sensualist leanings.

Kristian Urstad

(89) Rebecca asked:

I am writing a dissertation entitled, 'Freewill, autonomy, and mental illness', any suggestions? I have yet to begin it!

---

(89) Eli asked:

Are scientific laws really absolute?

---

I'm not sure what you mean by 'really absolute' (yawn, why do philosophical discussions always start with 'it depends what you mean'.Because it is vital to stop us talking at cross purposes).

Maybe you mean one of the following (if not, we'll be at cross purposes)

1. Can we tell the difference between a scientific law and an accidentally true generalization ? 2. Are accepted scientific laws accurate, or might they just be useful approximations ? 3. Do laws change over time ? 4. Could the laws of nature have been different ?

To deal briefly with each:

1. There are many approaches to demarcation, eg

(i) laws are more general (ii) laws don't mention specifics (iii) laws support counterfactuals (iv) laws involve projectible predicates (v) laws are relations between universals

But all approaches are open to dispute and counterexamples.There is no infallible distinction and ultimately the judgment of the scientific community decides. Sometimes new evidence exposes an accidental generalization wrongly held to be a law eg Bode's planetary 'law'

2. Probably the most famous laws are Newton's laws of motion and gravitation, revered for centuries. But now known to be useful approximations to Einstein's more accurate theory of general relativity. Newton is good enough to get men to the moon and back, but a car satnav would be hopeless in town without an Einsteinian correction programmed into its software. We cant be certain our accepted laws are accurate (although we hope they are, and I imagine some truly are)

3. No evidence for this. But some scientists think it possible that, say, the speed of light, or the value of the fine structure constant, has changed slightly over the last 13 billion years, and are looking for past evidence in the form of info reaching our telescopes from galaxies ten billion or more light years away.

4. Fifty years ago most scientists would have said the 'package' of laws seen in our universe is the only logically possible one (God had no choice as to which laws to instantiate), although we don't yet understand enough about the laws to see why that is so. Nowadays, many scientists think the laws and constants of nature are contingent, indeed maybe all possible packages are tried out in myriad different universes within the multiverse. Naturally, we find ourselves in one of the (few ?) universes with laws and constants allowing emergence of intelligent life

I hope this goes some way to answering your question

Craig Skinner

(91) Ergyr asked:

I am seeing that people like Stephen Hawking, famous mathematician and scientist, write with massive quantity of words in order to engage in sleight of hand to convince himself or at least his readers that he has proven something, but he has proven nothing.

The same also with Nietzsche and also today's Richard Dawkins.

Is this suspicion warranted?

Now, since Hawking is a mathematician, can he and he should redact all his arguments in his recent book, The Grand Design, into mathematical symbols, namely, in the language of mathematics, and see whether he can fool mathematicians to agree with him that God is not needed for the universe to begin to exist, that it can and does come from nothing.

---

Dawkins gives us atheists a bad name. As far as I am aware, he has no intellectual training in the field in which he is most popularly received (ie, philosophy of religion), but, like the proverbial man in the pub, sets all learning at nought. If you have ever seen him in debate with a trained theologian or philosopher, the impression is priceless — but that is just why he sticks to abusing fundamentalists. Best ignore him if you plan on doing philosophy.

(92) Derry asked:

Why Wittgenstein in Private language says 'Speech with and without thought is to be compared with the playing of a piece of music with and without thought.'

---

The problem with your question is that individual remarks in Wittgenstein's later work cannot be interpreted on their own but only as a part of a group of remarks on a particular topic. Also as Wittgenstein pointed out in the introduction to Philosophical Investigations, it is a work that can only really be understood as a whole.

Wittgenstein's later work is not just something you can pick up, read and expect to understand. In particular Philosophical Investigations is not a work of philosophy, it doesn't contain any philosophical truths or any philosophical arguments. To understand Investigations you will need to have a graduate level of knowledge of the problems of Western philosophy. You should also be acutely aware of the fact that after 2500 years of Western philosophy there is not even a single agreed solution to any one philosophical problem.

If you think you have the answer to any philosophical problem or if you think there are any metaphysical truths then you are unlikely to find anything of value in Wittgenstein and you will probably never be able to really understand what he is saying. Wittgenstein's later work is only for people who know Western philosophy well and still find it deeply puzzling.

There are two key remarks you need to think about. 'Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our own language' and 'We are like savages who take the expressions of civilised men and give them a strange interpretation'.

For Wittgenstein the surface features of our language implant myths about the nature of reality in our minds, these myths are what tempt us to create metaphysics.

One of these myths is about the relationship between language and thought. The thought is a ghostly thing that exists in the mind. We express the thought in words. Sometimes we express the thought badly or we don't see the thought clearly enough with the 'inner eye' and then we say 'What I really meant to say was..' This is the myth of the connection between speech and thought, speech is the expression of a ghostly thought.

Wittgenstein wants us to free ourselves from these myths so he compares speaking without thinking to playing a piece of music without concentrating. We are not tempted to think that a piece of music exists as a ghostly think in the mind and that a performance is a reproduction of that ghostly thing on a musical instrument.

Speaking without thinking is sometimes just speaking carelessly. It doesn't mean that the ghostly thought doesn't exist. Speech and thought aren't the same thing but neither are they two different things.

If after all this you are still tempted to ask 'So what is the relationship between speech and thought?' then you have still not understood what Wittgenstein is trying to show you.

Suppose I say..

1. The government's economic policy will increase unemployment

2. I think that the government's economic policy will increase unemployment.

What is the difference between these two things except a difference in the form of words and that 2 can sound more hesitant than 1. If people judge that I say either of them sincerely then they could be said to express my view of the government's policy. Neither of them imply that I have necessarily had any ghostly things existing in my mind or that I have been thinking about the governments policy. However they could also be an expression of the result of many months deliberation on the subject. It all depends upon the context in which my words are uttered. However in philosophy words have no context, they invite us to invent the most likely context.

Shaun Williamson

(93) Marion asked:

I've just read an article titled 'Row Over Crematorium Heating For Swimmers' which details plans of a local council, in an attempt to save energy, 'recycling' the heat generated from an adjacent crematorium to heat a swimming pool. Some have slammed the idea calling it, 'Sick and an insult to local residents', and I agree with them... Is this not ethically unacceptable?

---

(94) Ergyr asked:

I am seeing that people like Stephen Hawking, famous mathematician and scientist, write with massive quantity of words in order to engage in sleight of hand to convince himself or at least his readers that he has proven something, but he has proven nothing.

The same also with Nietzsche and also today's Richard Dawkins.

Is this suspicion warranted ?

Now, since Hawking is a mathematician, can he and he should redact all his arguments in his recent book, the Grand Design, into mathematical symbols, namely, in the language of mathematics, and see whether he can fool mathematicians to agree with him that God is not needed for the universe to begin to exist, that it can and does come from nothing,

---

Hawking's 'The Grand Design' is no masterpiece. He argues for the truth of M-theory, an extension of string theory. Whether this speculative view, or something like it, becomes an accepted cosmological theory, nobody knows, and I wouldn't bet on it. In addition, he presents his familiar atheistic views. But I don't think he claims to have proven anything. There simply are no proofs that gods (or demons, devils, angels or other supernatural beings) exist or that they don't. There are arguments for and against, but none is conclusive. This doesn't necessarily mean that we should say it's a 50-50 shot. Dawkins argues that the evidence very much favours the 'no gods' view. But of course those who believe in a God or gods don't agree.

Dawkins militant atheism can be a bit wearing. He comes across to me as being angry with God for not existing, and wanting God to come out from under that cloak of nonexistence and take the rap for all the natural disasters, evils and suffering in the world.

As for prospects of a 'no-gods'scientific account of how the universe might have come to exist,there is no knockdown argument, but I feel the eternal inflation/ multiverse view is promising. But I don't think putting this view in full mathematical dress makes it any more or less plausible.

No chance, anyway,of Hawking putting his arguments into mathematical symbols in a popular book (he has already done this in the journals for fellow mathematicians/ physicists). In his first book, 'A Brief History of Time', he says that he was advised that each equation he included would halve the book's sales, and included only 'e=mc squared', hoping not to scare off half his potential readers. A wise move it seems. His book was a blockbusting best seller for over a year. Sixteen years later, his friend and colleague, Roger Penrose, wrote 'the Road to Reality', a better book in my view, but he said some math was essential, readers would rise to the challenge, and,optimistically,included plenty of it. He didn't sell many copies.

As scientists, Dawkins and Hawking are perfectly entitled to point to cosmological and biological evidence suggesting no gods needed, just as those in earlier days (and a few today) argued that the wonders of the natural world showed the glory of God's creation

I'm not Nietzsche-savvy enough to comment on his alleged shortcomings

Craig Skinner

(95) Chuck asked:

Why are people homeless?

---

Chuck this is a very complex question so I can't give you any simple answers. Some people are homeless for personal reasons i.e addiction to drink or drugs or mental illness make it impossible for them to exist in a situation where they have to pay rent regularly.

I have also know tramps (hobos) who suffered from a form of claustrophobia which made it impossible for them to live indoors. However most homelessness is caused by the policies of governments and mortgage lenders and a failure to ensure that enough homes are built which can be rented at a reasonable rent. The present recession has been caused by mortgage lenders pushing a enormous amount of money into fraudulent mortgages and these fraudulent mortgages were then turned into fraudulent securities which were traded by financial institutions to the point were they caused a collapse of the banking system. Yet very few people have been prosecuted over this fraudulent activity. Both in Europe and the U.S. many people are becoming homeless because they cannot pay a mortgage which they should never have been given in the first place. At the same time there are growing numbers of vacant properties and a growing number of homeless people.

So some homelessness is caused by the government failing to keep fraud out of the banks and out of the housing market. All of this stems from the deregulation of the banks by President Regan and Margaret Thatcher. Banks which previously had only been allowed to take deposits from individual customers ( a safeguard introduced after the 1927 Wall St. crash which was also caused by the banks reckless lending) were now allowed to gamble on the stock exchange and to invent new types of securities which were not what they pretended to be.

Shaun Williamson

(96) Eli asked:

Are scientific laws really absolute?

---

I don't know what you mean by really absolute. Scientific laws represent the best explanation we have for the facts about the material world that we know at present. As we get more information about the material world we may modify our scientific laws but for real scientific laws such as quantum mechanics or the theory of evolution, it is not likely that that they will be overturned but they may be modified or become part of a larger theory in the future.

However not all so called scientific laws have clear and overwhelming evidence in their favour.

The important fundamental theories won't be overturned but scientists and scientific researchers cheat, lie and publish false results. This is especially true in the fields of medicine and medical research. The newspapers also distort and lie about scientific research in order to make a good story.

Shaun Williamson

(97) Derry asked:

Why does Nietzsche speak of the 'timeless knowing subject' that is based on the fiction of 'an eye turned in no particular direction'?

---

He was pointing out that an eye is always turned in a particular direction and so there are things that the eye can see and things that the eye cannot see, because for example they are behind its field of view.

In the same way the things that we think we know are always relative to our time and place in the world. However this has been interpreted by some people to mean that truth is always relative to a time and place and the things that we think are true could always be seen as false at some time in the future. Truth and knowledge are just a historical interpretation of the world.

The truths of logic and mathematics will always be true. The major scientific theories may be replaced by more comprehensive theories in the future but that doesn't mean that our present theories are false. What Newton and Rutherford discovered about physics is still true even if we now have a fuller understanding of their ideas through the theories of Relativity and Quantum mechanics.

It is more likely that our ideas about politics and society and morality will change radically over time although even there some things remain constant.

And of course some things seem to remain outside our field of view at all times. Will we ever get politicians who understand economics and who know that money doesn't grow on trees and that all bubbles eventually collapse? I think not.

Shaun Williamson

(98) Aviral asked:

When we talk about changing past then to change it where can we find it ? Is it anywhere or any place we can specify ?

The past mostly exist in our memory and nowhere else. How can we change something which is merely our memory or impression in mind. So till we are not able to get inside our own mind where can we find past to change it ? If past could be changed then the whole concept of destiny would have been gone.

Can we deny destiny completely despite of so many things in this world which are not under our control and everyone at some point in time realizes destiny if he is honest to admit it?

---

If you think of Einstein's four-dimensional space-time, then time is a dimension. What we call 'now' is a point on this dimension, moving steadily along it into the future. So all of time exists, timelessly, as it were. We are stuck in the now, so cannot travel to the past, but it exists. (One reason we cannot travel there is the grandfather paradox: suppose you could travel to the past, and went back in time to when your paternal grandfather was a boy, and killed him. Then your father would never have been born, so nor would you have been born, in which case your grandfather would not have been killed as a boy.)

Destiny, on the other hand has to do with the future: it is the supposition that the future is like the past in that it cannot be changed (or some of it at least cannot be changed). This is tied up with the question of free will. Although we have a strong feeling of being free in making choices, it can be argued that this feeling is an illusion, and we are not free. The argument is: every event is either caused, or not; if it is not caused then it is a chance event; making a choice (that is, deciding an action) is an event, which is either caused or chance; if caused it is not a free choice, and if chance it is not a free choice; therefore there is no freedom of the will, in which case everything that happens is destined.

I might add that neither of the conclusions of these two paragraphs is final: these matters have been debated for centuries, inconclusively. So if you can refute them, preferably validly, then you will be doing philosophy on your own. Good luck.

Helier Robinson

(99) Albert asked:

Speculations, procedures, and conclusions are not scientific unless they are made public.' Is this true?

---

No. First of all, publicity is very important in science. For example, the three main criteria in empirical science are: experimentalists should be objective, quantitative data are preferable to qualitative data, and experiments must be repeatable. Objectivity is attention to the public (as opposed to subjectivity, which is attention to the private), quantitative data are more public than qualitative data, and repeatability of experiments makes their results more public. Again, reasoning, in the form of logic and mathematics, is the most public part of mental activity. However, speculations, procedures, and conclusions are more or less scientific regardless of when or if they are made public; making them public is not a magical act of reconstitution.

Helier Robinson

(100) Kaitlyn asked:

Is it possible for one to start life after they have previously gained age? Can one experience two or more separate lives before they die? What is life?

---

I will answer only your third question. The best definition of life that I know of is that offered by Erwin Schroedinger, the discoverer of Schroedinger's Equation in quantum mechanics. He defined life as a system of very high negative entropy in dynamic equilibrium. Entropy in physics is a measure of disorder, so that negative entropy is a measure of order. Dynamic equilibrium, as opposed to static equilibrium, is equilibrium during change. According to the second law of thermodynamics the entropy of a closed energy system can increase to a maximum (called the (static) equilibrium state), but is exceedingly unlikely to decrease. In a living system the entropy is very low (the negative entropy is very high) and this keeps on trying to increase in accordance with the second law; but the increase is mostly cancelled by bringing in negative entropy from the environment, by feeding on other life or on sunlight. Ill health is a matter of increasing entropy, and death is the final collapse of the dynamic equilibrium.

Helier Robinson

(101) Zzy asked:

Hi, I would like to ask a couple of questions.

It would be great if you guys can suggest a few solutions, thanks!!!

To put it simply, my questions are about the rules of the universe (and whether the universe is logical or not).

I think that things in the universe may or may not obey unchanging rules. There should be more than a handful of unchanging rules up to now at least. I believe that many things in our daily life are based on assumptions similar to those rules.

So why are those rules obeyed by the universe? I believe an obvious answer is that they are obeyed for no reason. It is just the way it is. If this is indeed the case, then wouldn't it be reasonable to not expect the rules to stay the same? If those rules just happened to exist, then they could also just happened to change, right? I probably have committed a bunch of fallacies in the above words, but I hope you guys can see what I'm trying to say here.

Does the universe have to be logical/ rational/ sensible/ reasonable? Because when I think, I need to know where my starting points are. If I don't know anything for sure, how am I suppose to think? One problem I used to think about is:

Why do things exist?

If the universe is not logical/ rational/ sensible/ reasonable, then there could be no reason at all for existence. If there is no reason for existence and there is no reason for the rules of the universe, can't we just say that there is no reason why the universe's current conditions will not change? Since the universe is already not logical/ rational/ sensible/ reasonable, then illogical things can happen right?

Please help me out!

---

'Rational' is the best word to use here, since it includes the logical and the mathematical. The most important thing about the rational is that it requires that a contradiction cannot be true, which in turn means that contradictions are impossible in reality. (In fact the only realm in which contradictions can occur is language: we can say them and write them, but cannot make them exist otherwise.) The second important thing about rationality is that it contains necessities: logical necessities. For example, if it is true that you have two apples and three oranges then necessarily you have five pieces of fruit.

Philosophically, reality (the Universe) is rational because it contains no contradictions and it does contain necessities. Real necessities are causal necessities, and they correspond to the logical necessities of rationality. The importance of this is our desire for explanations: an explanation of something being a description of its cause. To describe cause is to explain their effects. We have several kinds of explanation: superstition, common sense, theological, metaphysical, and scientific. The last is the most reliable, partly because of its rationality. In science theoretical science explains what empirical science describes, and it does so by describing the underlying causes of empirical phenomena. 'Underlying' here is a metaphor for imperceptible, and 'theoretical' means imperceptible, or non-empirical.

The question now is: can everything in the Universe be explained? If it can then everything is causally necessitated, or determined. If it cannot then some things are uncaused, or a product of chance. (Note that chance is not necessarily wholly so; if you toss an ordinary die and the result is a chance number, then that number necessarily is one of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.)

So your questions all revolve around the question of whether determinism (the doctrine that everything in the Universe is fully caused) is true or not. Philosophers are not agreed on this question. My own view, for what it is worth, is that determinism is true.

Helier Robinson

(102) Ross asked:

Hi, I once remember an old philosophy tutor I had using the quote 'there has been no new philosophy, just two thousand years of commentary on plato and aristotle' I seem to remember him saying that the quote was from Bertrand Russell, but I am putting it in an essay and need to make sure that it is referenced correctly and cant find the quote anywhere. does anyone know who said this and/ or which work it is from? Regards.

---

See Alfred North Whitehead 'Process and Reality', p. 39 of the Free Press edition, 1979, ISBN 0-02-934570-7:

'The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato'

Various web references:

(103) Deborah asked:

What came first the chicken or the egg?

---

The egg came first. Before modern chickens evolved there were many other creatures who laid eggs, for example insects, reptiles and dinosaurs all existed before modern chickens and they all laid eggs. Fish also lay eggs and they also existed before chickens did.

You should study evolution, then you will not be tempted to ask this sort of question.

Shaun Williamson

(104) Roy asked:

could the angels and aliens be hermaphrodites

---

Angels are supposed to be pure spirits. If they exist they do not have bodies or sexual organs, so they cannot be hermaphrodites.

I don't know anything about aliens, I have never met one and neither has anyone else.

Shaun Williamson

(105) Payal asked:

Numbers are a man made creation, so how we know 1 + 1 = 2?

---

It is precisely because numbers are a man made creation that we can be sure that 1+1=2. In the same way man invented the game of chess and we can be absolutely sure that a game of chess ends if one player achieves checkmate.

However our number system also has useful application to the real world and that is why it is important to us. Man invented the ruler and we can be absolutely sure that 1 metre = 1000 millimetres. But rulers are also useful for measuring things. If measuring things didn't work, i.e. if the things in our world changed their size randomly, we would have no interest in rulers or in measuring things.

Shaun Williamson

(106) Ruth asked:

(I apologise for asking such a basic question, but I have googled and googled and.... nothing).

I was reading a discussion online the other day and one of the participants posited that 'all experience essentially takes place in the mind'. My question is, if there is no such thing as 'objective' reality, are people altered by the things they experience and change because of outside stimulus, or do they 'change' the things they experience to suit their own framework? Which choice is preferable?

---

Neither, things are much more complicated than simplistic philosophical talk might lead you to believe. If all experience essentially takes place in the mind and if there is no objective reality, why do I have to pay taxes? Why can't I fly?

Wittgenstein wrote 'Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our own language'.

Shaun Williamson

(107) Julie asked:

I was reading a fantasy novel recently, and the theology in this book was very interesting. In the novel, the idea is put forth that WE are God. That man, and his sentience, are a vessel with which the universe is to becoming selfaware.

Is this a common belief? Is there a name or an 'ism' for this particular line of thought?

---

Julie, it seems to me that the author of the novel to which you refer has borrowed a small part of his theme from the 'ism' known as pantheism and a larger part from Hegel's 'dialectic process'. Pantheism, from the Greek pan (all) and theos (god), is the belief that God and nature are identical where nature is taken to mean the universe and the totality of all that is; alternatively that God is all and that all is God, that God is identical with the universe. This doctrine holds that all beings are modes, attributes or appearances of a single, unified reality or being. Baruch Spinoza's philosophical views, as set out in his Ethics is considered to reflect this approach. However, since you suggest that the novel in question concentrates rather on 'man, and his sentience' rather than everything in the universe, it seems to me that your writer has taken more from Hegel than Spinoza. According to Hegel everything in the universe can be understood only in terms of the Absolute mind which has been evolving throughout the world`s history into a transcendent, self-contained being. Each stage in the world`s history is the expression of the inner struggle of the Absolute to achieve self-realisation. The term Hegel used to describe this evolutionary process is `dialectic`. All change, says Hegel, is subject to this law. By this he means that first a thesis is produced, it then develops an opposition (an antithesis), from the ensuing conflict between the thesis and antithesis a synthesis arises. This synthesis then becomes the thesis, and the unfolding process continues throughout history until the Absolute achieves self-realisation.

Hegel believed that in discovering the dialectic that he had discovered a necessary historical law. That is, for Hegel, the dialectic is an actual process which worlds events necessarily follow. All change, he insists, occurs by virtue of this law. According to Hegel, history is not a series of discontinuous contiguous events, rather it is structured by the triadic process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. All forms of life, says Hegel, whether artistic, philosophical or religious, display this organising principle. The dialectic process shows how, in human history, one form turns into another as the contradictions are revealed in previous forms. However, the preceding form is not discarded, rather that which is valuable in each is carried into a richer and deeper form of life which incorporates and transcends the previous forms.

For Hegel history can best be understood by observing the development of nations in the light of the dialectic process. For example, a nation develops; it produces an opposition to itself, and from the resulting conflict between the two opposing forces a new order emerges: a civilisation that is of a higher order than either of its predecessors. For a working model of Hegel's argument we need no further than the northern counties of this island: the Nationalist opposition (antithesis) arises in conflict to Unionism (thesis). Following a long struggle a synthesis (which has its genesis in the Good Friday Agreement) emerges. If Hegel's thesis is correct, this new situation should lead to a more pluralist, equitable, and stable society: a society that will be most value to each of its predecessors. In time this synthesis will become the thesis, out of which will emerge an antithesis, and so the process continues.

According to Hegel the dialectic process must take account of all major forms of human experience and activity and with the basic psychological structures of selves who engage in such activities. That is, the nature of the self and its capacities has to be understood in relation to basic forms of activity in which human beings engage: familial, economic, political, artistic, philosophical, and religious. For Hegel, human beings only develop a rich sense of self in relation to common activities. That is, they achieve recognition from others, and affirmation of their 'selves' by engagement and interaction with the world in which they live. For Hegel there is unity in diversity. That is, beneath the surface differences between various activities in which human beings engage there is an underlying connectedness which can be brought to the surface by virtue of the dialectic process. Immanuel Kant had argued that all experience is subject to certain conditions which exist a priori in the mind. The human mind, he held, is destined never to know reality. Kant's philosophy had established a chasm between philosophy and science. It maintained that scientific enquiry and discovery is constrained by certain a priori criteria. Hegel rejects this approach. According to Hegel, a complete understanding of reality is possible: there is nothing real which cannot be grasped by reason, nor is there anything which is a concept of reason that is not real.

Hegel's dialectic process, then, stands in direct opposition to Kant's thesis. What Kant holds to be transcendental a priori conditions peculiar to all rational human beings at all times, Hegel holds to be historical. That is, conditions that Kant maintains has always existed in the human mind, Hegel says have been developed over time. Hegel's dialectic process contends that the subject is primarily in a state of primitive consciousness. That is, the individual is in a state of consciousness that does nothing but grasp that which confronts him or her at any given moment. Hegel calls this most primitive form of consciousness 'certainty at a certain level of sense experience', or simply 'sense certainty'. From this naive form of consciousness the mind, by virtue of the dialectic process, evolves to a state of self-consciousness. However, human beings only develop through interaction with the world in which they live. Self-consciousness cannot develop in isolation. If consciousness is to develop it requires an object outside itself as opposition to itself. This relationship manifests itself in the form of desire. And to desire is to want something for oneself: to obviate that which is different in 'the other' and to possess that which is different in oneself.

To understand the place of the triadic dialectic process in Hegel we need to look at the most well-known section of his Phenomenology: the Master/ Slave relationship. In this relationship the master holds his position precisely because he keeps a slave. The slave is subservient to the master who enjoys the fruits of the servant's labours. At first examination the master seems to be superior to the slave in that the latter's identity depends on his relationship with the master. However, when we consider that the master also needs affirmation of his identity we understand that, while he has acknowledgement of his slave, in the mind of the master, the slave is just a 'thing' not an independent consciousness. Thus, since to the master the slave is a non-person, his desire or need of affirmation of his identity by this 'other' is not satisfied. In a sense, the master is slave to the slave. When the master reflects on this situation, as Hegel believes he must do, he cannot fail to acknowledge the arbitrariness and injustice of his relationship with his slave, and upon whom he depends, and out of this understanding arises a synthesis: a more rational and humane social arrangement. For Hegel, human consciousness, history, philosophy, science, religion, art, and everything else operates in accordance with this triadic law.

Hegel's dialectic mode, then, contends that the most primitive form of consciousness is 'sense-certainty'. By this he means that primitive beings react spontaneously, or without reflection, to the world around them. The inner conflict generated by others leads to a state of self-consciousness. That is, in virtue of the triadic process, one form of consciousness emerges from others. However, rather than replacing one of the preceding states in favour of another, the new state retains all that is good from both states. Thus, sense-certainty evolves to self-consciousness, and self-consciousness become objective consciousness: the ego-centricity of self-consciousness gives way to the experience of oneself as a meaningful part of a greater, universal consciousness. By letting go of the concept of being — of 'I am' — as a separate or partial entity, the individual becomes aware that the experience of being, of 'I am', is not of oneself as an isolated subject in an alien universe, rather it is the experience, the knowledge and awareness of oneself as an integral part of the whole: the absolute, which is one's true self — Geist.

For Hegel, the term `Geist` means `objective` or `cosmic` spirit. Every condition of thought, or of things — every idea and every situation in the world -generates within itself a contrary thesis — an antithesis. From this conflicting thesis arises a higher, more complex whole. This evolutionary movement is a continuous spiralling development of oppositions, and their merging and reconciliation constitutes the formula of all development and all reality. The evolution of consciousness is the same as the movement of all things: in each there a dialectic progression from unity through diversity and to diversity- in-unity. In the individual, the Absolute rises to self-consciousness and becomes the Absolute Idea. That is, thought realising itself as part of the Absolute, transcending limitations, and drawing together beneath the surface chaos, an underlying universal harmony. By the Absolute Idea,, Hegel means that the Absolute, reflecting on Its own Being becomes, in the virtue of the dialectic process, conscious of Its true self. It is through the dialectic process that the Absolute gains a clear understanding- a clear idea — of its true Self. The task of philosophy is to discover the unity that lies potential in diversity. The task of religion is to reach and feel the Absolute in which all opposites are resolved into unity, that great sum of being in which mind and matter, subject and object, good and evil, are one. God is the system of relationships in which things move and have their being and their significance. As mentioned above, the individual rises to self-consciousness, and becomes the Absolute Idea. What this means is that the dialectic process is not simply a process through which human beings become conscious of the Absolute, but that it is a process through which the Absolute comes to consciousness of Itself. Human beings, for Hegel, are not contingent to the Absolute, not things which can be done without, rather it is that they play a vital and necessary role in the Absolute's coming to realisation of Itself.

Geist, or cosmic spirit, then, is the Absolute striving to each self-awareness, and the locus, the channel, through which this comes to realisation is the human being. It is in virtue of the dialectic process that, through human beings, the Absolute reaches Self-realisation, and that human beings come to a new understanding of their own lives. That is, they see themselves, not as individual fragments of the universe, but as indispensable vehicles of the cosmic spirit. This spirit is not reducible to man; it is not identical with the human spirit, for it is the spiritual reality underlying the entire universe. For Hegel, Art, Religion and Philosophy are humanity's aspects of the self-revelation of the Absolute. The medium of Art is sensation, the medium of Religion is mental imagery, and the medium of Philosophy is imageless conceptions. Each represents different areas of the Absolute Spirit -`Geist` — revealing itself.

Hegel conceived Art to be the absolute form of spirit, a universal phenomenon and an epochal force: a mode of being and a thinking that characterises particular stages in the history of mankind. Thus understood, as the constitutive force and the substantial expression of an epoch, art is no longer. From a purely critical-historical point of view, Hegel concluded that for the modern world art is something of the past. The history of Art evolved through the dialectic process. The spiritual contents of art are `moments` or stages in which the mind reveals itself and becomes conscious of itself through history. Symbolic Art, that is pre-Greek and especially Egyptian and Oriental, represents the seminal stage of the unfolding process, and is represented in the architecture found in objects like the obelisks and pyramids which represent the Absolute trying to realise itself. Out of this emerges Classical Art, that is Greek and Renaissance art, which represents the unfolding of the Absolute as it emerges in harmony with itself. By the time the dialectic process reaches the Romantic period the Absolute has evolved to the stage where it dominates the medium: thinking and refection have superseded art. There is a deeper comprehension of Truth which can no longer be appropriately expressed in Art. Art is no longer the highest and most privileged way in which we articulate and express our understanding of reality, of ourselves or the Absolute. Art has become absorbed into philosophy. It is no longer the primary and spontaneous means in which the comprehensive image of our world is brought to consciousness.

Through the individual the Absolute achieves self-realisation. The dialectic from which Art arises is the dialectic between spirit and matter. For Hegel, Art is conceived as a manifestation of the Absolute and the supreme form of Truth. The function of Art, for Hegel, is to reveal Truth. In Art the individual grasps Truth in its immediacy. The aesthetic experience, for the individual, is the Absolute realising itself through that individual.

Tony Fahey

(108) Erin asked:

I think that utilitarianism is superior to ethical egoism. I am trying to explain why. I want to show how a problem is entailed by egoism and how utilitarianism offers a better account. I have found that there is a lack of trust found in ethical egoism, but that utilitarianism definitely includes trust. Are there any other problems with ethical egoism that show why utilitarianism is better?

---

I think that you are going to have a problem with your attempt to show that ethical egoism is superior to utilitarianism. (Hmm. Superior on what scale of reference??) In fact, I think that the only way you are going to be able to succeed in this endeavour is to build a straw-man version of ethical egoism a version that no ethical egoist will accept.

Utilitarianism suffers from three serious flaws what are called the open question argument, the commensurability argument, and the separateness of persons argument.

Utilitarianism maintains that the measure of moral goodness is net aggregate happiness. But unlike some moral theories, Utilitarians do not just define moral goodness in terms of happiness. Instead, Utilitarians must offer an argument to the effect that moral goodness is (or ought to be) equivalent with the net aggregate of happiness. The closest that JS Mill came to doing so was to claim as an empirical (and hence debatable) fact that the majority of those generally recognized as moral experts would agree that happiness is equivalent to the Moral Good. The open question argument says that even if you can say this makes me happy, one can still ask whether this is morally good. Since it is not a tautology that happiness is equivalent to good, it remains an open question that can (and is) debated.

Utilitarianism maintains that happiness is both additive and commensurable happinesses can be ordered (which implies an ordinal scale if not a cardinal scale), and can be summed (which implies a cardinal scale). Mill (and most Utilitarians since) recognized that some happinesses are so much better than others that there are discontinuities in this scale. So it is possible that a small amount of a higher happiness might out weigh any amount of a lower happiness. Even with this refinement, however, it is not obvious that my happiness with some personal achievement is at all commensurable with my happiness at doing the (morally) right thing. Even if one adopts as a guide, at Mills recommendation, the consensus of opinion of those who have experienced both forms of happiness, it is still very debatable that my own happinesses are either comparable or summable let alone comparable and summable with yours.

And Utilitarianism maintains that whose happiness is involved is irrelevant. Utilitarianism takes no account of the separateness of persons that it is fundamentally more important to me that the happiness in question is mine instead of yours, or vice versa. Utilitarianism demands a completely disinterested attitude towards the calculus of happiness. Hence it is quite possible to find a Utilitarian argument that would recommend torturing my daughter if the result was sufficient happiness for a sufficient number of others not a generally acceptable moral recommendation. Now I might find this distasteful result acceptable if it was your child that was to be tortured in return for my happiness. But it is completely unacceptable to me for it to be my child that is to suffer, regardless of how much happiness is the result. This disregard for the separateness of persons means that Utilitarianism can be used to support almost any insult that the majority might wish to inflict upon a minority.

Given these deep flaws of Utilitarianism, I think that the only way you can position Utilitarianism as better (on what scale?) than Ethical Egoism is to caricature Ethical Egoism as a moral philosophy that recommends as morally good an excessive narrow-minded and short-sighted preoccupation with one's own well-being and interests, accompanied by an inflated sense of self-importance resulting in a tendency to be self-centered to the point of considering only oneself and one's own interests. But this, of course, is a straw-man caricature that no advocate of Ethical Egoism would support.

If you are seriously going to compare Utilitarianism with Ethical Egoism, then you really ought to select as a target a version of Ethical Egoism that people actually advocate. Consider, for example, a version of Ethical Egoism called Evolutionary Ethics. This version maintains that the correct measure of moral goodness is the probability that ones genes will continue to flourish when evaluated with a wide-scope and long-term view of the consequences. Since this is the definition of moral goodness, it avoids the open question challenge. Since the focus of the evaluation is on the genes of the acting agent, it avoids the separateness of persons argument. Since we are dealing with probabilities, they are naturally commensurate. And since, in any given circumstance, the probabilities in question are objectively examinable (in principle if not usually in practice), the subjectivity of an evaluation of happiness is avoided. Evolutionary Ethics is not by any description an advocate of an excessive narrow-minded and short-sighted preoccupation with one's own well-being and interests. Its focus is on ones own interests, to be sure. But it advocates a very wide-scope and long-range view of the matter. Hence, it is relatively simple to show that cooperation in the pursuit of mutually desirable goals is a superior means of pursuing ones own best interests. And trust is a natural part of that cooperative spirit. In other words, I disagree with your evaluation with regards to trust.

If you are determined to continue your effort to show that Utilitarianism is superior to Ethical Egoism, I would be very interested to see the result. I would be happy to contribute further comments to your efforts.

Stuart Burns

(109) Roy asked:

Could the angels and aliens be hermaphrodites?

---

Given the complete absence of any evidence what so ever that might be used to constrain our flights of fancy, angels and aliens might be anything at all including non-existent.

Stuart Burns

(110) Deborah asked:

What came first the chicken or the egg?

---

Evolutionary genetics has finally laid this old saw to rest.

Since mutations take place in the germ-line at the point of mitosis, it is obvious that the egg came before the chicken. Identifying where one species diverges from another is a matter of drawing an arbitrary line across a continuous line of parent-child descent. So no matter where you choose to draw the line in the evolutionary history of the modern chicken, there will be a point where a proto-chicken hen lays a chicken egg.

Stuart Burns

(111) Andre asked:

Is philosophical discourse being discouraged in american culture today, especially among the youth?

---

In my non-expert opinion, the answer is clearly Yes!

I base this opinion on two separate factors. First, American culture is, regrettably, a very religious culture. And religious belief does not well tolerate philosophical discussion. After all, the entire basis of philosophical discussion is the investigation and questioning of fundamental beliefs. And religious belief does not permit being questioned or challenged. In America this intolerance of philosophical discourse shows up as much between Republicans and Democrats as it does between Christians and heathens. Both sides maintain that their truth is The Truth and as such is not open to challenge or debate.

Secondly (and largely perhaps because of the first), philosophical education in American schools is locked into a stultifyingly historical approach to teaching philosophical thinking. Nothing will turn off the budding philosophical thinker faster than a demand that they try to get into the mind of some long dead (and largely wrong) ancient philosopher so they can rebuild a philosophical line of reasoning that was erroneous in the first place. What Aristotle or Plato or Descartes or Hume thought about anything should be the last concern of a student being introduced to philosophical discussion.

Stuart Burns

(112) Ross asked:

Hi, I once remember an old philosophy tutor I had using the quote 'there has been no new philosophy, just two thousand years of commentary on plato and aristotle'. I seem to remember him saying that the quote was from Bertrand Russell but I am putting it in an essay and need to make sure that it is referenced correctly and cant find the quote anywhere. Does anyone know who said this and/ or which work it is from.

---

Well done for making sure refs/ quotes are accurate (they often aren't). I'm not sure whether your old tutor got it wrong, or whether you weren't listening or have forgotten. The quotation is from Russell's collaborator, the philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, in his book 'Process and Reality' (1929). The correct version is:

' The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato'

Google in 'Footnotes to Plato' and all is revealed

Good luck with essay

Craig Skinner

(113) Julie asked:

I was reading a fantasy novel recently, and the theology in this book was very interesting. In the novel, the idea is put forth that WE are God. That man, and his sentience, is a vessel with which the universe is to becoming selfaware. Is this a common belief? Is there a name or an 'ism' for this particular line of thought?

---

You and I, and my cat and dog, are all bits of the universe. We are all aware (sentient). So all of us can be said to be vessels with which the universe has become self aware. It doesn't seem sensible to call any of us God, so I wont pursue that, and it is scarcely a fantastic thought (other than in the general sense that the mere existence of the world and ourselves is a source of wonder). And, obviously, it is a common belief.

Less mundane is the thought that we bring the universe into existence by observing it. Yes, this line of thought has a name: the Participatory Anthropic Principle.

Let me lead up to it.

The Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP) is uncontroversial. It simply points out that, because we exist, the observed values of physical/ cosmological quantities are restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve, and by the requirement that the universe be old enough for such life to have already evolved.

The Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP) is speculative, saying that the universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it.

The Participatory Anthropic Principle (PAP) is much more speculative, saying that observers are necessary for the existence of the universe. The idea here derives from some interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the microworld, things exist in a superposition of states, described by a wave function, until collapsed into one definite state by an observer. So the universe is one giant wave function which only collapses into something definite when observed (by us). It's unclear to me why humans get the credit: after all, giraffes, say, observed it before us, so these principles could as well be called Giraffic Principles. But I suppose it is we, not the giraffes, who dreamt up the idea.

The WAP is a truism. The SAP and PAP are speculative.

The FAP (Final Anthropic Principle) states that once intelligence enters the universe, it can never be destroyed. Enthusiasts speculate that, in one form or another, intelligence increases indefinitely, leaving the likes of humans far behind, and ultimately becomes God (and is then able,retrospectively, as it were, to create the universe, say the superenthusiasts).

Please note the suggestion by the late Martin Gardner that SAP/ PAP/ FAP might usefully be referred to collectively as CRAP (Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle).

If you can stand any more, try 'The Anthropic Cosmological Principle' by Barrow and Tipler (OUP 1988). It's exhaustive, informative and entertaining, and a nice counterpoint to fantasy novels.

Craig Skinner

(114) Gabriella asked:

According to Marx and Engels, how does the proletariat differ from the bourgeoisie?

---

The proletariat is that social class or category of people who have no private property or capital to provide for their means of subsistence. So, they have to sell their labour power to whoever needs it-usually the bourgeoisie or capitalists — in order to provide the means of subsistence.

The bourgeoisie have private property earned from capital. They do not have to sell their labour power. Profit made from the surplus labour expropriated from the proletariat provides their income. This is either reinvested into the capitalist business or used for personal, private use.

As such, each class has antagonistic interests. These interests provide the dynamism for class struggle. Class struggle will entail the triumph of either class; the bourgeoisie will either perpetuate capitalism whilst the proletariat will overthrow and end capitalism to install Communism.

Martin Jenkins

(115) Marcus asked:

'Who was the first to use the phrase 'necessary truth'? I've heard that Leibniz introduced the concept: is this true was the concept known under a different name before his description of it, or was he not the first to use the phrase? Thank you very much

---

The concept of necessity and necessary truth was important in ancient Greek philosophy from Parmenides onward. Aristotle uses it in his definition of 'syllogism' as 'an argument in which, some things being supposed, something else follows of necessity because of the things supposed'. Here he defines a valid argument. He also sets forth the fatalist argument allegedly showing that, since true propositions about the past are (now) necessarily true, so must true propositions about the future be (now) necessarily true.

Leibniz distinguished 'truths of reason' and 'truths of fact' . These correspond, respectively, to necessary truths and contingent truths, or maybe more accurately, to analytic truths and synthetic truths), similar to Hume's later distinction of 'relations of ideas' and 'matters of fact'.

What Leibniz did introduce into philosophy was the notion of possible worlds (although this idea can probably be discerned in John Duns Scotus' 13th Century logic). Scholars argue as to what extent Leibniz explicitly connected this notion with his accounts of 'truths of reason' and 'truths of fact'. But clearly, truths of reason are true in all possible worlds, and truths of fact are true only in some possible worlds — allowing a nice account of how 'Caesar crossed the Rubicon' is a contingent truth although it is necessarily true to say (now, of the actual world) that 'Caesar crossed the Rubicon'

Craig Skinner

(116) Romer asked:

Does satan really exist?

---

Satan is as real as Santa Claus, the bogeyman, the tooth fairy, the Loch Ness Monster, or any anthropomorphic entity, benign or malign. Moreover, it can be said that the belief that Satan 'really exists' will persist as long as educators continue to employ these myths to indoctrinate the undeveloped minds of innocents. Whilst it can be argued that some of these beliefs, such as Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, are innocuous enough and can symbolize the altruistic nature or natural inclination to sociability of human beings, it is when they are used by those who hold the reins of power to subdue, control and oppress others that they become instruments of malevolence. It should also be said that whilst it is accepted that the developing mind, through the use of reason, has the wherewithal to reach a stage where it can deconstruct many of these myths, it must be argued that there are those attached to certain institutions (particularly religious bodies) who not only fervently believe that the more pernicious of these myths are in fact real, but who also accuse those who refuse to subscribe to the perpetuation of such beliefs of being a threat to social stability (whilst in fact they are only a threat to the stability of the particular institution responsible for perpetuating such myths), or even heresy.

Tony Fahey

(117) Rebecca asked:

I'm writing an essay about Aristotle's categories in particular the differentiation of 'substance' from the other categories. I am struggling to write a lot on it and wondered if you had any words of wisdom? I also need some well recommended books as all the ones I have are irrelevant!

---

Substance can be problematic, and I suspect that you have difficulties with the other categories because they are so simple and obvious. One good way would be to write a story of an extended family: there you have quantity (subdivide them: so many males/ females; adults/ children); where/ when each member lives gives you time and position as well as their relations (uncle, brother-in-law etc). Then what they own and their occupations (possession, activity), if they are sick (passivity) and some of their attributes (good, kind, handsome) for quality. Now write another story and replace the people with things in a supermarket. All those items also have qualities, attributes that govern your choice when you buy them. That leaves you with substance. A substance is a thing that can move and work by itself: living things, people. They are indivisible (all have something like souls). Computers and cars need to be switched on; balls have to be thrown, so they are not substances. Finally living things have a will; objects do not. Living things especially strive to survive and procreate, objects do not. The difficulty with substance is that in religious philosophies the problem crops up that God is the only substance, we as creatures live by the 'concession' of God to let us have a limited sort of autonomy (substantiality). But you don't have to get involved in these issues. You only need to be aware that today we tend to misuse the word 'substance' (e.g. drugs are referred to as substances). But this is an instance of changes in common language use. Although it's got nothing to do with Aristotle, you could mention it (i.e. drugs are not substances in the real meaning of the word). Hope this helps.

As for books, there is Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 6, 'Aristotle: An Encounter', and 'The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle', ed. by Jonathan Barnes. They will make a good Aristotelian of you!

Jurgen Lawrenz

(118) Kim asked:

Explain Aristotle's Golden Mean. Do you think it has any value as a guide to ethical behaviour?

---

For Aristotle, the good for humans is rational activity of the soul in conformity with excellence (virtue)

To act in this way is a matter of observing the principle of the mean in relation to us (finding the appropriate response between excess and deficiency in a particular situation).

The idea of the mean features in Aristotle's views on medicine, perception and politics, and in the views of the Pythagoreans. As a good work of art is spoiled by adding to it or taking from it, so virtuous activity is spoiled by excess or deficiency, and secured by observing the mean.

Aristotle distinguishes between the mean in the object (the arithmetic mean) and the mean relative to us (neither too much nor too little for the particular circumstances).

Recommendation in he first sense, the midpoint between two extremes, would simply be a counsel of moderation in all things, perpetual sober caution, a rather dreary doctrine.

But this is not his position. The mark of virtue is observing the mean 'in relation to us'. By this is meant 'to have the right feelings at the right times on the right grounds towards the right persons for the right motive and in the right way is to feel them to an intermediate....to the best degree', Strong anger, say, may be appropriate in some circumstances, moderate anger may be excessive in others. I must also take account of my natural inclinations. If I am inclined, say, to be overcautious, a response a little more toward the rash end of the spectrum than my first inclination will be appropriate.

Nothing mediocre about the mean.It is the peak of suitability. Aristotle likens it to an archer hitting the target, taking account of the wind, angle of the flight path, bow, and degree of steadiness of his hand. Many ways to get it wrong (missing the target), one way to get it right.

Aristotle declares that each of virtues is somewhere between two opposing vices. Courage for example is a mean on two scales — first, as a response showing degree of fear, between cowardice and recklessness; secondly, as a response showing degree of confidence, between timidity and rashness. He cites five scales for even temperedness, relating to frequency, degree, duration,people and provoking circumstances. Things start to get a bit complicated and forced. Honesty, for most of us, is not a mean between two vices. It is just a virtue, opposite to the vice of dishonesty. But Aristotle tries to shoehorn it in to his scheme by implausibly restricting it to talk of one's own achievements, saying it lies between boastfulness and self-deprecation.

In summary, virtue is a state of character, concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us determined by reason as the practically wise person would determine it.

The doctrine might be of practical value to us if it included a useful way of determining where the mean is ie what is appropriate to a particular situation. But there are no algorithms or formulae from Aristotle. The mean is determined by reason as the practically wise person would determine it. In short, if one wants to be a virtuous person, then one must act as a virtuous person should act — not much help. It's not as if there is any shortcut to acquiring practical wisdom. Aristotle doesn't make it completely clear (to me) how it is acquired, but I think he sees its acquisition by receiving a good upbringing and education, by reflection, by experience, and by taking part in a society with shared values. A fair description of how most people try to bring up their children these days. A bit deflationary if you want to get practical wisdom by study, or develop a rigorous theory of ethics, but he may be right. The general advice not to be overenthusiastic or too diffident, to be emotional to an appropriate degree, to take account of our own weaknesses, and to have role models (people with practical wisdom) is sensible, but might be given by any pub pundit or self-help guru.

The doctrine of the mean, for me, is not one of the enduring highlights of Aristotle's ethics. Opinions about it among experts on Aristotle vary from most-valuable-if-interpreted-rightly to best- forgotten

Craig Skinner

(119) Paul asked:

I have a friend who says he is one third atheist, one third theist, and one third agnostic. Is that legitimate?

---

Firstly Paul, I'm a little suspicious that this question may be a wind up by you on the Ask a Philosopher panel, or a wind up by your friend on you (can one really not know the correct way to spell 'atheist' and 'theist?). Secondly, since his trisecting of his beliefs is so precise, and given that atheism is the direct opposite of theism, and agnosticism neither one nor the other, my initial reaction to this question is that your friend is either: a joker, a procrastinator, or a budding philosopher. However, whilst any one of the above may be the case, and starting with the premise that one cannot be an atheist, a theist, and an agnostic at the same time, I am prepared to accept that there is something to be gained by putting my skepticism aside and treating your question with a degree of seriousness.

Allowing that your friend's declaration, whilst somewhat ambiguous in its formulation, is genuine, it seems to me that the rubric of budding philosopher, may be that under which he best may fall. Thus, giving him the benefit of doubt, and given that one cannot be all three at the same time, I will take it that what he means is that he is struggling to decide which of the three isms best describes his philosophical, religious, or spiritual position, and that at different times he finds drawn to one over the other two. If this understanding is correct, I would say that whilst this position may be legitimate, it is not one that is easily resolved and that many thinkers, philosophical, spiritual, and religious, find, during the course of their lives, that this is a dilemma which they will confront many times — I would add that being open to the view that re-examining one's beliefs is essentially what philosophy is all about. That is, in the pursuit of wisdom, knowledge, and truth, one comes to accept that there is always the possibility that one may be wrong in one's beliefs. In my own case, having given much time, thought, study, and energy to such issues, if I were pressed to state my own position on the subject under discussion, I would have to come down on the side of agnosticism. That is, in regard to the issue of the existence of God, I am forced to conclude that we simply cannot know, with the degree of certainty claimed by theism or atheism, that such an entity exists or not. Paraphrasing Wittgenstein somewhat, I would say that 'that of which we cannot know, we should stand in silence'. It seems to me too that too much has been attributed by too many to that which they cannot possibly know. However, I would add the codicil that whilst this is my current position, it does not mean, given further evidence, that this position may not be revisited, reassessed, agonized over again, and even amended the months and years to come.

Tony Fahey

(120) Andrew asked:

I'm new to philosophy and believe that God cannot be proven or disproven. I've come up with the following analogy to 'prove' my beliefs.

The idea of God can be understood, but the mind cannot comprehend God, much like the idea of colors never before seen can be understood, but the mind cannot comprehend what such a color would look like.

Basically, a person can understand ideas of God being omnipotent, all powerful, all knowing, etc etc, but when a person actually tries to comprehend God, (s)he cannot.

Does this hold water?

---

Reads to me as similar to Immanuel Kant's examination of the Ontological Proof for the existence of God contained in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Namely, God has the characteristics of omnipotent, all knowing etc which people can understand. However, it is not established that He exists. If he exists, then he would have those qualities. Whether he exists is another matter. So understanding the characteristics of God does not logically entail his actual existence. God's existence is not proven. All that is established is an idea of the concept called God.

Further, Gaunillo's criticism of St Anselm's version of the Ontological argument can be invoked. Namely, if I can conceive of possible colours although no such colours have been experienced then on the same grounds, anything conceivable can be proposed as possibly existing-unicorns, perfect islands and so on. The argument becomes nebulous and unconvincing.

At most, Andrew, you've said that the human mind can understand things it has not yet encountered such as colours and God. Even assuming the assumption that the mind could understand them is correct, this still entails the view that Gods existence is a possibility not an actuality. As a possibility, Gods existence cannot be proven. At most, faith in his existence is appropriate. I don't believe your argument provides a natural proof for the existence of God.

Martin Jenkins

(121) Alan asked:

Do we have free will?

Just before I typed this, I toyed with the idea of not submitting the question. Then I decided to submit the question although it seems that I could effortlessly have decided not to submit the question. This seems to be a process of me doing the deciding. Is it not meaningless to say that it is just an illusion that I have a voluntary choice of whether or not to submit this question when it feels so real that I have this choice?

---

Geoffrey Klempner has already answered this in impeccable philosophical style, so there is no need for me to add anything. But at the bottom of his reply I find a little quote from Benjamin Libet that opens up a problematic little window on the issue. It has a context that has been suppressed for many reasons and seasons — namely its biological aspect; and, speaking candidly, I have never understood why this is consistently ignored. Why do people keep arguing as if neurons were little bits of plastic instead of living things?

However, my reply will be couched in this context.

1. "Making a choice". All biological entities make choices. The meaning of the word "life" includes the definition of its bearers as autonomous agents. Their choices change the habitat. Survival entails making the right choices often enough. Creatures evolve and adapt on this basis, or become extinct.

2. "Free will". This compound noun is analogous to another: dead corpse. As it is futile to deny that a corpse is dead, so it is futile to deny that will is free. A will that is not free is not a will.

3. Corollary: No creature HAS a will. They ARE a will.It is a language problem, as you can see. The word "has" insinuates an independently existing (or illusionary) property that you acquire.

4. The only relevant criterion left over after this is that there are constraints on its EXERTION. It is easily understood that a man with a knife at his throat might agree to abandon his will to eat a steak instead of fish. It does not of divest him of his will, only of its object.

5. Finally, if free will is an illusion, yet everyone shares it, it is not an illusion. It is a matter of consensus, like accepting that things we all sense in common actually exist.

6. The upshot is that free will does not have to be proved. There is nothing to argue about, as it is simply a fact of nature. It has, on the contrary, to be proved that it is not a fact of nature.The two issues that can be discussed are (a) the degree of consciousness to which any creature is aware of its choices, and (b) the constraints that work against its exercise.

7. However, the "Libet Factor" invites one further debating point to be aired. There is also a collective will, qualitatively very different from the individual will. Its discussion seems mostly the preserve of psychologists. But social animals also exhibit collective wills, and so do the neurons in your brain. Once that thought seeps in, Libet's problem loses most of its sting. The neuronal collective is constantly evaluating information, and must be assumed to have "contingency plans" at the ready for any sort of sensory impingement. Some of this strategy is likely to be localised at the site where it occurs. Your "decision" to lift a finger would therefore be "in your brain" long before you implement it as an option. It doesn't strike me as paradoxical. It's only our sequential thinking habits that make a mystery of it. But this is too complex an issue to pursue here, and I think I have made the points about "free will" that seem important to me.

Jurgen Lawrenz

(122) Adam asked:

I have a question for you regarding an answer you gave to a person struggling with the idea of an infinite past. I've discussed this with friends of mine and your statement 'A universe stretching infinitely back in time is no more difficult to conceive than a universe stretching infinitely into the future.' appears to be the standard response. I find this response problematic because of a puzzle that arises from an infinite past. Suppose that there is an infinite past, and that this current moment (Time X) is temporally connected to another time previous (Time Y) that is infinitely far away from it. If we suppose that time Y happened and then time X happened, how can it be that they were infinitely far away from each other. It seems impossible that two moments can both happen if they are infinitely far away. What is troubling about this example is that every moment in time suffers the same fate, that other moments which are connected to it happen as a part of the same chain, yet on a link that is infinitely far away. If no two moments in time are infinitely far away from each other then I don't see how there is an infinite past, since any two moments can be finitely (even if extremely large) compared with one another.

---

Philosophers have grappled with precisely this issue for as long as there has been philosophy — including (so as not to forget) — theology. However as you mention a 'standard response', I am prepared to give a 'non-standard' response and you can mull over the difference.

Time is an homogeneous field. Accordingly there are no 'moments', no time X or time Y. If you reflect on what is meant by 'now', you will find it to be an arbitrary assignation of an instant of experience. For us, therefore, to project this instant into the past or future is equally arbitrary. None of the Times X or Y you mentioned in your question are denotations. They do not refer to time, but to you, the agent of cognisance.

Now repeat all this for space, replacing instants with points. The conclusion will be the same. You will see in a moment why this is necessary

Homogeneous fields are indiscernible. Whatever time 'is', it must be seamlessly continuous, and so with space. Accordingly time is not a succession of instants, but of events. Similarly space is not a volume, but a collection of objects. These we can perceive and extrapolate them upon a presumptive time and space, but this does not oblige the universe to supply us with an actual time or actual space.

You might see now that your question is incomplete. The increments from Event A to B, and between Object A and B are matters of perception. Perception cannot deal with infinites; and therefore it cannot deal with an infinity of increments. We can only judge about them from observing their temporal relation to us, and their spatial distance from us. Both of these belong together, as you know, because events and objects do not ever sit still.

A full version of your question would therefore have to be stated as an ensemble of three items, viz.:

An event/ object passes over (moves) spatial points P1,2,3 etc in instantaneous Time1,2,3 etc. How can we correlate these?

Answer: only if we can identify the smallest possible instant of time and the smallest possible point in space. I think you will agree that this a self-contradictory proposition. For any motion from P1 to P2 implies the possibility of a P1/ 2,1/ 4,1/ 8 etc to infinity, and likewise with T.

Which leaves us with only the one conclusions mentioned above: The arbitrary assignation of perceivable increments for both. In a word: we cut into any arbitrary point on the number continuum and assign a value to that point (e.g. 0). This gives us the opportunity for calibrating other points at our convenience (check out the 'Dedekind Cut' for further information).

In short, we stop pretending that time and space 'exist' as pointillist continua, independent of ourselves. We have to set up such a points continuum first and then impose it on time and space to render both of them intelligible.

It is what, for example, we do when we posit a 'Big Bang'. It enables our measurements of time and space. (By the way, I've never met a scientist who believed in the actual occurrence of such a bang: I think they are all responsible enough to recognise that it's all in the mathematics).

Let me end by expressing my hope that I've explained something useful to your thinking!

Jurgen Lawrenz

(123) Len asked:

My question has to do with language and in that sense it could be a linguistics or a philosophy of language question. Of the two, I'm not really sure into which category it falls.

If you agree or disagree with a statement, it seems to me this is an absolute. However, on many psych tests employers use these days for candidates seeking to fill the open position, they give choices of 'agree,' 'strongly agree,' 'disagree' or 'strongly disagree. For example; if the the statement is 'The sky is blue,' I can either agree or disagree with the statement. How could I further agree or disagree about the state of the color of the sky or any other statement for that matter. If you and I both disagree, how could either of us disagree 'more' than the other? Herein lies my question: How can you assign an adverbial quantifier to something that I believe is an absolute? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who thinks this way so could tell me the difference between agree and strongly agree?

---

Simple statements of fact e.g. 'it is raining' do not leave any room for complex judgements, they are merely true or false. However other complex statements of fact such as 'Playing violent video games does not encourage children to behave violently' can call for complex judgements since we cannot know whether they are true or false but we can say how likely we think it is that they are true given our present state of knowledge.

When we say that we strongly disagree with this statement we are not contradicting the idea that it is true or false , however its truth value has not been definitely established and this leaves room for complex judgements about the likelihood of it turning out to be true.

It is easy to be mislead by simple examples. Many statements are so complex e.g. Politicians do not understand the economy' that it would seem to be impossible to establish any definite truth value for them. That does not prevent us from having beliefs about them being true or false.

Shaun Williamson

(124) Callum asked:

Recently some thoughts came into my head that worried men greatly. The widely accepted (at least I think it is but am hoping isn't) view of Determinism has worried me purely because it means everything I do was always going to happen (taking away value from my achievements) and therefore makes criminals not bad (not that I'm thinking of being a criminal).

Are there any credible philosophers or experiments that resist determinism or (if my words are ambiguous) believe we have choice to do otherwise e.g. a person walking in a shop has the possibility of stealing or not stealing. As this would put me at ease.

---

I sympathise with anyone who gets caught up in the great nasty determinism debate. I myself spent years arguing and debating it with all sorts of people, trying to find a hole in the arguments of determinism.

Well, I found it. And the most astonishing things is this: it's totally obvious. The answer is: the boot is on the wrong foot.

What I mean is this: Where does determinism come from? (a) Religions, superstitions, fear of ghosts, spirits, fear unexplainable events and things which leads in all cases to a belief in supernatural powers; (b) the expectation of scientists that physics can 'in principle' solve all questions from the big bang to the big crunch, so that meanwhile they feel entitled from the knowledge that has already been acquired to pronounce the universe to be a kind of pre-programmed machine where nothing ever happens that is not already disposed in the elements. You will observe that science cannot explain the nature of free will, therefore they deny free will by ramming the insupportable point of view down your throat that free will 'can be explained chemically'.

But you can see from this that determinism has no leg to stand on. It is in both cases a pretence by the relevant human authorities to a kind of knowledge which in plain fact they do not possess. The classics statement for scientific determinism was issue by Laplace, who knew nothing about thermodynamics, let alone quantum physics. But his belief is an article of faith for science, as God or Allah is article of faith for believers.

You need only look at today's genetic determinism to see how this insalubrious attitude spreads across society as a doctrine. Is genetic determinism proved? By no means! We know almost nothing of their origins and little more about how they actually work. That little serves as 'proof'. Not good enough!

Therefore your proper response to determinisms of every colour would be: The onus of proof is your shoulders. Prove to me, Mr Theologian or Mr Physicist, that determinism meets the facts, and in doing so examine your suppressed prejudgements and leave them out of the argument.

In other words: you, the victim of these pretences, must not allow yourself to be bulldozed into defending your free will. Every creature on this earth has free will: it is an attribute of life. But science does not know what the word 'life' means. So demand proof from them that they know what they are talking about!

Up to this moment, I've been speaking to you casually, as probably an older person to a younger one, with a view to helping you to keep you at arm's length from a trap that many unsuspecting people fall into into.

However, if you wish to get the 'full Monty' of a rigorous philosophical argument, let me recommend my book 'Leibniz' The Nature of Reality and the Reality of Nature' to you. Chapter 7 is a full-fledged philosophical description of how one great thinker, Leibniz, destroyed determinism from the roots. This is not easy reading, and you will need a lot of philosophical nous to get the gist of it. On the other hand, may be you could cajole your professor into putting it on the reading list of the course on determinism!

Jurgen Lawrenz

(125) Andrey asked:

What is supernatural?

All right, I know this might sound really broad but I think I can specify and clarify it a little better if I explain what I mean. According to Wikipedia supernatural is anything above or beyond what one holds to be natural or exists outside natural law and the observable universe. If a supernatural being/ thing exists, there could be only two scenarios; one would be a supernatural being/ thing which can interact with everyday material that we can sense (ie. matter, photons, gravity weak force, strong force, electromagnetism essentially anything that exists) and in that case it would have to have its own mechanisms which we can observe test and learn (there is an assumption here that everything that interacts with us has a 'mechanism' or a set of rules by which it behaves), which would mean it is 'scientific' and not supernatural. The other scenario is if it couldn't interact with our physical world, in which case it would be outside the natural law of the observable universe, but even then the question remains of how does it work. So I guess my real question, which I think is the same as above, is 'can something exist without having a mechanism?' and if it does, do we care, or can we just say it doesn't exists because as far as we are concerned it doesn't 'matter'?

PS: there is one other thing I have to clarify, the mechanism isn't necessarily referring to the 'real' world. For example, if we are living in the computer and if a chair came into existed suddenly in my room it still would have to have a mechanism such as the code or a program which was executed by the computer in which we live, and thus the whole process had a 'mechanism'.

---

There are no definite answers to these questions. All I can do is draw your attention to the most sophisticated form of theology (note theology is not philosophy).

God exists outside of time and space so the idea of a mechanism by which God interacts with the world does not make sense. God created the world out of nothing and holds it in existence so God's creation is timeless and outside of time. This has nothing to do with the sort of creation that we are familiar with i.e creating things out of other things. It has nothing to do with cause and effect.

If God exists he doesn't have a mechanism in your sense.

Shaun Williamson

(126) Len asked:

My question has to do with language and in that sense it could be a linguistics or a philosophy of language question. Of the two, I'm not really sure into which category it falls.

If you agree or disagree with a statement, it seems to me this is an absolute. However, on many psych tests employers use these days for candidates seeking to fill the open position, they give choices of 'agree,' 'strongly agree,' 'disagree' or 'strongly disagree. For example; if the the statement is 'The sky is blue,' I can either agree or disagree with the statement. How could I further agree or disagree about the state of the color of the sky or any other statement for that matter. If you and I both disagree, how could either of us disagree 'more' than the other? Herein lies my question: How can you assign an adverbial quantifier to something that I believe is an absolute? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who thinks this way so could tell me the difference between agree and strongly agree?

---

Len, that's a nice question! I guess — trying to make sense of something that I agree isn't exactly crystal-clear — you could think of those questions as asking about your level of confidence. I believe some things more strongly than others; I am pretty certain that I will die within the next 100 years, but considerably less certain that I'll go to the shops tomorrow. So I might answer 'strongly agree' to the first and only 'agree' to the second. You might not think of this as literally believing some things more strongly than others, in the sense of belief itself being a matter of degree (although plenty of philosophers do think that belief comes in degrees). You might just think of it as a matter of (a) do I believe this? (Yes or no?) and (b) to what extent do I take this belief to be justified?

That said, I think it depends a bit on the question. For example when you're asked to agree/ strongly agree/ etc. with something like 'I enjoyed taking this course', or 'the level of service was acceptable', it's unlikely that your answer could reflect your level of confidence. ('Did I enjoy taking the course? Well I'm not sure — I think I did, but maybe I'm wrong ...') So in those kinds of cases it looks like you're being asked whether you enjoyed taking the course a lot, or quite a lot, or not very much, or not at all (or the level of service was excellent, not bad, pretty mediocre, etc.). I agree that asking whether you agree/ strongly agree/ etc. with the proposition is a pretty inaccurate way of describing what's going on here!

Helen Beebee
Director
British Philosophical Association

(127) Adan asked:

Hi. I just had a question in regards to 10 necessary and sufficient clauses. They are as follows:

Are the following sentences true or false ? In each case explain the reasoning behind your answer.

1. Being alive is a necessary condition for having a right to life.

2. Being human is a sufficient condition for being a mammal.

3. Having US citizenship is a necessary condition for becoming president of the US.

4. Having US citizenship is a sufficient condition for becoming president of the US.

5. Being a woman is a sufficient condition for being human.

6. Rain is a sufficient condition for the ground's being wet.

7. A perfect SAT score is a sufficient condition for getting into Notre Dame

8. Being 7 feet tall is a sufficient condition for being at least 5 feet tall.

9. Completing all assignments is a sufficient condition for getting an A in PHIL 20101.

10. Committing acts that scare civilians is a sufficient condition for being a terrorist.

Thanks!

---

What fun. The questions deal with a nice mix of logical, legal, physical and practical necessity/ sufficiency

1. Being alive is a necessary condition for having a right to life. I think True. Being alive is obviously not sufficient for having a right to life (TB germs are alive but nobody thinks they have rights) But is it necessary ? For existing things, the answer seems clear. A thing cant have a right to life unless it already has life. So books, houses and other inanimate things cant have such a right. For non existent things, it's less clear. We sometimes say future generations have a right to, say, a world without devastating, maybe lethal, global warming. So do we have an obligation to any future individual (who is not now alive) so that this individual has a present right to expect us to discharge that obligation thereby recognizing and protecting her right to life ? I'd say no, future individuals, being non existent, cant have rights. Our present policies will determine which individuals get born. The present policy by many Western women to have children when aged 30-plus means that the children who would have been born had those women gone for teenage pregnancy don't get born at all (the sperms and eggs that would have formed them just go to waste). Have we violated the right to life of these never-existing children ? I don't think so.

2. Being human is a sufficient condition for being a mammal. True (taking 'human' to mean 'a human being', rather than including, say, a piece of human DNA, which obviously isn't a mammal). Logical sufficiency. Mammals include the species homo sapiens (human beings) and many other species, so that being a member of any one of these species is sufficient to be a mammal.

3. Having US citizenship is a necessary condition for becoming president of the US. True. Here, the necessity is legal rather than logical. The US constitution requires candidates to be US citizens, US-born and over 35 years old.

4. Having US citizenship is a sufficient condition for becoming president of the US. False. Other things are needed as well. You must be eligible to run for the job, you have to get more votes than any other candidate. Having US citizenship isn't even a sufficient condition for being eligible. Sadly for Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, as Governor of California, tried but failed to get the Constitution amended so that he could run for president, you have to be US-born.

5. Being a woman is a sufficient condition for being human. True. A woman is human by definition being an 'adult female human being'.

6 Rain is a sufficient condition for the ground's being wet. True. Given that the ground is wet, one condition that is enough to explain it, is rain. Of course rain is not always sufficient to make the ground wet. Rain at sea doesn't (no ground) and rain wouldn't if the ground were very hot, say 800 degrees C (rain just vaporizes) or very cold (rain instantly freezes so ground is icy not wet).

7. A perfect SAT score is a sufficient condition for getting into Notre Dame. Don't know. It's a matter of practical sufficiency — true if regulations say so and assumed background conditions met. I've no idea what a SAT is (age-related ignorance I suppose). I assume that the only life forms on earth to get perfect SAT scores are humans, and that by 'getting into Notre Dame' you mean enrolling at the University rather than visiting the cathedral. So, is being a human with a perfect SAT score enough to get you in ? Say the regulations state that a SAT score of 70% or more gets you in, then your perfect score is sufficient. So the answer is yes. The regulations make background assumptions eg that you are human (a perfect SAT score from an ET might or might not suffice to get the alien in) and not dangerous (a perfect SAT score might be insufficient in an applicant recently-released, hopefully 'rehabilitated', after 20 years in jail for compulsive arson targeted exclusively at University buildings in various countries. More general background conditions are assumed to be met eg the Earth continues to exist, Notre Dame isn't closed down because it turned out to be an elaborate money-laundering scam etc.

8. Being 7 feet tall is a sufficient condition for being at least 5 feet tall. True. Logical sufficiency.To be at least 5 feet tall means to be 5 feet tall or to be more. Seven feet tall is more than 5 feet tall and so is sufficient.

9. Completing all assignments is a sufficient condition for getting an A in Phil 20101. Don't know. Do you mean 2010, or are you a visitor from the 201st century, or is 20101 a course number rather than a date? Anyway, answer as for 7. (depends on regulations and assumed background conditions). I doubt if just completing assignments would suffice, they could be done so atrociously as to fail to merit any grade never mind an A. But, for all I know, maybe 'completing'' means 'completing to the satisfaction of those setting them', and different assignments are set depending on the grade you are aiming for, so that completing all assignments is sufficient.

10. Committing acts that scare civilians is a sufficient condition for being a terrorist. False. Hinges on definition of terrorist. Those committing acts that scare civilians would seem to include drunken revellers any night in UK town centres, football hooligans, police officers on duty at violent demonstrations, and I wouldn't call any of these terrorists. To do so would be to define 'terrorist'so broadly that the word becomes useless. At the same time, I recognize that a judgment that somebody is a terrorist depends a lot on your perspective. One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.

Craig Skinner

(128) Sydney asked:

I had my first class in critical thinking earlier today and my professor was unable to tell me if instinct was epistemic luck. I was wondering if you might be able to help answer this question?

---

Epistemic luck about your instincts is precisely the same thing as epistemic luck in a lottery. The point is that the word epistemic relates to knowledge: so that if your instincts allow you to survive, it means you are the lucky beneficiary of good survival instincts. The same with a lottery: if you picked the right numbers, then you win, so that after the event you are entitled to say, 'I had a good feeling about those numbers'. Most philosophers would of course dispute that this is real knowledge, because instincts are subconscious, and the same again with your 'good feeling'. But this is something that cannot be resolved by argument. Your instincts 'know' something; and since they are your instincts, you 'know' what they know, even if you're not aware of it. The difficulty with numbers, however, is that we would have to invoke some metaphysical connectedness between yourself and a future event, and this is probably aiming a little too high. Finally there is another issue of difficulty. If we are talking about you, personally, and your good instincts, we are taking it out of a realm where instincts are indispensable. You are presumably living in a city where (on the whole) you are well protected, like everyone else, against bad instincts. This is the route humans have taken for the last 6000-odd years. The effect of this is that epistemic luck is virtually nullified. I suppose this is a strong reason why the term has limited applicability — strictly only to animals, but they are not self-reflexively conscious and so can't use it. At any rate, I hope this helps you over the hurdle, and clears up for you why the term is not really an issue on which you should get bogged down.

Jurgen Lawrenz

(129) David asked:

I learned about a philosopher in college who spoke about how the categorization of our perceived world was bad because we are placing names and values on things that don't exist.

One example my professor gave me was the question 'what is blue?' because you can not explain what blue is without giving an example it doesn't truly exist except as a perceived notion.

I can not remember the name of this philosopher and I would like to go back and read more on the subject. I believe his first name was George but that could be wrong.

Hopefully you can point me in the right direction, thanks.

---

It seems to me that the person your query relates to is the philosopher/ theologian George Berkeley. Although referred to as one of the 'British Empiricists' Berkeley was actually born in Kilkenny in Ireland in 1685 (he died in 1753). Berkeley's central thesis was that there is no such entity as a physical world, or matter, in the sense of an independently existing object. Rather it is that all that we ordinarily call physical objects are actually collections of ideas in the mind. Berkeley held that all we can ever know about objects is merely the ideas we have of them. The appearances we experience are the very objects and the appearances are sensations or perceptions of a thinking being. His most famous saying is 'esse est percipi' — 'to be is to be perceived'.

According to the 'esse is percipi' thesis, all the things surrounding us are nothing but our ideas. Sensible things have no other existence distinct from their being perceived by us. This also applies to human bodies. When we see our bodies or move our limbs, we perceive only certain sensations in our consciousness. Using a series of arguments, often called by philosophers as the 'veil of perception', Berkeley argued that since we never perceive anything called 'matter', but only ideas, the view that there is a material substance lying behind and supporting these perceptions is untenable. For Berkeley everything was mind-dependent: if one cannot have an image of a something in the mind, then it fails to exist — hence his thesis 'to be is to be perceived'. Berkeley's response to those who argued that if there were no material substrate behind our ideas, how is it that things persist when no one perceives them, was to argue that all our perceptions are ideas produced for us by God.

One of the most ardent of the many critics of Berkeley's philosophy was Dr. Samuel Johnson who is said to have famously refuted the eminent bishop's theory of immaterialism by kicking the bishop's ass and shouting 'Consider yourself refuted!

Tony Fahey

(130) Derrick asked:

I recently read a report on a request made by the Russian Minister of Finance who asked that Russians smoke and drink more as the country needed the revenue. Is this not as a result of their adoption of the capitalist system, a system that has been faulty since its exception?

Communism did not work and the West did its utmost to see it failed, the Capitalist system is no better as it benefits only a small segment of the population and the myth of the creation of wealth which is now the holy grail is all smoke and mirrors and has value as long as the paper Dollar retains its value.

When it comes to finance we have people who are awarded the Nobel prize for the creation of systems that are supposed to improve how systems work, I have yet to see this actually effect anything, in fact things keep getting worse.

We are told how well we are doing while pensioners don't know how they are going to survive.

We are also told the markets know best, best for who? A shareholder's interest is never a countries interest, self-interest is the only consideration.

What do we need to break the cycle of greed, a 3rd World war? But then war is profitable.

I understand Greek Philosophers had thoughts on matters of finance, does Philosophy have solutions or is man so flawed that we are too far into the abyss to pull back?

---

(131) Marion asked:

I've just read an article titled 'Row over Crematorium Heating for Swimmers' which details plans of a local council, in an attempt to save energy, 'recycling' the heat generated from an adjacent crematorium to heat a swimming pool. Some have slammed the idea calling it 'Sick and an insult to local residents', and I agree with them. Is this not ethically unacceptable ?

---

We treat corpses with care, and the plan might seem to be uncaring of them.

First, all cultures honour their dead, although the way they do it varies — some bury them with a speech; some leave them for the birds to eat; some eat them to acquire their wisdom; in this country we mostly send them to an oven to music. And to use the heat from the burn, even as we exit the chapel, strikes some as not fully honouring the recently dead.

Secondly, not unrelated to the first point, we tend to treat a recently dead person as not quite dead until the corpse has been honourably dealt with. Two examples from my own experience.

1. Explaining the extra expense, the undertaker told me my dead sister would be 'more comfortable' in a deeper coffin (she had died in the foetal position and the body couldn't be straightened out). 2. Relatives often refuse to allow a post-mortem examination requested by the doctor on the grounds that their loved one 'has suffered enough', as if she were still capable of suffering.

So I understand people's distaste, and if the locals don't want the plan, fair enough.

I don't think the plan is unethical. For me, ethics is to do with how we should treat the living, not how we deal with corpses, although of course the living have feelings on the matter as I have described.

I would be the first to support such a scheme if my council came up with it. I'd prefer the heat from burning my body, or that of any of my loved ones, to be used rather than to be wasted

Craig Skinner

(132) Louella asked:

Kindly explain the saying,

'NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS.'

or does REALITY exist?

thanks...

---

The saying 'Nothing is what it seems' arises from the claim that everything we perceive around us is not reality but just images of reality. There are two arguments for this. One is that everything we perceive is composed of sensations: colours, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations such as various degrees of hardness, temperature, weight, smoothness, etc.; and sensations are manufactured by our brains out of data from our sense organs; so these structures of sensations are at best images of an external reality, and at worst hallucinations. The other argument is that everything we perceive is at least a little bit illusory, and illusions can only be explained as being somewhat false images of reality. (If you doubt this, try to point to some perceived object which is wholly free from illusion, and explain how you know it to be so.)

The counter argument to this position is that yes, our brains contain images of reality; but what we perceive is outside our heads, material, and public, while brain images are inside our heads, mental and private. So what we perceive, being external, material and public, is reality, not images of reality. This is, of course, the common sense view, and the view held by almost philosophers today (e.g. analytic philosophers and phenomenologists).

The two positions are logically simple to reconcile, but psychologically difficult to do so. Without going into too much detail, the reconciliation, due to Leibniz and, later, Russell, comes from the observation that we each perceive our own body, including our own head. If everything we perceive is an image of reality, then we each have a real body, including a real head, and this real head contains all our images of reality, including our own image body. Our farthest image is the blue sky (or the star-spangled night sky, which, as an image, is equally distant.) This means that beyond the blue sky is the inside surface of your real skull. You see what I mean about psychologically difficult? Your empirical world is inside your real head and outside your empirical head; empirical objects are (somewhat) public by similarity to other people's empirical objects, but not public by identity (as common sense believes); and they are empirically material and at the same time really mental.

This brings us to your second question. There are two useful definitions of reality. One, which we might call empirical reality, is that it is all the we perceive around us that is non-illusory, which in turn is all that is potentially, universally, public; this is the field of study of empirical science. The other, which we might call theoretical reality, is everything that exists independently of being perceived; this is the field of study of theoretical science. So whether reality exists is two questions. Some of empirical reality exists indubitably as long as you are conscious, unless solipsism is true, in which case you are all that exists and everything empirical is unreal. And in so far as theoretical science is true, so does theoretical reality exist.

Helier Robinson

(133) Alex asked:

Hey there! My question is: does nothingness exist? If (hypothetically, I am religious) everything came from nothing, didn't SOMETHING cause that? Does profound and absolute nothingness exist?

---

No, nothingness does not exist. If everything came from nothing it was because a first cause was self-caused; or else because there never was a beginning, so that everything was caused by something earlier, during an infinite past.

Helier Robinson

(134) Marion asked:

I've just read an article titled 'Row Over Crematorium Heating For Swimmers' which details plans of a local council, in an attempt to save energy, 'recycling' the heat generated from an adjacent crematorium to heat a swimming pool. Some have slammed the idea calling it 'Sick and an insult to local residents', and I agree with them... Is this not ethically unacceptable?

---

A crematorium has two sources of heat. The major one by far is natural gas; the other is the heat given of by the burning body. If they could be separated there would be no problem: the gas heat could go to the pool and the body heat to the atmosphere. But since they cannot be separated, which is better: a lot of gas heat going to the atmosphere, or a little body heat going to the pool?

Helier Robinson

(135) Alex asked:

Hey there! My question is: does nothingness exist? If (hypothetically, I am religious) everything came from nothing, didn't SOMETHING cause that? Does profound and absolute nothingness exist?

---

Well, Alex: without mincing words: nothingness is nothingness, and that's all there is to it. You can't use language and then twist it around to make the words mean things they don't mean.

You have to attack this problem in another way. And now there are two ways of doing it, and you may choose whichever you prefer.

The first is: 'what does existence mean when there is no conscious knower around to certify it?' If life was wiped out (and assuming there is no life elsewhere in the universe), can the Andromeda galaxy still be said to exist? Of course it can't, because there no-one around to say it. So this is your 'profound' issue. We humans simply presuppose that existence is existence, as if the human mind could confidently arbitrate that X has always existed because we measure its age and conclude that it was around 15 billions years ago. We also assume that '15 billions years' is a phrase that makes sense. Maybe, maybe not.

However, for you as a religious person that problem can be phrased another way. Namely that God is a name for existence. Then your question is not about existence as such, but about created existence: namely, why did God create the world when this creative act requires work, whereas nothingness requires no work? Did God want something to do? Was he bored? I'm not being silly: there are several great thinkers who have wrestled with just such ideas and (more or less) supposed that a supreme intellect is the principle of activity in itself and must create, because to exist means to be creative.

So this problem boils down to a choice. Your choice, my choice, NOT the universe's choice: Nothingness and existence are words that have a meaning only to a conscious intelligence. You and I are conscious existences; so is God to those who believe in him.

The effect of this is that we humans claim that existence has a specific meaning. But we cannot prove this. A religious person does not have to prove it; but an irreligious person must. So a religious person is entitled to say: existence is God (=conscious intelligence) and everything flows from this. Then you can also say that 'nothingness' refers only to the material universe, not the spiritual universe.

If you are scientist, then you have to explain where existence takes off. But science cannot handle consciousness as a scientific term, and therefore they ignore it. But this leaves them unable to prove that there was existence before there was consciousness. Some people (including me) would say this is a self-contradiction.

Jurgen Lawrenz

(136) Wella asked:

Life is really a mystery, because we ourselves is part of God's mystery...

My question is, how can we make sure that we are facing the world of reality, and how can we say that we are not dreaming?

---

This is a question that has been asked of philosophers for at least 2000 years, and many of them have given different answers. But rather than giving you a long-winded explanation, a few simple observations you can make yourself should set your mind to rest.

1. When you face reality in an inappropriate way, it will bite you. So there is one argument that there is a reality of which you are part. What that reality actually is, that's another question. For the moment, though, you can be sure that reality is real, because you and every living creature have to respond to whatever conditions it imposes on life.

2. If we are all dreaming, then we are all dreaming twice: once in life, and then again every night. And those dreams are different from each other. There are two problems with this. First, that dreaming you are dreaming doesn't sound like a probable state of being in the world. Second, if life is just a dream, but everybody (including the plant and animal world) share in that dream and live along with us, then it doesn't matter about mere words. You can call it a dream life, but that's just a phrase. Because what everybody dreams as life, adds up to reality. You and every living being in this world consent that their experience is the same: when you and your dog go to New York you see and experience what every else can see and experience. So at worst you get the equation reality=dream, therefore dream=reality.

There is a third comment to add. We sense the world, and we all sense it in a coherent way, so that all humans can agree on most things as to what they are. But when you look through a microscope, familiar things become unfamiliar, a whole 'different' world reveals itself. Also, our senses sometimes hallucinate. These two features of our life create confusion in people's minds. They jump the gun and suppose that there must be a 'real' world beneath or beyond our world. That's pretty feeble, I'm sorry to be so blunt. All it tells us that the world we experience is tailored to our form of life. The world of fish is necessarily different; and intellectuals among them might well speculate if they are not just dreaming their life... you get the point?

Jurgen Lawrenz

(137) Harman asked:

In Descartes' second meditation, he claims there are many more things beyond doubt in the same way his own existence is. He says 'I now hear a noise, I feel heat. These things are false since I am asleep. Yet I do seem to see, hear and feel warmth. This cannot be false. Properly speaking, this is what in me is called 'sensing'. But this precisely so taken, is nothing other than thinking.' Does this mean that Descartes says his senses cannot be doubted?

---

Hi Harman, taken in isolation, I can understand how you might assume that this quotation infers that Descartes held the view that his senses could not be doubted, however, if you read the text immediately following this passage (that relating to the 'ball of wax'), you will find that Descartes quickly moves to question this approach. Thus, rather than saying that the senses cannot be doubted, Descartes held that all empirical evidence — all knowledge deriving from the senses, is unreliable. What he is interested in was a priori clear and distinct ideas: ideas which do not depend on sensory experience, but ideas or knowledge that derives only from reason. If you would like a more extensive explanation of Descartes' philosophy, you may find this piece (put together by me some time ago) of some interest.

Descartes' Discourse on Method

With the Renaissance came the rediscovery of man in nature and a desire to assemble contemporary thought into one coherent philosophical system again presented itself. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) came to believe that the body of knowledge inherited from the Middle Ages was unreliable. His main concern was with what we can know. This form of philosophy is called epistemology. In other words, 'certain knowledge'. Descartes was convinced that there was a division between spirit and matter. In his Discourse on Method he raises the question of the method the philosopher must employ in the search for truth. Descartes argued that we should not accept anything as being true unless we can perceive it clearly and distinctly. To achieve this we must break down a compound problem into as many single factors as possible. Then we must take our departure point the simplest idea of all. Every single thought must be weighed and measured, just as Galileo wanted everything to be measured and everything immeasurable to be made measurable. Descartes believed that philosophy should move from the simple to the complex, because only then would it be possible to construct a new insight. Finally, it would be necessary to ensure, by constant control and enumeration that nothing was left out. Only then could a philosophical conclusion be within reach.

Descartes' aim was to reach certainty about the nature of life. He begins by maintaining that at first one should doubt everything. Following this chain of thought he came to conclude that one thing he could be sure of was that he was doubting. Moreover, because he was doubting, he must be thinking, and because he was thinking he must surely be a thinking being. Or, as Descartes says 'Cogito, ergo sum' ('I think, therefore I am'). Following Parmenides and Plato, Descartes held that that which we grasp with our reason is more real than that which we grasp with our senses. He perceived not only that he was a thinking 'I', but that this thinking 'I' was more real than the material world which we perceive through the senses. This is the kernel of Descartes' theory of knowledge. Bertrand Russell maintains that it contains that which is 'most important in his [Descartes'] philosophy :'I think, therefore I am', makes mind more certain than matter, and my mind (for me) more certain than the mind of others' (History of Western Philosophy, 1991, p. 550. Routledge London). Having established his existence, Descartes proceeded to investigate his nature of essence. What kind of thing am I? he asked. I am not essentially a physical being, for, applying the method of doubt, I can doubt whether I have a body — or even that external objects exist. One thing that I can be sure of is that because I am a thinking being, the essence of my nature is to think. Furthermore, this thinking 'I' is separate from my physical body.

Descartes' Theory of Dualism

Descartes believed that each of us possesses the idea of a perfect entity. Inherent in that idea is the fact that a perfect entity must exist — because, as Anselm had said, a perfect entity can only be perfect if it has existence. Neither could we conceive of a perfect entity if there was no such thing. We are imperfect, said Descartes, so the idea of perfection cannot come from us. Descartes reasons that the idea of a perfect being must have been placed in him by a really existing perfect being — God. That God exists was therefore as self-evident to Descartes as that a thinking being must exist.

Descartes believed that the idea of God was innate; it was something we are born with. The more self-evident a thing is to one's reason, the more certain it is that it exists. From this he concluded that he was a thinking being and that there exists a perfect entity, God. With this as his departure point, Descartes lays out his theory of dualism. With regard to all the ideas we have concerning outer reality, there is possibility that we are deceived. We think we have a body but we may be dreaming; we cannot be certain that we have a body. Descartes believed his body and all the non-conscious natural world was non-essential, that is, contingent. It is important to realise that Descartes is not saying that the material world does not exist, but that its existence is radically unlike that of the mind. His body is not part of his essence, therefore, if his body ceased to exist, his mind would not cease to be all that it is. In other words, Descartes would continue to be Descartes even if he had no body.

There are two kinds of reality — two substances — says Descartes. One is thought, or mind, the other is extension, or matter. The mind is purely conscious and occupies no room in space and therefore cannot be subdivided into smaller and smaller parts. Matter, on the other hand has no consciousness. Descartes maintained that both mind and matter originate from God, because only God exists independently of anything else. Although both substances come from God, they are independent of each other. Thought is independent of matter and conversely, the material processes are independent of thought.

Descartes, then, can be said to have divided God's creation in two. In this way, we understand that he was a dualist: that is, he effects a sharp division between the reality of thought and the reality of extension, or matter. According to Descartes, the human body is a machine. But man also has a mind which operates independently of the body. Descartes' 'mind' can be compared to the Christian notion of 'soul'. Christianity teaches that the soul is independent of the body and therefore not limited to the co-ordinates of time and space; it is the source of consciousness and survives death of the body. The Cartesian mind can be understood in the same way. Descartes believed that the existence of the body was contingent to the mind — that is, that the mind does not depend on the body for its existence. This brings us to, what might be called, the 'Cartesian paradox', for although Descartes argued that the body and mind were separate substances, he did accept that there was constant interaction between them. As long as the mind is in the body, Descartes believed it is connected to the brain by a special 'organ'. This organ he called the 'pineal gland', and it is found at the base of the brain, somewhere in the region of the nose. Here, apparently, some sort of impact occurs between the physical, the extended brain and the unextended, thinking mind. The existence of the pineal gland allows for constant interaction between 'spirit' and 'matter'. In this way the mind can be constantly affected by feelings and passions that are related to bodily needs. But the mind also has the ability to detach itself from such 'base' impulses and operate independently of the body. This aim is to get reason to assume command.

Not surprisingly, the pineal gland theory actually produced more problems than it solved, since one could ask whether this was physical, and if so, how could it be connected to something that did not occupy space? If it were mental, how could it be next to any part of the brain? When this problem was pointed out to Descartes he became increasingly vague about the issue and insisted that the fact of the interaction was known to everybody. 'We experience it all the time', he said, 'but how mind and body were united', he admitted, 'was most difficult to explain' (see Philosophy. Popkin and Stroll. 1996: 125). In parenthesis, it should be said that there actually is such a gland (also called the 'pineal body' or 'epiphysis'). It is a small endocrine system endocrine gland in the brain. It is located near the center of the brain, between the two cerebral hemispheres, tucked in a groove where the two rounded thalamus-thalamic bodies join. However, there is absolutely no evidence that it serves the purpose described by Descartes and it should come as no surprise to learn that the 'curious transactions of the pineal gland' was dropped by followers of Descartes.

Descartes' Metaphysics

In Descartes' metaphysics there are three basic components of the universe, called substances: God, mind, and matter. All other things are modifications of these. God is the creative substance, who created mind and matter. The essential property of the mental substance is that it thinks. The essential property of matter is that it is extended.

By reducing all material entities to extended substances, Descartes produced a philosophical justification for a new picture of the natural world. Like Newton, he saw the physical world as an elaborate mechanism — a grand cosmic clockwork. This vast world machine operates in accordance to God's constant laws, says Descartes. God constantly converses with, and controls, a physical order in which various portions of extension move others by contact, producing the regular world that modern science describes. Descartes believed that everything that is extended is part of this elaborate machine. The only aspect of the created world that is not part of the world machine is mind. Mind, says Descartes, is completely unextended and therefore, not in contact with the material world — which brings us back to the unresolved problem of the pineal gland. The activities of the mind include: thinking, willing, reasoning, and so on. In this way Descartes' world machine, in denying any purposeful capabilities in the physical world, provided a suitable metaphysical basis for the new scientific theories of such scientists as Galileo in that it gave scientific activity intellectual respectability without offending the Church. It should also be said that Descartes was not without his critics. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), for example, saw Descartes as a man of little understanding of religious faith, and his remark that 'The heart has its reasons which reason knows not' (see Pensees) was directly aimed at Descartes.

One argument against Descartes' concept of the I or ego as an intrinsic, independent entity divorced from the body is that it devalues the existence of other human beings. In fact, it could be said that, were it to be true, it reduces other people to non-beings: simply to figments of the ego's imagination. In such a situation there would be no compunction or obligation for the 'thinking I' to attempt to empathise or sympathise with others. Since all would could be certain of is that one alone exists, there would be no reason for a charter of human rights; no need to think of anyone's happiness but one's own, for to possess such an intrinsic, independent existence is to hold the view that the ego has the capacity to remain untouched by or influenced by the actions of others and of other things.

Tony Fahey

(138) Terri asked:

What do you think of Mill's 'pig and Socrates' argument for the difference between sensual and intellectual pleasures?

---

I think the difference between sensual and intellectual pleasures can become blurred. Sensual pleasures can be subject to intellectual reception. Playing pushpin, darts, and so on can be subject to PhD research on culture, sociology, anthropology.

Soap-Operas have been the subject of Dissertations and research. So for me, it is how the subject matter is interpreted. Popular music-much derided-can be as emotive, as meaningful, evocative as 'classical'.

This however, does not negate Mill's contention. For Socrates can appreciate the sensual pleasures intellectually whereas, the 'fool' could not. Is it a matter of happiness though? As someone once said in a Philosophy class, 'I was alright before I knew about the 'Mind-Body' problem'. Once the problem is appreciated, I don't see happiness increasing. Perhaps the opposite. Perhaps it is a matter of having more knowledge at one's or a groups disposal, which is the same thing as being a vehicle of power?

'Man does not strive after happiness, only the Englishman does that'.

Friedrich Nietzsche. #12. Maxims and Arrows, Twilight of the Idols.

Martin Jenkins

(139) Daniel asked:

Who 'owns' the space between an upright airplane seat and a reclined airplane seat: the person in the seat, or the person behind the seat? Is one always entitled to put one's seat back in a plane? Only some of the time? And even if one is entitled, are there cases when one ought not exercise one's right?

---

Interesting question. It highlights the difference between 'rules' (laws, morals, etc.) and 'etiquette'.

Obviously, it is the airline that 'owns' the space in question and I am sure that you are aware of that, given the 'scare-quotes' you employed. But the airline has seen fit to rent out that space to the person who has purchased a ticket (usually for that specific seat). Since the ticket holder has the right to use that seat for the duration of the flight, the ticket holder also has the right to make the fullest possible use of that seat consistent with the rules established by the airline (ie. whether a baby can be carried in arms, or must have its own seat; various restrictions on the storage and use of hand luggage; and so forth). In those cases where the airline wants to restrict that right (say, in the emergency exit rows), they fix the seats so that they cannot recline.

I know of no rules established by any airline that constrains the ticket holder from reclining the seat to any extent, at any time (except of course, when the steward(ess) instructs passengers to 'return seat backs and tray tables to their upright position'). Hence, I do not believe there are any rules constraining ones entitlement to recline ones seat back when that is permissible.

So whether, and how far, you recline your seat back is a question of how much consideration you have for the person in the seat behind you. And that, of course, can vary according to circumstances. Thus, behaviour in this regard is a matter of etiquette how you hold your pinkie whilst drinking tea. As to whether there may be cases where one ought not exercise ones right to recline ones seat-back that is a matter of fine judgement on your part. Just how considerate do you wish to be to the person in the seat behind you? There may be circumstances where it is clear to you that you ought to be more (or less) considerate than average (or at all). Unfortunately, in the absence of any rules on the subject, if the person you are sitting behind chooses to be inconsiderate, there is not much you can do about it except fume uselessly, and vow never to be considerate to that person if the opportunity should ever present. That is, regrettably, the only enforcement for standards of etiquette.

I must admit that I have given up flying in the last few years (it's become such a pain in the a**) so I am a little out of date with the etiquette displayed by the average passenger. But when I was flying, it was my experience that many male passengers displayed little consideration for their posterior seat mate and reclined their seat backs to the fullest degree whenever permitted. Whereas few female passengers did. I have no idea whether this difference in behaviour was due to a difference in their respective sensitivities to seat-back etiquette, or to a physiological difference between the sexes as to what seat position was more comfortable.

Stuart Burns