Why Do Philosophers Love Arguments?

Philosophers love argument. I don't just mean that they love arguing. I mean that philosophers are in love with the Platonic idea of argument. Plato invented a special name for it, dialectic.

Yet Plato, most famously in the Republic, also talked about the importance of philosophic vision. The ultimate aim of philosophy is to seek an undistorted vision of intelligible reality, made possible by the light of 'the Good'.

Plato's view implies that goodness is somehow part of the structure of ultimate reality. That's a hard position to defend. It might still be the primary goal of the philosopher to seek out ‘The Good’, however, even if there were no certainty of success.

I can't speak for Plato, I can only speak for myself. I cannot say with any confidence what the primary, or ultimate goal of philosophy is, or might be. I only know that I find certain questions gripping. I also hold certain tentative views. And because holding a view implies that one believes — however heavily one qualifies that belief — in a 'truth', part of my essential activity as a philosopher is seeking to persuade others of that truth. This is the purpose of the 'art of argumentation'.

What is the Difference Between Faith and Hope?

(In the spirit of the holidays ...)

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

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

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

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

Happy holidays

What are the Ethics of Cloning?

Remember Socrates: "know thyself"? And many others, who said the same? Let us say, then, that knowing how to clone is good, if self-knowledge is good. Then we ask, is acting on this knowledge good? But how is that question answered? One cannot answer, generally, the question of when knowledge should be applied.

Is any self-knowledge intrinsically bad or evil? I suppose that if one knew nothing except how to kill, and that particular knowledge could only be applied to that end, then that knowledge would be intrinsically evil. But cloning is not in this category.

Well, then, we're left with the typical dilemma of any knowledge that could be applied for good or for evil, aren't we. We then ask how cloning should be applied. Can it be applied for good? It would seem reasonable that as far as animal husbandry goes, for example, cloning the most successful animal of a given type would eliminate much of the genetic roulette of breeding programs. So cloning of animals could have great beneficial effects, and probably not too many deleterious effects. So cloning could be applied for good.

What about cloning of humans? First, is it intrinsically bad? Well, we now have artificial insemination for a variety of reasons, and that is not regarded as bad, so if we take that attitude to be a correct judgment, the "artificial" aspect is not intrinsically bad. Is a clone the "same" person as the original? Obviously not, no more than an identical twin is. To object that the rich could clone themselves is to neglect the fact that the rich can also have multitudes of children (and do) if they wish. Could cloning be used to generate thousands of identical soldiers? Yes, perhaps. Would that be bad? If soldiers are necessary for a country, then it is good to have them. To raise someone, from birth, however, without letting them choose, as anything in particular is almost certainly bad, because of the lack of choice, assuming that it is good to let someone choose their own life. Could cloning be used to generate the twin of a great scientist or artist (philosopher, even) who died too soon? Yes, and that might be good; at least, the world would have another with the same potential.

The emotional issue seems to be that "test tube production" of people is bad. But if we look at that, we find that it is not actually the "test tube" aspect, as we have seen above, but the "production" aspect that is abhorrent. But what's the difference between that and having thousands of women, even as volunteers, producing babies for any set purpose? The problem is the lack of choice and dignity, which could result from any type of human breeding program.

Why is it that Children in our Schools are not Permitted to Read the Bible and Men in our Prisons Can?

(I heard this question posed on local news channel)

Because our country is not a theocracy; there is separation of church and state, or so the Constitution says.

Because children are, by definition, not responsible adults and so cannot separate fact from superstition.

Because schools are not prisons.

Because if they were "permitted to read" one bible, why not all? The Christian bible, which I assume we are referring to, is only one of many. Why should we prefer that one?

Because, since this is primarily a Christian country, children would not merely "read" the Christian bible, they would be (and are) subjected to pressure to believe it. Why should they be Christians and not Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Taoists, Buddhists... etc., all religions with millions of followers just as zealous and certain of the correctness of their faiths as Christians? Not to mention the hundreds of faiths with less than, say, hundreds of millions of followers... in Utah, for example, they would be (and are) pressured to be Mormons, and to "read" (i.e., to believe) the Book of Mormon, their bible. Should they be "permitted" to do so in state-sponsored schools?

If you want your child to be schooled in one of the multitudes of faiths presently existing, send that child to the appropriate religious school; there are thousands of them. There they will learn that the particular set of beliefs taught in that school is the only correct one, and that all the rest of humanity, from the dawn of time to the present, is and has been utterly wrong and misguided in their beliefs, and is most likely burning in some version of hell. Am I exaggerating? No, I don't think so. Just tune in to any southern religious broadcast, any faith, and check it out.

This is not much of a philosophical piece, is it?

Can Religious Experience be a Legitimate Source of Knowledge?

Yes, of course. Absolutely. The question is, what kind of knowledge. Most people, especially in the past, have accepted what their senses have presented to them as reality. Thus, when someone has had visions, say, of Buddha, or Allah, or Zeus, or the Virgin Mary, they have accepted those visions as either literally real or at the very least as manifestations caused by that god. We are now, in some cultures, becoming a little more sophisticated than that, and are questioning the emotional, environmental, and neurological basis for religious thoughts, visions, and so forth. And so the kind of knowledge we are obtaining is psychological, neurological, and ethological. Why do humans have such experiences? What purpose have they served, in the course of the evolution of humanity and of cultures? It is questions like these that are just beginning to be asked (although Freud and others at the turn of the last century asked similar questions also) in the context of contemporary empirical studies.

How Do I Know That I Am Not Part of Someone Else's Dream?

This question puts a peculiar twist on Descartes' story of the Evil Demon.

In the First Meditation, Descartes imagines that there is an evil demon deceiving him into thinking that he is awake, in contact with a world of physical objects around him, when in reality he is only dreaming. Yet even if an evil demon deceives me, argues Descartes, there is a "me" being deceived. Deceived about the existence of an external world or not, either way I must exist.

Yet it could be argued that there is a possibility that Descartes does not consider. He assumes that as an existing subject, in a dream world or a real world, I make judgments about my experiences, perform inferences, ask questions, consider doubts. These are actions, albeit mental actions. But what if I did not exist as a subject capable of actions, physical or mental? What if all these thoughts passing through my mind are merely experiences being fed to me? This is a scenario that should not be unfamiliar to readers of science fiction: the idea that one might exist inside the circuits of a supercomputer as a character following the script generated by a virtual reality program.

What’s Wrong With Lying?

Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative states in effect that we're only morally permitted to do things that we could reasonably will everyone to do. So it's immoral to lie, because if everybody always lied, then communication would become impossible and society would collapse. So for Kant, lying is always wrong, because it violates the categorical imperative.

For a utilitarian, an action is wrong if it has bad consequences. Lying tends to cause bad things and unhappiness — people are disappointed when promises aren't kept, people get angry when they discover they've been lied to, people feel ashamed about having lied, people count on others' word, and suffer from them not following through, etc. For a utilitarian, it's usually wrong to lie, because usually, lying has bad consequences (and it's very difficult to recognize the situations where it won't). In some extreme cases, though, a utilitarian will encourage lying. If, for example, a gun-wielding maniac who is trying to murder your children asks you where they are, you should lie to him. (Kant famously thought you should tell the truth even then.)

Why Must All Things That Live Ultimately Die?

Before answering the question, it might be wise to ask, ‘What is the purpose of life in the first place — why does anything live at all?’ What seems evident to every observer is that living things go through an inevitable sequence of birth, development, decline and death. In other words, birth is the start of the road to death.

Of course, philosophically, this is a materialistic view of life which is adopted by many of the world's human population without question. However, there are those who do not accept the finality of this naive observation. It is, of course, well known that followers of several religious factions believe that life does not end with death of the material body. Some believe in a future material resurrection, some in a spiritual life here-after, and some believe that we are reincarnated in a different body to the one we discard at death.

The unfortunate situation with regard to death is that, although there have been claims for the proof of spiritual survival, most people are fairly certain that no one has been back from the 'other side' to tell us about it. We sometimes hear of those who are brought back from the brink; and, oddly enough, they all relate the same experience of a peaceful drift down a long tunnel towards a bright light, and some are very annoyed at having been dragged back. Of course, neurologists and psychologists do not accept that this indicates transfer to another form of existence; drifting towards a bright light is to them an indication of the last flickering electrical discharges of the dying brain. Until the real truth is revealed it seems that the answer to the question is confined to the simple scientific explanation, that all living things die to make room for the next generation. However, none of us are forced to accept it, and, in philosophy at least, the search for the truth goes on.

Can You Reflect Over Your Own Reflections?

Of course. Try it now. Reflect on what you had for breakfast today (maybe it was oatmeal). Now reflect on why you are reflecting on your breakfast (probably it was because I suggested it). You are reflecting on your reflection. Here's another example: reflect about the last time you made a choice (perhaps it was the choice to have a look at this blog). Now, reflect as to whether it was a good choice. Again, you are reflecting about your reflection.

In this latter example, however, your ‘second-level reflection’ enables you to judge whether your first level action (the choice) was done well or badly, and gives you a chance to be able to do it better in the future. You can go to a higher level again, by reflecting on what makes a choice a good choice.

Second-level reflection is important because it enables us to improve our thinking. Philosophy often involves second-level reflection.

What is the Relationship Between Happiness and Work?

There probably isn't a direct relation between work and happiness except in the most extraordinary cases. The relation is probably via fulfillment. You cannot be happy in any deep sense without fulfillment. Freud described work as a 'path' to happiness. He noted that work is a source of satisfaction only where it is freely chosen, and sadly this probably isn't the normal case. Even then he talks of 'professional activity' and not manual labor.

Freud said in The Future of an Illusion that civilization rests on a 'compulsion' to work. I don't think people feel, in the main, compelled to do a job. For Freud, the impulse to work is a sublimation of sexual instincts. That is, the impulse to work displaces erotic instincts and provides satisfaction through being involved in reality, or the human community. However, Freud claimed that persons differ and the man who is predominantly erotic will prefer to seek the path to happiness through relationships, whereas a narcissistic man will seek satisfaction in his mental processes. Furthermore, he urges people not to seek satisfaction from a single aspiration.

When we work from necessity, this is because we need money. But there are all sorts of other ways in which we can look at work. It might be bringing up the children or doing the gardening, and in this sense most people are compelled to work because we naturally seek fulfillment and strive for happiness.

How Do You Explain Déjà Vu?

When we experience déjà vu, we feel something which is happening has happened before and I'm not sure if this involves different time dimensions, since it essentially involves memory, which is of the past. I like the theory that déjà vu is concurrent memory and consciousness of a single situation. It is thought that the brain races forward and acquires information before it enters consciousness, so informationally, in the brain, there is a memory. When we then become conscious of the situation, the brain matches this with what has become a memory as far as the brain is concerned — since it rushed forward. We then have both a memory and consciousness of a current situation.

What is the Perfect Lifestyle?

I think this is the wrong question. I think the question would be better as "What is the perfect lifestyle for me?" If we agree that different people have different likes, preferences, values and commitments, then no one lifestyle will suit all.

But even my new version seems wrong to me. It assumes that we can rank lifestyles best to worst. But if we agree (and I think there are good arguments that we must) that each person's likes, preferences, values and commitments do not form a perfectly coherent whole (so that some preferences are somewhat at odds with others — e.g. I want to be a sports star, and I want to travel extensively while I'm young), then while we can say that some lifestyles are better for me than others, we will come to a conclusion that, among the better ones, this lifestyle (training every day) is better in this way (making me a sports star), while that lifestyle (setting off overseas on an open ticket) is better in some other way (travelling), and there does not seem to be any way of saying that one is absolutely better than the other.

So now the question becomes, for me, "What would be a good lifestyle for me — one I would be happy with?" And while asking other people is a perfectly good way to go about answering this, there will not be a single answer for all of us, or even for me alone, and I will have to make my choice as best I can among the alternatives. When I do, some possibilities open up and others close down. As long as I end up happy, it doesn't matter that some of my preferences were never fully met.

What is the Difference Between History and the Past?

The most simple and direct illustration of the difference between history and the past is your own life. Assuming that the universe was not created five minutes ago by a playful Deity, you do have a past. Much of it is unknown. There is some number which is the total number of your heart beats from the moment as an embryo when your heart started beating, to the time you reach the end of this sentence. That is an unalterable, objective fact about your past.

We are story-telling beings. That is a fundamental fact about our 'natural history'. When we look at the course of our own lives we feel compelled to re-construct the actions we have done and the events that have happened to us in a way that makes some sort of sense. Why is it necessary to do this? Why not just lay out all the 'facts' that we are able to recall to memory, or reconstruct from external evidence?

Explanations in the form, 'X caused Y to happen', whenever they are available, will be part of this collection of facts. But causal explanations will not always be available, or, when they are available, may be highly conjectural. What is the real, objective explanation of any human action? How far back do you go? From this perspective, it seems an impossible task.

Yet we do explain our past actions. We succeed in telling a coherent story about our own lives. Of course, there will always be opportunities for self-deception. But remember that these personal 'histories' have to stand the test of the questions and criticisms of others. If your attempt at autobiography falls apart under the most cursory examination, then that is as good a sign as any that the historical claims you have made regarding your own life are false. But what exactly does that mean?

A record of your actions and the events that happened to you in the past can only be true or false. Either what the diary records, or what your memory tells you, happened or it didn't. Such records constitute the evidence for a history. By contrast, a history can only be more or less coherent than another history based on the same historical evidence. Some philosophers would draw the conclusion that a history cannot strictly be 'true' or 'false'. I would rather say that when we are concerned with history, rather than with the past, questions of truth and falsity remain open-ended, not just with respect to the possibility of uncovering new evidence, but also with respect to the possibility of seeing past events in a new light.

What I have said about personal history, about constructing an autobiography, is intended to generalize to all history. Just as I can attempt to tell my history, so I can attempt to tell yours. Or we can attempt to tell ours — or theirs. It is not necessary that the span of one's own life should be placed within the history that one is telling. Yet it seems to me that a good historian always does succeed, in imagination, in putting himself in the historical period that he is recounting, and by so doing, enables the reader to do the same. A historical account is believable, makes sense, to the extent that we can imagine what it was like to have been there.

If God Really Exists Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

I certainly don't know, but here is an answer based on the supposition that God exists:

It is that certain bad things that happen, what are often called evils, are necessary evils. That means that without these evils certain good things could not exist, and that these good things are worth these evils so that it is better for these good things to exist even if the evil things also exist, than for the good things (and of course the evil things) not to exist.

You know how sometimes you are willing to accept a necessary evil because you believe that only that way can you have a good thing whose goodness is worth the bad thing? For instance, suppose your dentist tells you that you need a root canal procedure. Not a pleasant thing. But you have it done anyway because unless you do you will have greater trouble. So you have this unpleasant procedure for the sake of a healthy mouth. You accept an evil because it is a necessary evil. Now, let's apply this to the question. We all believe that compassion for people in trouble or in need is a good thing, don't we? On the other hand, isn't it true that for there to be compassion, there have to be people in trouble, perhaps very ill? You could not be compassionate about nothing! So, according to this answer, certain kinds of evils exist for the sake of the compassion which is good.

How Would Epicurus Feel About Pornography?

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

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

Which Came First: the Chicken or the Egg?

This is a factual, rather than a philosophical question. However, it is a legitimate task for philosophy to analyze the conditions under which it would be correct to say that the chicken came first, as well as the conditions under which it would be correct to say that the egg came first.
If the theory of Creationism is true, then God could have created the first chicken, which hatched the first egg, or He could have created the first egg, from which the first chicken hatched. Either task would have been equally easy (or difficult). Unfortunately, the information which would enable us to answer this question is missing from the Book of Genesis.

If Darwin's theory of evolution is true, then we can say that the 'trick' of producing a soup of proteins and fats enclosed in a hard casing, inside which an embryo is protected and nourished, was developed by the prehistoric creatures from which chickens evolved. We know that dinosaurs laid eggs. Dinosaurs are reptiles. The accepted view is that birds evolved from reptiles. So in that sense it would be true to say that the egg came before the chicken.

But what about that first chicken? What kind of egg did it hatch from?

If we had the power to go back in time to follow every line back of each one of the millions of generations that led up to the chicken that supplied your breakfast egg this morning, it would be impossible to identify the first chicken. There is no single characteristic, so far as I understand it, which separates a real chicken from a bird which is ever so much like a chicken, but is not a real chicken. However, supposing there is some unique, new feature, a crucial genetic mutation which separates chickens from non-chickens, it logically follows that the first bird to possess that new feature was hatched from an egg which was laid by a bird which did not possess that feature.

The Idea of Lifelong Learning

It is not necessary for a person to believe that they know everything that is worth knowing, in order for them to feel — perhaps at a certain time of their life — that they have had their fill of knowledge and learning. Nor need this be a matter of glorifying in one's ignorance. It is simply the realization that one has reached a comfortable plateau. — Is that a justifiable attitude?

In an age as one that has made a god of the ideal of personal growth, the view I have just expressed is often regarded with scornful disdain. One is 'never too old to learn'. Now the evening classes are packed with old folk learning History, Indian Cuisine and Italian. I think that's great. But I have no criticism to make of those who choose to stay at home.

From a practical standpoint, we are told that today's job market emphasizes the need for continual re-training throughout one's working life. One cannot count any more on following a single career path. However, couldn’t this be an apology for wage slavery?

But, yes, I believe in lifelong learning. What I would seriously question is the view that the value or the cause of lifelong learning is somehow compromised if some persons refuse to jump on board.

Can Killing People Ever Be Right?

The question implies that there are situations in which killing is justified, and other situations in which killing is not justified.

An adult is about to kill a child. For the sake of the example, we may assume that this killing is a wrongful killing. It is not a case, for example, of turning off a life support machine, after a court order has given permission to do so.

The second adult sees that this wrongful killing is about to take place. The second adult is therefore morally justified in taking the minimal steps necessary to prevent the killing. If there is no reasonable alternative but to take the first adult's life (for example, if the second adult is a long way off and armed with a pistol, and the first adult has ignored his warning shots) then the second adult is justified in shooting, and if necessary killing the first adult, because it prevented a wrongful killing from taking place.

I looh forward to your comments

Do We Choose to be Victims?

Suppose that a crazed roof-top gunman picks you out of a crowd because of your bright orange T-shirt. You can be criticized for your sense of dress, but not for 'making yourself a victim' of the shooting. In getting shot, you became a victim. You didn't make yourself a victim.

I have heard it said that muggers and rapists know whom to prey on. Suppose that is sometimes true. Suppose that meekness, or timidity, or some other more subtle quality identifies an individual as a suitable target of such vicious crimes. Knowing this, there is something we can do to lessen to some extent the chance of our becoming victims. Assertiveness training might be some help, or classes in self-defense. It still does not follow that a person who suffers a violent assault is in any way to blame for 'allowing' themselves to be perceived as a victim.

It is a rather different question when a therapist finds himself having to deal with a client trapped in an abusive relationship, where the client regularly becomes the victim of their partner's violence. To assert emphatically that it is not the abused wife's fault that she is being beaten (more often than not, she has become convinced that it is somehow her fault) is not to say that she cannot be helped by therapy to find another way of being in the world, besides that of the helpless victim.

It is a truism that we are all potential victims. As the example of the roof-top gunman shows, we are all, ultimately, at the mercy of our fellow humans. It is also a truism that there are times in our relations with others when we have the opportunity to adopt the stance of 'the victim', or not to adopt that stance and accept our part of the responsibility for the things that happen to us. It is a false comfort to think that one has less power at one's disposal than is in fact the case. Instead of complaining, “Look what you did to me”, or, “Look what you made me do”, we can take assertive action. In that sense, psychology has something relevant to say to us all.

I look forward to your comments

Can the God Question Ever be Answered?

Is it really the case that such questions can never be answered? Even if it was the case that such questions could not be answered to everyone's satisfaction, is it not an important question? Should we not attempt to answer important questions? Is this not why we pursue philosophy?

Perhaps the problem is that there are too many answers that are no longer convincing. What changes in these answers is the idea of God. As we gain greater knowledge of reality, and as our mental capacities improve, we should be able to arrive at a better answer.

Many of the answers that have been given about God have their origin in mythology. Aristotle proposed a rational answer, based on the contingency of reality, but then he could not connect his idea of God to that reality. The problem was that he did not have the categories of process available to use in his explanation. He did not understand the world as the result of a process that extended over billions of years.

We now know that the cosmos and time were initiated in the Big Bang. We can trace the process that led from the Big Bang to the present. What we see is the self-organization of matter that ultimately produces a life-friendly planet, Earth. Then life begins, with a DNA program that enables it to mutate to fill all available ecological niches. Homo sapiens evolve and begin to form cultures. Human cultures are processes of self-creation. People make cultures and cultures make people. Humans develop in their intellectual capacities, and begin to perceive the Platonic moral oughts, forming moral cultures. Humans develop in creativity and goodness, becoming more like some aspects of their concepts of God.

So there appears to be a quite complex process, that began with the Big Bang. It appears to be a process of ever increasing freedom, from the determinism of the laws of physics to the total freedom of humans in relation to the moral law, which commands but cannot compel. It is also a process of ever increasing complexity. The Big Bang did not just happen. It had to be caused. By whom and for what purpose? Consider the evidence. A self-existent entity, a God, could be the key to understanding what is going on. Then again, maybe not.

Please post your name (optional), age and location in comments so I may determine whom my readers are. Thanks KC.

Is There Knowledge We Shouldn’t Seek?

There is a popular saying that 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.' I am mentioning this at the start because I want to exclude this sort of response. That is not a reason for not seeking knowledge in the first place. If I know that the best I am likely to achieve in my knowledge seeking is insufficient to reliably guide my actions, then I should be aware of that fact and proceed with caution. 'A little knowledge' is dangerous only when we falsely estimate its size.

There are in fact two questions to answer: 1. Whether there is any knowledge which, as a matter of prudent self-interest, I should not seek. 2. Whether there is any knowledge which it would be morally wrong for me to seek.

1. Knowledge gives us the power to do things. If my plans rest on false assumptions, they are more likely to be frustrated than if they had been based on knowledge. It would seem to follow from this that knowledge can never be a bad thing for me. The more knowledge I possess, the more power I have to achieve my goals. However, we have to reckon on the psychological effect of certain kinds of knowledge, for example, the knowledge that one has only six months to live. A doctor may judge that it is not in a person's best interests to be told the truth about their state of health.

2. A person can be held morally culpable for not making sufficient effort to acquire knowledge of the facts, in cases where their actions have unintended bad consequences for others. It is not an adequate defense to say, for example, 'I didn't know that the brakes of my truck were faulty.' Ethics concern doing good things, and not doing bad things, and just as in the case of prudent self-interest, knowledge is necessary for successfully carrying out our intentions. However, as before, there seems to be cases where one can reliably predict the effects of our acquiring certain kinds of knowledge. One example would be the attempt to devise intelligence tests which could be used to determine possible differences between people from different racial groupings. It is a near-certainty that such knowledge would be put to a bad use.

I therefore see no contradiction in asserting the following propositions. Knowledge is good for the person who seeks it. We have a moral duty to ensure that we act out of knowledge rather than ignorance. Yet there are cases were, all things considered, knowledge is not good for the person who seeks it. And there are cases where, all things considered, we morally ought not to seek knowledge that is within our means to acquire.

I look forward to your comments

Why Didn’t Socrates Take the Chance to Escape?

In Plato’s the Apology, Socrates is defiant as anyone would be, who was convinced of their innocence. In his own eyes, he has done nothing wrong. If, according to the laws of Athens, he has committed any crime, then the laws are wrong — or at least badly formulated. In fact, the charges raised against him by his accusers are lies. In pursuing his vocation as a philosopher, he has created enemies, who have sought to destroy him by bringing the false charge of atheism. Finally, after the guilty verdict has been pronounced, Socrates turns on his accusers, asserting that they, and the Athenian Court, in convicting him, have committed a great wrong.

In the Crito, Socrates, in prison awaiting his execution, is offered the chance to escape, but turns it down, arguing that such an action would “harm the Laws of Athens.” Why should he care? The verdict of the court was unjust, he does not deserve to die. His answer is very simple. The fact that a wrong has been done to him does not make the action of escaping justice right. This is readily understandable, in the light of the principle which Socrates lived by: “It is worse to do wrong than to suffer it."

I look forward to your comments

Do Moral Laws Exist Independently of Us?

Think whether there has been any time in your life, or anything that has come within your experience, that raised the question whether right-and-wrong is something real, independent of the moral attitudes of this or that person, or group of people. That would be an example which illustrates the question 'whether moral truths exist independently of us'.

Let’s look at two examples.

Suppose there is a discussion on abortion. Those people who are against a law allowing abortion in cases where a pregnancy is unwanted are passionately against it, and think that abortion is a great evil. Those people who are in favor of 'a woman's right to choose' believe just as strongly that it is the anti-abortionists who are in the wrong. Is there a right answer to this question, in reality? How would we know? And how can we discover what that 'right answer' is?

Here's another example, which might seem to point in a different direction. Not so very long ago, slavery was thought to be morally acceptable. Nowadays, the vast majority of the people you are likely to meet would say that slavery is morally unacceptable. How did this change of view come about? Is it just an example of different groups of people holding different views? Or is it a case of something that really is wrong, although people at first did not accept that it was wrong, and only later came to see the error of their ways?

As always, I look forward to your comments

Can Euthanasia Be Justified?

We are all going to die. I do not believe that there is any moral justification for the view that a person should never be allowed to choose the time and the place. It follows that if the circumstances make it impossible for a person to take their own life without assistance, then there will be cases where it is morally permissible for such assistance to be offered. It does not follow, however, that euthanasia is always justified provided that the decision is freely taken.

We need to think very carefully about the consequences that would arise if euthanasia were legally sanctioned. Would a healthy person be permitted to request euthanasia? Or would a committee of doctors decide whether the quality of a person's life was sufficiently impaired to justify the request? There will inevitably be cases where the request would not have been made, had the patient been able to afford certain expensive drugs. The committee, in granting the request, would be saying in effect, 'As you can't afford the treatment, we agree that you are better off dead.'

My intuition tells me that the scenario I have just described is totally unacceptable. I cannot justify that view with a philosophical argument, although I believe that many intuitions are widely shared. And there will be many other such scenarios.

It is quite possible that, when all the problem cases are taken into consideration, we shall find that it is impossible in practice to formulate a law permitting euthanasia that had adequate safeguards. The paradoxical conclusion is that what is sometimes morally permissible ought never to be legally permissible.

Inception: Can Reality be a Dream?

I thought about this subject after watching the movie ‘Inception’

The key to the answer is the recognition that the concepts "reality" and "dream [world]" refer to two distinctly different modes of experience. By the very nature of these two concepts, they cannot refer to the same thing. Therefore, the simple answer is "No". Reality cannot be a dream without seriously abusing the meaning of the two words. Movies, of course, are granted license to abuse the concepts for artistic purposes. But philosophers must take greater care.

We each experience these in two distinctly different modes. When experiencing life in one mode, we notice that things perceived are constant, persistent, consistent, and coherent. When experiencing life in the other mode, we notice that things perceived are dramatically less constant in form and character, often transient in existence, frequently mutually inconsistent both from thing to thing and across time, and far more frequently quite incoherent. One mode of experience draws the focus of our attention, is amenable to inquiry, and responsive to our reactions. The other mode of experience often drifts uncontrollably past our attention, is rarely subject to inquiry, and is often unresponsive to our reactions. On any scale of measure, the difference between the two modes of experience is dramatic and unmistakable whenever noticed. One of these modes of experience we call the "real word", the other we call the "dream world" (or hallucinations, or illusions).

Most of us spend most of our time experiencing life in the "real world" mode. Episodes spent in the "dream world", while they may seem quite real at the time, always end with a transition back to the "real world" mode of experience. Some people, for reasons as diverse as drugs to brain damage, spend more of their time in the "dream world". Some people, again for diverse reasons, lose the ability to notice the distinctly different character of two modes of experience, and are unable to distinguish their "real" experiences from their "dream" experiences.

The bottom line is that life is not a dream. The "real world", unlike the "dream world" possesses an unmistakably greater degree of constancy, consistency, and coherence. In the real world, elephants are huge, grey and don't fly. That remains true across time, and is consistent with all other information we have about the real world mode of experience. In the dream world, pink elephants can buzz around your head, and turn into green mice stomping on the roof of your house. The fact that sometimes a dream appears so real you can't tell the difference, does not alter the fact that you always wake up.

I look forward to your comments

What is the Best Way of Organizing Ourselves Politically?

Aristotle, one of the greatest political thinkers of the Western tradition, declared that “man is by nature a political animal.” However, there is a tension between two forces which move us: morality and power. Is doing the politically prudent thing compatible with doing the moral thing? Aristotle, like Confucius much further east, believed in the continuity between moral character and political interests. And although he believed politics as well as morality to be based on knowledge, Plato held that engaging in politics requires much specialized training, and that only an educated and morally accomplished elite could achieve political competence. Niccolo Machiavelli finally drove a wedge between the unequal siblings of politics and virtue: A statesman should only be concerned with being powerful, not with being kind or good.

Why have politics at all? Given the many disadvantages which have accompanied political organization throughout history – such as oppression, conflict and unhappy compromises – would human relationships not acquire a more genuine and superior quality without the mechanisms of politics? The Chinese philosopher Laozi had early suggested that the best and most sustainable way for human beings to live together was in small communities with a minimum of political interference. Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed the ‘noble savage’ to be superior to humans formed by civilization. Several theories contrasting the ‘state of nature’ (a hypothetical state of affairs marked by the absence of politics) with political states, however, come to the conclusion that political structure is absolutely necessary for successful human flourishing. John Locke argued that only in a political state would private property be protected. While Locke stated that a government can only have powers over a person who implies or expresses consent, Thomas Hobbes believed that political power could be legitimately acquired by force as well as by consent. This conviction was based on the assumption that, due to human beings’ innate selfishness, a state of nature would be marked by “war of everyone against everyone.” It is therefore rational to accept the dominance of a powerful political leader, a ‘leviathan’, who can protect his subjects and uphold the law.

Since only very few of us find the prospect of an all powerful leviathan attractive, the question remains, which is the best way of organizing ourselves politically? The answer which seems most popular today took a long time to reemerge. But despite Plato’s warning that “democracy passes into despotism,” thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries enthusiastically engaged in debate on democracy. One of the most eloquent writers on the subject remains Rousseau, who believed that the ‘general will’ could best be addressed in a system of direct (rather than representative) democracy. However, Rousseau was pessimistic about the chances of implementing such an arrangement in society.

As we all know, this did not stop the spread of democratic ideals. And so we find Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French judge and liberal thinker, reporting on his one year visit to America that what repels him most about America is how little concern there is about tyranny. This tyranny he feared was that of the majority dominating minorities, a worry that Tocqueville shared with his friend John Stuart Mill. Mill wrote his ‘On Liberty’ as a reflection on how the autonomous space of the individual might be safeguarded from the domination of the majority.

With its inherent flaws, democracy is still the best way of organizing ourselves politically.

I look forward to your comments

What is Our Mission in the World?

There are two assumptions that I can see underlying this question: that we do have a mission in the world; and that it is the sort of thing that we can discover.

Firstly, it can be argued that we do not have a mission in the world. Some argue that the world is ultimately meaningless, a chance occurrence, and that we are also creatures of chance, with no mission. The idea of a mission seems to imply that somebody or something has set the mission. If there is no such somebody (e.g. God) then there will be no mission.

This brings me to the second point. For a mission to be discovered, it would seem that it has to be there already, waiting for us to find it. But there is an alternative. We can set our own mission for ourselves. We invent it, not discover it. This makes more sense to me. I don't mean to say that we just make it up out of nothing. It arises out of our desires and aims, all in the communities in which we live. Social institutions, our upbringing, our chosen circles of friends and so on all come into play. Within this we can make choices about what is most important to us and those we care about, and this leads to us setting up our mission.

I look forward to your comments

Can You Be a Philosopher?

Can you be a philosopher? Perhaps the real question should be who is a philosopher, an easier answer — everyone! I suppose a philosopher is one who seeks to understand life, its meaning, its orientation, its end and the processes that we engage in our attempt to navigate our way through life. The philosopher seeks to understand where we have come from, how we got here, where we will end up. The great philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant etc., searched in their own way to explain what makes us 'tick' as humans, whether it was in the sphere of thought, the moral sphere, the human sphere. All of them offered their insights and perceptions into these great human issues. Ultimately, some philosophers search after meaning, and how to make that meaning applicable, others would say there is no meaning, others would say we cannot know anything, others would say it is possible for us to know everything. A philosopher is anyone who seeks to reflect on life and its meaning and the consequences of that meaning for the individual, the corporate body, society, the world. We all contemplate some, or all, of these questions during our lifetime.

World Cup: Should Athletes Thank God After Victory?

Watching the World Cup this week, I wondered if athletes should thank god after their victory. But, thank God for what? For the fact that they won, or conversely that others lost? Thanking God that others are worse off than oneself seems a little ungodly. The view that God favors oneself over others has lead to worse losses than victories. Perhaps it is the case that God is on everyone's side. God supports each athlete equally. But then why should anyone lose at all, why doesn't everyone win?

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

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

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

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

I look forward to your comments

Why Does Evil Exist?

When assessing this question it is important to distinguish that there are two sorts of evils or causes of suffering: natural evil (earthquakes, diseases, natural disasters...) and moral evil (violence, theft, murder...). Often, it seems easy to say that we human beings are responsible for moral evil and suffering that we ourselves cause. We have free will, supposedly, and could prevent these causes of suffering. God's powers may not seem very challenged by moral evil. Often, though, certain moral evils, like the holocaust or the torture and murder of a child, are examples that seem to some people to defy any claims about our making our own choices and being solely responsible for all moral evil. When so many people die unjustly under horrendous circumstances not of their own making, it is hard to see why an all powerful and benevolent god would allow an evil event of this scale to happen. Likewise, when an innocent child dies senselessly, it is difficult to see how his or her free will was involved to begin with — why would an all powerful and good God allow a child without any opportunity to become morally responsible to suffer and die senselessly?

Natural suffering is also quite difficult to reconcile with our idea of God. We might think, 'Well, if God is so good and powerful, why does he allow as much of it as he does?' When a tsunami wipes out an entire community, it may seem reasonable to wonder if this isn't over-kill on God's part. Why not simply destroy peoples' property instead of drowning everyone? Some may find the answer here to lie in our fall from the Garden of Eden; we ourselves chose to reject the original paradise we were given. The world since then is a difficult place. Yet, others find that in cases of natural evil, God seems to act randomly. Natural disasters do not seem to be caused by the evil deeds of those affected by them. The more we have learned about the world, about the causes of earthquakes, tsunamis and diseases, the less inclined we have become to blame ourselves for these occurrences. If God is a master-planner, these evils seem like flaws in his design.

I look forward to your comments

Is Science the New Religion?

The real-world answer, of course, is both yes and no, depending on how one views science, and religion. But let us take the ideal case.

In religion, one sooner or later comes to something that must be accepted unquestioningly, on faith: a dogma.

In science, ideally, one may not have dogmas. There is, for science, nothing in any principle, methodology, or idea that cannot be investigated as to its validity, applicability, and so forth. Including that statement. Nothing is sacred, above questioning, including scientific methodology. Nothing.

And that, in a nutshell, is the difference between science and religion. Now I am not saying that scientists as individuals and as schools have no dogmas, assumptions, and so forth. But the history of science is a history of the investigation of those assumptions, their overthrow and replacement by other principles.

Now, is this a religion? Is the principle that everything, including this principle, can and should be investigated by any methodology available, and checked and rechecked for accuracy and validity a religion? Well, if it is, then there is nothing that is not a religion, and the terms "religion" and "non-religion" become meaningless distinctions, don't they. If science, as this ideal, is a religion, then that's the end... everything is a religion.

On the other hand, one can ask something like, "do too many people have a blind faith that science will benefit them?" And if that is making science a religion, then, given the current political and ideological climates worldwide, my own very personal response would be that we need much more of that version of science. The world now seems to me to be in the grip of various religious frenzies; a little more science would be wonderful at this point, in my very politically-incorrect opinion. To put it more calmly... science is a tool, and results in tools. Tools can be used for good or for bad; one can use a hammer to beat someone else over the head. Science per se is something that must be properly directed; and by the same token, it will always both be used properly and misused, just as all tools are, by human beings.

I look forward to your comments

If Life is Finite, Why am I Watching this Damn Game?

With so much else to do in life, and with each of our personal time clocks ticking a finite number of ticks, why should anyone spend hours on a sporting event which is ultimately trivial (a question my wife asks)? Why take part in thirty minutes of pre-game sentiment or the lackluster three-hour baseball All-Star Game that follows? Several months later millions more fans would shift to the sporting event du jour, watching football, basketball or hockey or all three. For those seeking perennial distractions, sport offers up a smorgasbord. To participate in any of these games professionally, you need to give your sport about half your life. To be a spectator, you need to sacrifice more time than that.

While philosophy pays attention to ‘issues’ in sports – issues involving cheating, competition, fairness, sportsmanship, to mention just a few – one might find many of these same concerns rearing their heads in business ethics. What is peculiar to sports is the play element. Sports are essentially invented competitions whose outcome has little bearing on the rest of our lives. By the afternoon on the day after the Superbowl, who, besides gamblers, is even affected by who won or lost?

On one level of course, this academic neglect hardly matters to the fan. The attraction of it all is clear: it’s unbridled fun. When the fan is in the ‘rooting moment’, the expenditure of time is the last thing on his mind. Issues of meaning are not paramount. Fandom, after all, is not intrinsically rational or self-examining. Cleveland Brown fans dress up like dogs, in a kind of weekly celebration of Halloween. Other fans pursue options less creative perhaps but just as free, watching an entire January contest in northeastern temperatures with team colors smeared across their faces and bare chests.

The word ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic’, and one of the greatest attractions of being a fan of some team is that the world of deadlines, plummeting stocks, and bills recedes in importance, if only for a few hours. Add those hours across days and weeks and seasons and the aggregate time could equal a two-month hiatus from the cares of life.

On a deeper level, sports can address a need for meaning, as a kind of secular religion. With sports, the observer is in a sense united with a player or team outside of himself. The Latin root of the word ‘religion’, religio, means ‘to be bound to’. While one can watch a sporting event without being bound to one team or another, indifference among spectators is the overwhelming exception. It is beyond dispute that most fans spend more time in a week following their team than they do in a month at religious observances. The bond between God and believer is long-term, founded on devotion and, for many, a desire for future insurance. But the bond between team and fan is immediate, with constant emotional payoffs and debits.

To take the sports plunge with abandon is to risk losing oneself in the fortunes of one’s team, not to mention the lives of all its members, in endless discussions of trivia and minutiae with other fans. Again, why go through with all of it?

One ‘answer’ would be “why not?” Notice how the question about the depth of spectator’s devotion doesn’t arise in the same way with the arts. Do people press the devotee of classical music about why he spends so much time with his love? Does the visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art incur criticism for repeatedly returning to view the permanent Egyptian collection? Probably not. So there may be a kind of high-culture/low-culture distinction that fuels the indifference to – and, for many – disdain for and loathing of sports. But if this common/uncommon distinction is all that lies behind it, then the reason for philosophy’s neglect of sport is surely mistaken. For is there anything common about an Alex Rodriduez homerun that makes it inferior to a symphony being played at the Lincoln Center? The aesthetics of A-Rod’s achievement – the very precision of his swing and its singular power – seems every bit as spectacular, and certainly more rare, than the beautiful sounds of a choir.

One needn’t be a philosopher to raise the question of what counts as meaningful or worthwhile. Most people who raise questions of what is meaningful in a life are not philosophers. But it might help to at least be philosophically inclined to probe whether it is meaningful or useful in some way to spend one’s time following a team.

Whatever we choose to do, our choices always say something about what we find meaningful. What is meaningful is, after all, influenced by the various subjective elements – tastes, desires and likes – that each of us brings to the decision. So if I watch a game, it will because I like it and that makes it a meaningful choice for me, at least some of the time. Whether we choose sports or something else, we face our own finite time, the fact that the clock is counting down. Time is a constant, a background condition of our lives, whether we’re thinking of sports or philosophy or anything else.

I look forward to you comments

What Is The Nature Of Reality?

Gazing upon a beer bottle I hold in my hand, I consider that I am not seeing the beer bottle as it exists, out there, in ‘reality’. Instead, I am looking at a picture of it as produced in my brain via my sensory perceptions. That is, my senses provide data about the object of my perception (a beer bottle), and using the sensory data my brain assembles a picture for me to see. At any rate, it is the picture in my brain that I see and not the bottle of beer I hold in my hand. But because the picture in my brain is not the object itself, one may come to doubt the very existence of the object out there, in reality. How can we ever know whether objects really exist externally, if all we have to look at are images of them in our heads? Is ours a world of ideas, or is our world really real? The answer is, both. Reality is at once a world of ideas, and an objective world of empirical reality.

Although one may never perceive physical objects apart from our perceptions of them, we can safely conclude that the objects out there really are there, and so really are real, because there is general consensus about them. People agree, generally, as to what objects are. If I were to throw my beer bottle and hit a passer-by on the head with it, that person would tell the police I threw a beer bottle at him – as opposed to having been kicked in the head by a flying blue unicorn, for instance. If there were no such consensus about the perceived external world, then the fact of one’s experiences would be all one could be sure of, with little by way of meaningful discourse with others. Yet, there is consensus about the perceived external world. Like moviegoers in a theater, we all see the same movie.

I look forward to your comments

Saint Socrates?

Why did Socrates write nothing? It’s a question that fascinates me. It’s not just that nothing in his own hand survives: we can be confident that he was wary of the written word, because it’s a suspicion with which Plato also struggled. So why? To us, the written word is the lifeblood of thought, and surely Socrates thought highly of that?

Socrates’ concern appears to have been that the written word distracts us from what was for him the primary focus of philosophy, namely life itself. He preferred to talk rather than to read, since conversation emerges out of you, whereas a text asks to be let into you. If your motto for life is ‘Know thyself’, then writing puts the cart before the horse. ‘Get thee a life’, Socrates might retort to the scholar stuck at a desk.

There’s another striking aspect to this aversion. We still remember Socrates. His presence persists in the way Western culture respects argument, principles, sacrifice and (more or less) philosophy. The historical centrality of Socrates, 2,400 years on, is so familiar as to be almost commonplace, which is remarkable, and doubly so when you think that he left no texts. Where would Freud be without The Interpretation of Dreams, Marx without The Communist Manifesto, or Joseph Smith without The Book of Mormon? They would have been forgotten had they not put pen to paper (and you might think the better for that). But Socrates did not write, and yet we remember him. How did he achieve that feat?

He shares this distinction with a tiny handful of others, Jesus and the Buddha being the two obvious examples. The Bible once records Jesus doodling in the sand, although the wind blew his words away. The incident is like a tease: what would Christians give to know the content of his scribbles? The Buddha’s sayings and talks were written down by his disciples, but he himself, following his momentous meditation under a bodhi tree, appears to have concluded that writing was a distraction. One wonders what Gautama Siddhartha would have made of the thousand embellishments that are now part of the Buddhist canon – hindrance or help?

Why we remember these three is no doubt partly due to the irregularity of history. Maybe there were others like the Buddha, Jesus and Socrates who were forgotten, although that doesn’t seem very likely when you think it through. They had converts and followers who could develop their message so that it informed and shaped civilizations. They led lives that possessed a spirit and energy which spoke of what humanity could achieve, and must have touched something deep in people. Conversely, they were prophetic enough to make enemies too – a sure sign they were onto something. All three ending up being rejected: India refused the Buddha’s reforms and remained Hindu; Jesus and Socrates were both executed by the state.

For the religious figures, life itself was primary, and the medium was the message. This is celebrated in the stories that are told and retold about the lives of these founding figures, and also of the saints and bodhisattvas who subsequently embodied the original charisma. So if such reverent biographies are thought extraneous to philosophy today, because it is not lives that are studied and honored, but logic, it was not always so. In fact, until the birth of modernity, the lives of the sages, not only the saints, were freely rehearsed alongside their systems of thought. Their qualities were captured in portraits; their stories portrayed in stained glass. “I consider the lives and fortunes of the great teachers of mankind no less carefully than their ideas and doctrines,” said Michel de Montaigne in the sixteenth century.

It started with the image of Socrates himself, particularly in the symbol of Socrates the martyr: unjustly condemned, bravely accepting the sentence, he confirmed the virtue of the powerless who similarly die nobly for their beliefs. Whether or not the image is justified is another question entirely – what happened when Socrates stood before the jury was contested from early on. This is presumably why Plato wrote not one but three dialogues exploring Socrates’ last days. But the appeal of the image of Socrates drinking the hemlock as he calmly discourses with his friends stems not from its historical accuracy. The image is archetypal. It speaks to a human ideal, which is why it sticks.

I welcome your comments

Heraclitus: The Greatest Philosopher?

If ‘philosophy’ means ‘the love of wisdom’, then the Greatest Philosopher is the person who loves wisdom most. But let us be clear that wisdom refers not to a storehouse of facts. If one wants answers, one should take care to avoid the true philosopher, for they are no provider of solutions. The true philosopher sees the world as something to be explained, but is aware also that we cannot give that sought-after final explanation: every answer submits to another question, truth is always beyond us. The true philosopher is also a visionary; one who sees possibilities, discovers new questions where answers have been placed. But the philosopher’s vision isn’t merely skeptical, aiming only to undermine and overturn: the philosophical vision involves being able to see the validity of opposing conclusions drawn from the same argument. So the philosophical vision is by nature paradoxical. The philosopher does not lead an argument, but follows it, and does not choose one way or the other on this journey, but transcends them both, setting forth heavy-headed down both paths, and recognizing that “the way up and the way down are one and the same.” The moment a thinker chooses one path, one direction, over another, philosophizing ceases, and the thinker falls into ‘dogmatic slumber’. The greatness of the true philosopher is not solely the possession of such vision, however. The ability to help others see with philosophical eyes is the other mark of wisdom. And there has been one thinker who kept under his gaze both thesis and antithesis, attracted not by either, but by both, and who has helped us to see this 'fluxed' world through the lens of his words: Heraclitus.

As always, I look forward to your comments

What is the Meaning of Life?

A problem with this question is that it is not clear what sort of answer is being looked for. One common rephrasing is “What is it that makes life worth living?”. There are any number of subjective answers to this question. Think of all the reasons why you are glad you are alive, and there is the meaning of your life. Some have attempted to answer this question in a more objective way: that is to have an idea of what constitutes the good life. It seems reasonable to say that some ways of living are not conducive to human flourishing. However, I am not convinced that there is one right way to live. To suggest that there is demonstrates not so much arrogance as a lack of imagination.

Another way of rephrasing the question is “What is the purpose of life?” Again we all have our own subjective purposes but some would like to think there is a higher purpose provided for us, perhaps by a creator. It is a matter of debate whether this would make life a thing of greater value or turn us into the equivalent of rats in a laboratory experiment. Why does there have to be a purpose to life separate from those purposes generated within it? The idea that life needs no external justification appeals to me. In the “why are we here?” sense of the question there is no answer. It would be wrong, however, to conclude that life is meaningless. Life is meaningful to humans, therefore it has meaning.

I look forward to your comments

How Can I Know Anything at All?

If you are to correctly claim to have knowledge about something, that knowledge must:

a) Be correct

b) Have been reached using a correct method (it can’t be a coincidence that you’re right).

The first obstacle to achieving knowledge is therefore that any information we receive though our imperfect senses could give an imperfect portrayal of the external world (see a). Secondly, our imperfect brains could process information incorrectly (see b). Therefore, a sufferer of schizophrenia might believe the ‘imaginary’ people he sees are real, or have a memory of something that never happened, and we too may have false perceptions of the external world, and even our own personal pasts. However, even the schizophrenic knows how things look and feel and sound and smell and taste to him. Like everyone, he has knowledge of his present sensations, his memories and his ideas. We are undoubtedly correct to say that we have knowledge of these things, because their reality doesn’t require existence of anything outside of the mind.

So, even though I can’t be sure that my perceptions give me a true picture of the external world, I do know what ‘the world to me’ is like. After that point, I don’t think it’s knowledge that is important, but reason. Reason allows us to take those bare bones of true knowledge and decide what they suggest about the world and how we should live in it.

Philosophy means ‘love of wisdom’. In Plato’s Republic, this is often referred to as ‘love of knowledge’, but I think this is incorrect. While knowledge has its own small (but crucial) role in achieving wisdom and understanding, it is really reason that does the hard work to determine how we live our lives.

I look forward to your comments

How Are the Mind and the Brain Related?

The perfect starting point is Descartes’ irrefutable cogito; I think therefore I am. I know I have a mind –but I am not sure that I have a body; or sure of the physical world at all, actually.

But what of this body? Does the physical plane exist?

Well, my mind exists, but do other minds exist? I seem to come into contact with other beings with minds constantly, but do they exist like mine? Either a) these minds are independent minds, b) they are figments of my mind, or c) they are figments of another mind (God?). But a) and c) have the same relevant implication, because both assert that I am not alone and that other minds exist. And it seems to me that my own mind cannot be the source of other minds because these other minds frequently act in ways I cannot predict or comprehend. Therefore other minds exist independently of my own and of each other. These minds are distinct from each other. This means they cannot overlap, for then they would not be distinct.

Now, we can say that the apparent external world must either be a) physical, b) mental with my own mind as the source, or c) mental with another mind as the source (God?). Yet b) and c) cannot be the case, because if a mind was the source of the world, other minds could not exist within it, as minds can not overlap and remain independent, separate minds. Yet minds do exist within the world (I know mine and believe in others): therefore the logical conclusion is that both a mind-independent physical plane and my physical body exist.

So what of the relation between mind and body? Mind is what makes us human; our mind is us. The purpose of the physical plane is to allow minds to meet and interact, which they could not do in a purely mental reality. Our bodies are anchors in this physical plateau for minds, and allow us to operate within it. Whether the mind withers away at our body’s death or continues to exist, no longer with the ability to enter the physical plane, is unknown. I would say, however, that as interaction between minds is the purpose of physical reality, the mind might as well die with the body if it cannot interact with anything.

As always, I look forward to your comments

Why Should I Be Good?

Why be good? Because the consequences of doing good are more favorable than those of not being good. This can be seen no matter how we interpret the meaning of ‘being good’. For children, being good means obeying one’s parents. By being good we gain parental approval and avoid punishment.

Extending this to the social norms of one’s community, being good means being a good citizen. As such we gain the approval and avoid the scorn of those whose opinions matter to us, not to mention avoiding fines and jail sentences.

To a more mature mind, being good might mean obeying the dictates of one’s conscience, an internal voice which judges our actions as right or wrong, as worthy of one’s own approval or disapproval. By being good we gain a sense of uprightness, of rectitude, and we avoid feeling guilt and shame.
Further reflection leads us to wonder where the voice of conscience comes from and what the justification is for what that voice tells us. We find ourselves with a sense of duty and wonder who or what imposes that duty. Many believe that God defines the moral rules and imposes the sense of duty. God is thus a surrogate parent, and by being good we gain divine reward and (we hope) avoid divine punishment.

Kant alleged that the dictates of pure reason impose the duty to act so that the principles on which we act could be universalized without contradiction. For a rational being, contradiction is certainly unfavorable.

Others postulate an unseen world of moral values not unlike Plato’s world of Forms, which the moral sense somehow apprehends. The consequences of doing one’s duty on this view are a sense of being in harmony with moral reality, of being virtuous and worthy of approval, whether or not anyone actually approves.

All these meanings of ‘being good’ involve obeying moral rules. In another sense, to be good means to be of benefit to someone or something. By being of benefit to other people and to our environment we can create a surrounding in which everyone flourishes, including ourselves. Whether we succeed depends on our skill in choosing actions that have good consequences. In any sense of ‘being good’, consequences are of utmost importance.

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Are We Free?

This question may be seen from at least three perspectives: In what ways are we free? In what does free will consist? How come we have free will, if we do? All other freedoms pre-suppose, are subordinate to, and are irrelevant without free will.

Consider one of the ways in which we may see ourselves as free: free as a bird, or as a wild animal. But do these have any power of choice? Are they not on auto-pilot, constrained by instincts, hunger, thirst, social pressures and fear? So are we also on auto-pilot, yet with a greater degree of choice and a stronger range of constraints: prison, blackmail, death threats? Humans clearly have the power of self-restraint, good manners, tact, enlightened self-interest; the ability to think through and carry out a plan of action which may or may not be benign, taking into account how others will react. But even in the most perfect world, there will be constraints.

Where in all this constrained freedom is free will? Free will requires total autonomy in thought, or at least the power to establish for oneself one’s principles of action. Even then, one’s behaviour will not necessarily accord with those principles. My mind, and I suppose others’, has been influenced from birth by what others communicate. Every neuron that has fired has been a response to some stimulus. So every thought has to follow from some signal. In simple animals there’s no room for free will. A man-eating tiger must be shot, clearly, even though it surely has done nothing but followed its nature and instincts?

Free will is autonomy, the unconstrained freedom to choose values and beliefs. But where does it come from? From nothing? From mass and energy? From a power beyond all science? So, if I have free will, how come? Is there something deep within me – self, id, soul, spirit that operates independently of instincts? There cannot be any explanation of free will from science. Yet to abjure free will is to abjure all responsibility, and all credit for any so-called achievements. The only possible explanation for free will speaks of a God who gives us choice even with considerable limitations on the freedom to act. (But does God exist? That is a question we will discuss another time.)

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Welcome!

Welcome to my new site and first entry. We will be exploring ideas, and their everyday application, in areas concerning existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, mind and language.

First, what is philosophy?

Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing the ideas listed above by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned arguments. The word is of Greek origin: "love of wisdom." Before philosophy, "folk wisdom," mythology, religion and other approaches had already appeared to explain life, the universe, etc. Philosophy came to challenge old beliefs. It is a search for truth.

I look forward to your comments!