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.)