Ask a Philosopher!

[Fifty]

Hi!

I thought it was about time to start an Ask A Philosopher thread, so I did (with approval!)

You can ask me any questions about philosophy, and I'll answer as best and as seriously as I can.

Plotinus said he'd also help out as needed. Which is good, because he's much better at the history of philosophy than I am, so if there are history of philosophy questions I will mainly defer to him, though I'm somewhat conversant in the history of philosophy so I'll do my best to answer as well.

Questions of a trollish nature, such as "Hows the job flipping burgers?" will not be tolerated! Be serious and respectful and I'll be serious and respectful back.

I do not intend to make this thread turn into a huge debate over the legitimacy of philosophy.

I will generally model it on Ask a Theologian: That thread is the ideal I want to approximate in my own way (and with some help from Plotinus).

The methodological school I am allied with is analytic philosophy. The old distinction between analytic and continental philosophy is mostly defunct, but its still worth saying. Analytic philosophy emphasizes logic, clarity, and rigor in argument. It has more in common with math and the sciences then with literature in terms of its method.

Possible question areas I can help with:

1) Questions about a philosophical topic (e.g. what on earth is moral anti-realism anyways and why would anyone believe it?)

2) Questions about my own views (e.g. what do you think about free will?)

3) Ideas for challenges to your own views (e.g. I believe that such-and-such is the case, what is the best argument philosophers have against my view?)

4) Requests for further reading (e.g. I'm desperately interested in understanding the nature of justification, what should I read!?)

5) Questions about the consensus in the field (e.g. How do most philosophers feel about the existence of God?)

6) Other! I'll happily do my best to answer any question posed in good faith.

If a debate gets too long, such that this thread changes from "Ask a Philosopher" to "lets debate x", we ought to either stop the discussion, take it to PM, or make a separate thread about it.

GENERALLY AWESOME PHILOSOPHY RESOURCE

 

[Earthling]

Is beauty objectively definable?

I would appreciate both your views/any philosophy resources like the ones you mention. Thanks, and good luck with the thread!

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Why?!!!!!!!

 

[Cutlass]

What education have you completed to be a philosopher?

 

[Greizer85]

Assuming God doesn't exist in any way, shape or form, where do absolute moral values come from?

 

[pau17]

My question is, what exactly is the lasting appeal of Bertrand Russell, when his whole notion of mathematics and logic got so badly crushed by Godel's work? (At least the book I'm reading makes it seem that way.)

Is it more because of his role in shaping modern philosophy than with any particular usefulness he has today? Was it sort of like Einstein laying the foundations but getting left behind later by other stars?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Russsel proved 1+1 = 2 though

 

[Souron]

What are examples of philosophical progress? Like positions that were once held that are no defunct?

 

[Lillefix]

Any good books on history of philosophy, or introduction to philosophy? I'm especially thinking on books you can read from one end to the other in bed. So not big A4 sized school books, but you know, books the size of novels.

edit: if anyone else has ideas, just come with it

 

[Godwynn]

Any good books on history of philosophy, or introduction to philosophy? I'm especially thinking on books you can read from one end to the other in bed. So not big A4 sized school books, but you know, books the size of novels.

edit: if anyone else has ideas, just come with it

Fifty recommended A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell to me earlier in the year.

It's a good choice. If you are not into philosophy, it can be a bore at parts.

 

[warpus]

What is the nature of reality, anyway? What are the different school of thought and how do they stack up against eachother?

 

[Hsinchu]

Do philosopher's have an inherent right to be pretentious based on knowledge they have or is that an acquired taste by a minority/majority of academic philosophers?

 

[Bill3000]

Hi Fifty! Technically, I asked you this question last semester, but you never answered. I know, you were busy and must have forgotten.

Last semester, in my Political Philosophy class, my philosophy "professor" (grad student of continental philosophy specializing in Luce Irigaray) objected to John Rawls' definition of personhood and citizenship in Political Liberalism. Rawls defines a person as someone who is normal and fully cooperating member of society over a complete life. In order to be citizens, persons must have a capacity for a sense of justice and a capacity for a conception of the good. He then asks about what is owed to humans who do not meet these capacities, such as the temporarily or permanently ill, what is owed to the rest of animals and nature, et cetera. He then says that he doubts that it is possible to answer these questions within the scope of justice as fairness as a political conception.

She whined about how he did not create a full system of political justice without answering the complicated sticky questions. ...even though all he said was that these questions just weren't part of political justice, and always needs to be compensated with other virtues, and that we shouldn't expect justice as fairness, or any account of justice, to cover all cases of right and wrong.

So, how wrong is she? Are disabled people incapable of achieving personhood and citizenship under Rawls' conception of them?

What is the nature of reality, anyway? What are the different school of thought and how do they stack up against eachother?

Probably would be better if you were more specific...

 

[I'm Cleo!]

What's a good basic book to read to understand the basics of various schools of thought, relevant today and in the past? Say, a cocktail party level of understanding.

Cleo

 

[Whomp]

Nice thread Fifty and I'm glad we approved it.

Is there a clear demarcation line between science and non-science?

 

[Bill3000]

Another question!

Why do you think people are more interested in the history of philosophy as opposed to looking at genuine philosophical questions? To mean that sounds like if someone was more interested in the history of science, looking at the various wrong turns that scientists went in order to discover more accurate theories.

Now I'm not saying that it's not a legitimate topic; how an academic field develops certainly can be interesting, but when it comes to fields such as linguistics, science, and math people tend to be more interested in the actual field! Take, for example, Physics: people don't really care about, say, the incorrect phlogiston theory; they care about thermodynamics! Even in the fields where they are not ultimately true, like classical mechanics, those fields are still correct approximations within a certain range - you don't really see people caring about Aristotelian mechanics! Why is philosophy different?

 

[Lord Baal]

Why is the study of philosophy so phallocentric? This is a serious question.

 

[Earthling]

Actually, thought of another one:

It is often and obviously thought remarkable how the human mind makes associations between stimuli from the outside world and its own experiences with such rapidity, and of course much study and pondering is done into individual differences and development and detioration of such thinking processes throughout life. Current neurobiological research even suggests that certain gestalts, like images or sounds of people, may be coded in the brain's memory by single neurons! What philosophical take could you present on the cognitive theory of mind, for example in an individual's reading of the following sentences:

"Good news, everyone! I've invented a machine to make you read things to the sound of my voice."

Spoiler mindblank :

"Number one, Geordi, marvelous work on this translator device to get people to read things in my voice, instead of Professor Farnsworth's."

Perhaps if it helps a complete answer, how would you relate this to the individual's perception of qualia and the philosophical view on such?

 

[Narz]

At what point in one's study does one become officially a "philosopher" (not meant to be snarky, just curious as in most other specialties their is a clear line at which a person becomes an official agent of their field)?

On that vein, how do you define a "philosopher"? Is a teenager who sits in his room contemplating philosophical issues a philosopher? Is it essential that he read particular past philosophers & have some understanding of it's history? What if he writes a paper on philosophy lauded by a philosophy professor? Conversely, if someone studies philosophy intently for many years but then moves on to other work &/or recreation can he still legitimately be called a philosopher?

Do you believe philosophy is too abstract for the average person to be interested in it/engaged by it?

Do you believe philosophers can help us understand, and more importantly, act upon, environmental issues? If so, how?

One more : what do you think are some of the public's biggest misconceptions about philosophy?

 

[Defiant47]

How's the job flipping burgers?

j/k all the love man

To be serious, though, how do you make a living out of philosophy? It seems a bit hard to imagine that these modern days.