Giovanni asked:

Should abortion be legalized?

Answer by Eric George

There are a number of factors which come into play when discussing the legalization of the practice of abortion. The most common argument for the against notion, hails from the religious standpoint. The argument itself is based upon mainly the concept of the sanctity of life, that abortion is synonymous with murder ‘thou shall not kill’ etc, because since the fetus (which some view cannot be counted as a ‘human’ yet exactly until born into the external environment) is still technically alive within the mothers womb it somehow has innate worth and purpose (a sense of objective value) whereby exterminating the fetus pre-determines the fate of the fetus to begin with i.e. terminating someone’s potential future life. Ending what could be, by ending what is.

The problem with the advocates of this certain perspective is that they more than oft overlook the severity of cases where the issue of abortion comes into moral consideration. Imagine for example, that a girl falls pregnant but has complications with her own health as time draws near, she is told by the Doctors that if she does not abort the baby her life will be in serious risk most likely death.

According to the argument above, no – she must go through with the birth, despite the fact that the ordeal itself will claim both the mothers and the unborn baby’s lives. A conundrum indeed; one is not ‘murdering’ but then in another sense one cannot prevent both you and your child dying.

Of course that was only a scenario, but one which has undoubtedly taken place around the world countless times already. Even more than that, what about rape cases? Should we force a girl to have a child, when the circumstance in the first place was brought by through violence, abuse and pain? This seems even less humane than defending the sanctity of life, by disregarding the choice of the person giving it.

Most countries have legalized abortion on conditional circumstances such as to save the life of the mother or in cases of incest or rape, which is the best way to attempt to regulate such a controversial practice as abortion.

To understand that everyone deserve a future, but that this right to have a future is unvarying for the living mother as it is for the unborn child. Cases are subjective, and therefore the legal implications of such happenings should be deemed conditional as well.

Answer by Shaun Williamson

I don’t know but I am a man. I think that in every country the answer to this question should be decided by women. Men can have their opinions about this matter but the law should only be decided by women.

Shummie asked:

I am writing this question in order to understand the process in which a philosopher would approach such a question. I understand that this question is not academic, however I do think there are deeper implications. This is a question that one of my children asked me when he was about four. He definitely challenged me! Here’s the question: Does grilled cheese have to be burned? As you can see, at first glance, the answer is clearly no, grilled cheese does not have to be burned. As a philosopher, what is the logical process that you would undertake to answer this question?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

Frankly, Shummie, you would be better off asking a scientist such questions. That is: if you wish to have it answered as a question on the physics of transformation by fire. What the ‘deeper implications’ might be, I cannot conceive. But I think you are confusing language use with something else. Or perhaps you are angling for a ‘philosophical’ solution to the problem of differentiating between ‘a little bit burnt’ and ‘a lot burnt’? Then you must ask a chemist. Whereas you and I would judge this issue by the brown and black colour. But how would a blind person define ‘burnt’? By taste, evidently. And much as I regret to say: nothing that your tongue can do has any deep implications whatever.

But I don’t wish to leave you entirely without guidance. I believe that toasters are for sale these days that guarantee perfectly toasted cheese, and the people who make them would obviously be experts on the topic. You must ask them, because plainly you owe your offspring an exact (if not exactly philosophical) explanation.

Answer by Shaun Williamson

Well this is difficult because there is nothing especially philosophical about your question so we have to answer it in the same way as anyone would. It is simply a question of asking does what we, in everyday use, call grilled cheese include the idea of burnt cheese. It doesn’t and recipes for grilled cheese don’t insist that the cheese must be burnt.

So the answer is that to make grilled cheese you have to grill the cheese, at least to its melting point, but you don’t have to burn it – burning is an optional extra.

Lynsey asked:

Debates between evolutionary biologists and ‘scientific creationists’ have been famously unproductive, with each side employing distinct criteria of judgement. Can the philosophy of science proposed by Karl Popper resolve the impasse for objective rational bystanders and if so, how?

Answer by Shaun Williamson

I don’t know why you talk of ‘scientific’ creationists because there are no such people. The aim of evolutionary scientists has always been to answer certain questions such as the age of the earth, the history of life on earth etc. The creationists have no such aims. They try to pick holes in the theory of evolution but fail to offer any alternative theory which is supported by good factual evidence.

Science is not an alternative form of religion, scientists get their answers to questions by looking at the physical evidence and finding the best explanation that fits the facts. That is what they are supposed to do as scientists. There are no special scientific answers to questions. There are just answers supported by all the known evidence (evolution) and answers supported by no good evidence (Creationism and Intelligent Design).

Any objective rational observer who looks as the evidence should have no trouble in deciding who the evidence supports. If they can’t then Karl Popper is unlikely to help. There is no idea or belief no matter how crazy that is not believed by some people.

The aim of the debate is not to convince the irrational creationists that they are wrong, it is simply to ensure that creationism is not taught in school science classes as though it is some alternative science. It just isn’t science and it never can be. Creationists and Intelligent Design pundits will use any form of legal trickery to get their beliefs into school science classes.

In any case the debate is not what is important, it is the science that is important. Most of the people who ask questions about evolution here have never studied the theory and have no clear grasp of what it contains and what the evidence is for it.

Yes certainly people employ different criteria of judgement but that doesn’t mean that creationists are an alternative sort of scientist. After all the insane have different criteria for their judgements but that doesn’t cause us to lose any sleep, nor do we think that Karl Popper could help the insane.

When you go to your doctor for medical treatment you don’t expect him to refer to the Bible for an answer. When you go to a class about the history of life on earth you don’t expect the teacher to get the answers out of the Bible.

If you are unsure which side is right in this debate then you should study the theory of evolution and learn exactly what questions Darwin asked and what answers he proposed for them. Evolution is a complex theory and it requires serious study. Just listening to what people say in debates or reading Karl Popper will not teach you anything about evolution and the overwhelming amount of evidence that supports it. At the same time you can also study creationism and wonder about the overwhelming lack of evidence to support any of the creationist claims.

Gungea asked:

According to Nietzsche, God is dead. How far do you agree with his view?

Answer by Eric George

‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’, so wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th Century German Philosopher whose brilliant Philosophical treatises still remain the subject of relentless observation, interpretation and most of all; controversy. By ‘God is dead’ Nietzsche expresses not that God does not exist per se, nor even that God is dead as an idea but rather Nietzsche argues that since an individual does not need God to be a morally-sound person, therefore God is not needed in society thereby rendering God, whether he exists or not as non opus, or as a flip of Trotsky’s statement would echo ‘As a theological ash heap in the dust bin of history’.

We meet the climactic altitude of irony however, when the argument for morality and God pronounces itself in the ear of Nietzsche as follows: one does not need God to be morally-sound, yes, but that is besides the point. The essential argument here is that if God does not exist, then moral absolutes do not exist – nature, culture and society determine what is morally right and what is morally wrong. This follows that a ‘moral act and an ‘immoral’ act must be treated equivalently since the standard against which such acts must be weighed by is totally subjective. It matters not in the end whether one lives a life according to piety or according to barbarism, both are right and equally valid.

Bertrand Russell personifies this ever so clearly when he stated the following, after being asked in an interview in 1959 as to what he would want the future generations of the world to grasp on to, ‘I should say love is wise, hatred is foolish.’ Russell, like Nietzsche was consistent with his world view. Loving someone is not right or moral, it is merely ‘wise’. In turn, Hating someone is not necessarily wrong or immoral, it is merely ‘foolish’. There is nothing essentially wrong with Hitlers views, it is equal with Teresa’s; such a world that exists to perish can produce only the comfort of despair.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

How far do YOU agree with this view?

Who or what is God?

When you ask questions like this you cannot assume that everyone understands your question without knowing what your presuppositions are.

There may be a million different ideas of ‘God’ bandied around in the world. So which is yours?

But I will offer this hint: Nietzsche is not speaking about ‘God’.

He is speaking about YOU, your beliefs and how you exercise your rationality in the pursuit of a way of life that should enable you to wear the title of a ‘moral agent’.

He is asking you to examine what you think God is.

Jose asked:

There is a doctor, a janitor, a waiter, a professor, a judge, and a bus driver. They all go to the hospital in need of a heart transplant. There is only one heart available. Who should get the transplant? And who actually gets the transplant.

Answer by Craig Skinner

Who actually gets it?

In the UK this depends on who is a tissue-type match for the organ. If only one of the patients matches, she gets the heart. If more than one match, the patient highest up the transplant waiting list gets it. There is a common waiting list for NHS and private patients (you cant jump the waiting list by paying for the heart). The patient’s occupation (if any) is irrelevant. Likewise social circumstances.

Who should get it ?

The UK setup seems pretty ethical. The ethic is Kantian rather than Consequentialist. Thus, there is no attempt to work out which saved patient would contribute most to overall societal benefit considered in an impartial way. Rather each patient’s life, if not of absolute value in a Kantian sense, is at least considered as of much value to that patient as any other patient’s life is to her.

Some people think other criteria should be relevant. Three examples:

1. Age. Many favour the ‘good innings’ approach (I do) – a young person should get priority over an old one (like me) because she still has much of her life ahead of her, whereas I have already lived most of a natural life span.

2. Dependents. Some favour prioritizing a person with, say, three young children, over a similar person with no children. I don’t favour this.

3. Some assurance that the patient wont ‘waste’ the new organ. Thus, some think unreformed alcoholics should be disfavoured for liver transplants. A famous example was the alcoholic former footballer, George Best, who received a liver transplant for alcoholic liver disease only to ruin his second liver with continued drinking. I’m inclined to say the patient must show evidence of being off the booze before transplant is considered. But I don’t feel strongly about it. If we held off treatment for people whose condition was their own fault we might stop rescuing climbers with broken legs because they insist on risking life and limb; stop treating car accident victims who were speeding, smokers with lung cancer, obesity-related diseases in gluttons, tennis elbow, knee injuries in rugby players and so on.

Answer by Shaun Williamson

This is a complex judgement which will have to be made by the hospital consultants. The first thing is tissue matching. The patient who is the closest biological match for the heart will be the leading candidate because they are likely to get the longest benefit from the transplant.

If more than one patient is a biological match then other factors will have to be considered such as the age of the patient or do they have a family with young children etc.

I don’t know who gets the transplant, I’m not a senior hospital transplant doctor and I don’t have enough information about the patients.

Duke asked:

Philosophy is about humans experience of every day living. every body
over 60 years old is a philosopher of his own experiences and
understand more about life than any young graduate of this generation
will ever know.

My question is, who can call himself a spiritual philosopher?
Don’t you have to be dead to be a spiritual philosopher like you say?

Answer by Tony Fahey

Hi Duke, the first thing that must be said is that not everyone who has reached the age of sixty can be called a philosopher. Whilst I tend to avoid making generalizations, I would make the case that philosophy demands a particular form of disciplined inquiry which many prefer to leave to those who are more predisposed to such a discipline. Indeed to argue, as you do, that everybody over sixty is entitled to be called a philosopher, brings into the frame all those who, through no fault of their own, are not equipped with the mental or intellectual ability to engage in philosophical issues. Moreover, whilst I agree that worldly wisdom, in some instances, can be one of the benefits of old age, it can equally be argued that many meaningful philosophical insights have been conceived by younger philosophers. Not least of these being Wittgenstein who was only thirty three years of age when he presented his first book, Tractatus Logico -Philosophicus to the world.

The second thing that must be said is that one certainly does not have to be dead to be a spiritual philosopher. Indeed, since we cannot be sure that there is life after death, we cannot say that this line of enquiry, or, for that matter, any line of enquiry, would be open to the post-corporeal state. Moreover, I would make the case that all philosophers, even the most ardent empiricists, at one time or another in their career, engage with the relationship between spirit and matter. In fact, it might also be argued that metaphysics – that branch of philosophy concerned with that which is beyond physics, and deals with such issues as ‘Why do we exist?’, ‘Is there life after death?’, ‘Is there a God?’, and so on, is but spiritual philosophy by another name.

It may interest you to know that the term ‘spirit derives from the Latin spiritus, ‘spirit, breath’, and from spirare, ‘to breath, to blow’. And it is in this context that, under the appendage of ‘soul’, it is seen by Descartes when he describes it as ‘the breath of life which animates the human organism’.(see Patrick Quinn, Philosophy of Religion, 2005, p.206)

With regard to the issue of whether one can be a spiritual philosopher whilst alive, it should be pointed out that the history of philosophy is replete with examples of thinkers who would meet this description. As well as the most obvious example of Socrates (who took direction on whether his choices were either wise or unwise from his daemon: his ‘spiritual being or ‘inner voice’, Plato (who not only held that the soul or ‘spirit’ existed separately from the body, but also that, on the birth of the physical body, it brought with it certain knowledge that was not dependent on empirical experience), we have Boethius (who, while awaiting execution for his beliefs, was visited by the goddess Athena, who reminded him that it was in philosophy that he could find consolation for his fear of his impending demise, and, following Socrates, that philosophy was the preparation for life beyond that of the physical body).

Without continuing with the specific details of others who might be counted as ‘spiritual philosophers’, amongst those can also be said to fall under this rubric are, Aristotle, Augustine, Arius, Avicenna, Arendt, Berkeley, Chardin, Erasmus, Hegel, Levinas, Maimonides, Marcel, Spinoza, Stein, Vico, Wittgenstein, and many many more too numerous to mention.

Answer by Shaun Williamson

I have no idea what a spiritual philosopher is and I don’t want to know what one is either.

The word ‘philosopher’ as it is used on this website refers to the attempt to find truth by using reason and logic alone. This sort of rational philosophy arose in ancient Greece and it is the philosophy that is taught in Universities all over the world i.e it starts with people like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

Philosophy is not about humans experience of every day living. You can use it in that sense if you want to but don’t expect us to agree with you. Most people are completely ignorant about the nature of philosophy but the young philosophy graduate has at least made a good start towards becoming wise because he has read some books and studied philosophy. Books are how humans pass on knowledge and wisdom, you may have heard of them.

Everybody over 60 does not understand more about life, understanding takes knowledge and knowledge takes study and hard work.

This site is often visited by hippie philosophers who want to say ‘Isn’t everyone their own philosopher?’. The answer to that is no they aren’t and being able to add up doesn’t make you a mathematician. Singing out of tune at the Karaoke bar doesn’t make you a musician either and so on.

So forget all this home grown wisdom, read some books and then read some more books. Start by reading Bertrand Russell’s one volume ‘History of Western Philosophy’ (it is available for free over the internet). This book will give you some idea of the sort of questions philosophy deals with.