Fred asked:

I’ve been thinking about presentism and the conditions of the cosmos. It is well known that when we look out into space we are looking backwards in time. If we look out far enough we will eventually see the big bang itself. Since this is true, even if I look out a fraction of a millimeter from my eye, what I am seeing is in the past. Even when I look at my body I am seeing it not as it is, but as it was. Thus everything that I perceive is not as it is, but as it was. If presentism is true, it seems everything I perceive does not exist. Really, only my mind exists and I am a solipsist. Is this argument sound? Please email a response.

Answer by Helier Robinson

No, the argument is not sound. It can be understood more clearly is a somewhat different form. If the Sun were to explode, we would not know about it until eight minutes afterwards, since that is how long it takes light to travel from the Sun to us. So if you are looking at the Sun, are you seeing the exploded sun, or not?

The point is that the real Sun has exploded, so what you are seeing is not the real Sun; so what you are seeing is either an image of the real Sun, or else it is a product of your mind. This argument applies to everything you see because light has a finite speed. Your argument left out the possibility of your seeing images of reality, leaving only the possibility that only your mind exists. (And note that everything you perceive does exist (you could not perceive it otherwise); what you should have inferred was that everything you perceive is unreal, merely mental.) So either solipsism is true, or else everything you perceive is an image of reality, not reality itself. You’ve got the makings of a good philosopher in you.

Wise asked:

Why do philosophers take 300 pages to say what could be said in one page?

Answer by Craig Skinner

Let me answer in one line – because their text is ‘one long argument’.

But, like them, I will take a page to say what I have already said in a line, because I want to explain, illustrate, convince.

It’s not just philosophers. ‘One long argument’ was how the famous evolutionary biologist, Ernest Mayr, described Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’. This book (in my Folio edition, including index) is 298 pages long, uncannily illustrating your point. I could give the gist of the theory of evolution through natural selection, including a summary of evidence quoted by Darwin, in one page. But, in Darwin’s day the idea was new and controversial and upset many people. So Darwin was keen to explain it properly, to give detailed arguments with many examples, to anticipate objections and reply to them in advance, to consider and dismiss alternatives, to cite in detail all the supporting evidence. Result? A great work and one of the few science books of the past worth reading for its current scientific value, not just its historical value.

And so it is with philosophers. Especially if defending a controversial or counterintuitive idea. Thus Berkeley writes not one but two books defending his idea that matter doesn’t exist, only minds (including God’s) and ideas (ours and God’s), the external world being ideas in God’s mind (his prose is wonderfully spare and exact so that he gets the total text down to nearer 150 pages). More modern examples include David Lewis ‘On the Plurality of Worlds’, nearly 300 pages saying that possible worlds are real. Or Huw Price’s ‘Time’s Arrow and Archimedes Point’, 306 pages about the block-universe view of time and it’s implications. Each of these books is ‘one long argument’, and part of learning philosophy is to follow a few of these arguments by reading such books and making up your own mind.

By contrast, reports of original observations or experimental findings only have to say what was done and found. Others can replicate the findings and thereby be convinced. So, for example, Crick and Watson’s famous 1953 paper on the structure of DNA is only a few pages long. Philosophy is rarely like that. However, one of the most famous and influential papers in 20th century philosophy, Edmund Gettier’s 1963 paper ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? ‘, is only two pages long. Other, famous, relatively short papers are Goodman’s 6-page ‘The New Riddle of Induction’ (the one about grue), and Quine’s 24-page ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’.

Having regard to the differences between science and philosophy, I doubt if philosophers are more prolix than scientists (or any other group of writers).

Answer by Tony Fahey

This is a good question, and similar to one I asked myself when I first embarked on third level studies. I should say though that I do think that arguing that philosophers can take 300 pages to say what can be said in one page might be a bit of an exaggeration, but in saying that, I do get the sense of what you mean. However, unfortunately, in philosophy, it seems that there is no political Ronald Reagan ‘one page man’ equivalent

One explanation why philosophers may seem so long-winded is that academic writing in general (not just philosophical dissertations or theses) demands that one’s argument(s) can never be reduced to sweeping generalizations: one can never state that such and such is one’s view and leave it at that. That is, one’s stated position must be supported by cogent, well reasoned, and, where possible, well supported argument.

For example, whilst Kant’s statement ‘Though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience’ might be seen to state his position in regard to Hume’s empirical stance, it takes considerably more than one page to set out what is meant in this short statement. Moreover, the full meaning of his much quoted view that the two things that sustained him were ‘…the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’ could not be explained within the two or three paragraphs of one page. I could go on to consider similar cases of many other famous thinkers – Wittgenstein (‘whereof one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence’), Vico (‘concepts arise from the ‘common-sense spontaneous judgements of the community’), Hegel’s ‘dialectic process’, Plato’s ‘theory of forms’, Husserl’s ‘transcendental ego’, and so on, and so on, but I think (or I hope) by now you may get my drift – I am also keen to show that, in this instance at least, what needs to be said can be said on one page or less.

Answer by Shaun Williamson

That is your opinion and you offer no evidence for it so it will just remain your opinion. It is likely that philosophy is just too difficult for you to understand. You think there are simple answers to philosophical problems because you fail to understand the problems.

Keith asked:

What is time?

Answer by Helier Robinson

This is probably the most difficult question in philosophy because there are two concepts of time and no way of reconciling them. One is time as we experience it. Passage of time, as it is usually called, seems to be a present moment, flowing out of the past and into the future. By means of it we experience change, since change is a dissimilarity in parallel with a duration. A particular problem with this concept of time is the question of how fast it flows; since rate of flow is measured relative to time, it does not make sense to ask how fast time flows. The other kind of time is a dimension, most clearly in Einstein’s four-dimensional space-time.

It is difficult to imagine four dimensions, but we can make do with a three dimensional space-time. Imagine that your life, from birth to death, is photographed in the old way, on to film. Each frame of the film is a two-dimensional you, and you can imagine the frames being separated and stacked together in the correct temporal order. You are then a three-dimensional space-time object. The relation between one frame and the next is a unit in the temporal dimension, and it has some degree of dissimilarity in parallel with it, so that there is change from frame to frame. But there is nothing traveling along that time dimension: no you, no soul, no ego, no self. From a god’s-eye view change is only a static part of the static structure of space-time. Einstein’s theories of relativity are as well established as anything else in science, so can only be denied by an ignoramus; but they require that our experience of passage of time is an illusion. Not only that, but if something basic in experience is to be declared to be an illusion, it is philosophically necessary to explain why we have that illusion, and no one has ever explained this one.

Closely connected with all this is the problem of identity and change, which arises out of a simple logical principle. This is the principle that qualitative difference entails quantitative difference, a principle that is easily proved, as follows. Whatever A and B may be, if there is a qualitative difference between them then there is some quality, Q, say, such that A is Q and B is not-Q, or vice versa. If A and B are one and the same then one thing is at once Q and not-Q, which is impossible, hence A and B must be two. Hence qualitative difference entails quantitative difference. We next define identity as unity, or oneness, and we define change as dissimilarity over time. Now if we ask whether it is possible for one thing to change over time and remain one, we find that it is impossible. Because in order to change, the earlier thing must be dissimilar to the later one, in which case they must be two, they cannot be one. On the other hand, if the thing remains one through time then the earlier must be exactly similar to the later, in which case it cannot change. Since this conclusion is both difficult to refute and flies in the face of common sense, it naturally concerns philosophers.

The ancient Greek philosophers were familiar with this problem. Heraclitus tried to solve it by declaring that the nothing is permanent except the fact of change, only change is real. He famously said that you cannot step into the same river twice: both you and the river have changed between the first step and the second step, so making two of you and two rivers. Parmenides, on the other hand, denied all change, on the grounds that it is illusion. “Only the One is,” as he put it. Plato tried to reconcile identity and change by having two worlds, the world of perfect Forms, which are unchanging, and the sensible world which is some sort of poor copy of the world of Forms. Being a poor copy it contains illusions, including the illusion of change. Aristotle did not like this and tried to come up with a solution more in line with common sense. He claimed that things are composed of substances, which are unchanging, and which have attributes, which can change. So one thing can change with time because its substance is one while its attributes can change. Most philosophers have gone along with this kind of approach ever since, even though it is a sophistry: it just states that common sense is correct in saying that one thing can change over time, and ignores the illogic of this.

Although most contemporary philosophers side with common sense on this question, scientists are slowly but surely moving to the Platonic view of two worlds. You can see this from the fact that in the mathematical sciences they distinguish between empirical science and theoretical science. Empirical science investigates what Plato called the sensible world, but which is now called the empirical world; they do this searching for all that is non-illusory in the empirical world that we perceive around us. And theoretical science explains what empirical science discovers by describing the underlying causes of empirical phenomena. (To describe causes is to explain their effects.) The underlying causes are theoretical, non-empirical, imperceptible; they may be said, not unreasonably, to be in Plato’s world of Forms. It is particularly interesting that Einstein’s four-dimensional space time is remarkably similar to Parmenides’ One.

Walter asked:

The masochist problem in hedonistic utilitarianism.

Is this explanation right?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

I have to say that I dislike these hair-splitting arguments intensely. They do not strike me as philosophical, but as templates for arguments about words and concepts, and they habitually leave the complexity of human reactions out of the picture in order to arrive at one “fundamental” criterion. Who is being satisfied by such reductions of human impulses and motive to a common denominator I cannot say.

There are two issues embroiled in this that are not reducible in any such way. Pleasure on the whole (in general) is preferable to pain; and on the whole humans will seek a pleasurable state of being in preference to a painful state of being. But this depends on the person and what their sense of personal gratification involves. A masochist, for example, does not enjoy pain as such, but the gratification of having pain inflicted on them for all sorts of motives including the desire to be punished or dominated etc. The general pleasure seeking or pleasure maximisation drive is nothing other than the cheap and easily acquired sense of being untroubled–not necessarily actual pleasure, but the absence of displeasure, discomfort, responsibility and so on. The colossal entertainment industry and the bulk of our industrial output which is designed to gratify consumers with mostly useless trinkets, serve those lukewarm desires.

The really more important issue is that gratification very often involves a great deal of pain which the pleasure seeker takes on board in order to achieve their goal. Take performance sports people, who punish their bodies for the purpose of achieving an Olympic medal; or the ordeals of mountain climbers; or the desire of religious people to flagellate themselves to please their divinity. I think you can multiply instances of this self-inflicted pain or displeasure without any troubles. There are no “solutions” to be found here, no reductions to simple pain/pleasure dichotomies. On the observe side you find people who hate easy gratification by e.g. pop singers and film stars or pulp novels because they are bored or disgusted by them. So they will make themselves slaves to immensely hard work to gratify their intellect, their deeper sensibilities etc. Philosophers can be instances of this; or creative artists; or explorers, inventors, missionaries, or indeed any person who takes their life’s calling seriously.

If this was at the back of your mind when you wrote your question, I’m happy to agree that you’re on the right track in criticising the arguments you found deficient.

Qian asked:

I have been an yoyo dieter for 5 years.

(I hope the question make sense… my English is not that good)

Answer by Shaun Williamson

How the hell are we supposed to help you? You tell us nothing! We don’t even know if you are overweight!

You are not addicted to dieting you are addicted to failing to diet. Like a compulsive gambler who has to keep on gambling until he has lost everything, you are addicted to the guilt and defeat the comes with failure. Your dieting is not about losing weight, it is about punishing yourself. You really crave the feelings of failure and guilt.

There is nothing moral about dieting or abstinence. The only reason to diet is to try to keep to a reasonable weight because it is better for your health. Being obese is bad for your health, if you are just overweight then that is unlikely to effect your health.

This is what you should do if you really are overweight, you go and join a weight watchers group. This will cost you some money but not that much. You go to the weight watchers group every week. When you fail to keep to the diet then don’t make a great drama out of it. Nobody is interested in that. You keep going to the weight watchers group and when you grow bored with failing and stop pretending that your failure is some great drama then you will be able to control your weight in a way that you are happy with.

If you are not overweight then get some help from a counsellor or psychiatrist.

Bakor asked:

What is a possible world?

Answer by Craig Skinner

It’s a way the world might have been eg I might have been a pop star, so we can say that there is some possible world in which I (or my counterpart in that world) is a pop star.

Possible worlds (PW) talk is a way of expressing modal talk: the way (mode) in which a proposition can be true or false, namely necessarily, contingently, impossibly.
Thus,

* necessity = occurs at all PW (eg 2+2=4)

* impossibility = occurs at no PW (eg 2=2=5)

* contingently = occurs at some but not all PW (eg Obama is USA president).

Talking about modality in this way started with Duns Scotus, continued with Leibniz, and really got going in the 20th Century.

In addition, PW talk elucidates counterfactuals (= occurs at close PW), supervenience and causality.

Most of us think these PW are just a convenient way of thinking — they are abstract or fictional entities in the actual world, and can be variously construed as sets of propositions, or states of affairs, or uninstantiated properties, or stories, or different sets of occupied/unoccupied spacetime points.

A few people think PW really exist, notably the late David Lewis. He argues that all PW are real, the actual world (for us) being one of them. Actuality is indexical like ‘here’ and ‘now’ — every world is actual to its inhabitants (if any). PW are spatiotemporally and causally unrelated. An individual is world-bound. Thus, you exist only in the actual world, but your counterparts exist in other PW. What makes ‘John McCain might have been USA president’ true, is that PW exist in which McCain (our McCain’s counterpart) is USA president.

These PW are the primitives reductively explaining modal talk non-circularly, and dissolving difficulties in modal logic. But the cost of ideological economy is commitment to the reality of all possibilities — talking donkeys, unicorns, ghosts, myriad counterparts of each of us doing all possible things. Few buy into it, but Lewis’s ‘On the Plurality of Worlds’ (1986) is compelling, and after reading it, I felt rather sorry at not quite being able to believe it.

Separately, the term is sometimes used for the many universes posited by modern cosmology (the inflationary multiverse; the quilted multiverse — our visible universe is just one patch in an infinite quilt; the braneworlds of M-theory; and, less convincingly, the constantly splitting worlds posited by the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics). But ‘parallel’ or ‘alternate’ ‘universes’ tend to be the preferred terms here.