Marc asked:

My question concerns real vs. nominal definitions.

Would it be reasonable to say that the real definition of ‘tiger’ I have given is false? Assuming the earlier denotation of ‘tiger’ I gave by pointing to actual large, four-legged cats?

Answer by Hubertus Fremerey

I feel uneasy with your concept of ‘definition’. What you call a ‘real definition’ is only a ‘labeling’, attaching a label to some object.

Any definition has to be a ‘nominal’ definition, but even this is a bit misleading: To define something means to show its ‘boundaries’ (‘de-finire’ verbally means to delimit, to draw the boundaries). Thus you cannot define a human without showing what a human is NOT! A human is not an ape, is not a robot, is not a god nor demon etc.. But even if you say ‘a human is not an animal’ you will get into trouble. A human IS an animal, but a very special one. So to define a human you cannot just point at a human and say ‘this is a human’. What about a cripple? It doesn’t fit the standard picture of the anatomical atlas, but as a child of human parents, it is a human. This too is a definition: to be a child of human parents. As you know, a walfish is not a fish but a mammal, and the jellyfish is neither a fish nor a mammal but a quite different sort of animal. In this case, fish is just a label of ‘animals living in the sea’ as different from ‘animals living on the dry land or flying around’ etc..

What’s an electron? Nobody has ever seen one! This does not mean, that there are no electrons, but you cannot point at them. They are — like photons and neutrinos — ‘required objects’ in the context of ‘particle physics’. They are in this sense ‘real — but unobservable’. You can write books on the properties of those electrons, photons and neutrinos without ever seeing any of them — and without becoming mystical in any way. You define them by their effects, but not by visibility — which is only one of man possible effects.

And what about ‘liberty’ or ‘justice’ or ‘sin and grace’? They too are ‘real’ in a sense, they point at something, but once more they are not ‘things’ you could point at but ‘theoretical constructs’ like ‘class struggle’ or ‘Oedipus complex’. All those ‘objects’ exist in some way, they are related to experiences, but they are defined by theories. Without Marxism there is no ‘class struggle’, while there are still social conflicts.

Thus even to call a definition ‘nominal’ is besides the point. You should call it ‘theoretical’. It’s not nomina but theories that define the object. And every religion has a different definition of God anyway — including the paradoxical definition that God cannot be defined because He — if He exists — is without any limits.

Thus my definition of ‘definition’ would be: A method of bringing some order into the boundless chaos of experiences — sensual and intellectual. The whole concept of ‘real definition’ is a misnomer, and even ‘nominal definition’ is. What you have as primary givens are experiences, and then you first attach labels to them and if needed you re-define the (sensual or rational) objects in the context of a theory. Because all theories are changing, the ‘objects’ defined by those theories have to be re-defined again and again according to the theories defining them. And if Christianity as a theory is vanishing, then the Christian experiences of ‘sin and grace’ are vanishing at the same time.

BTW: The notion of ‘definition’ is strongly related to the notion of ‘concept’: The tiger is — like you — a bunch of complicated molecules. For the neutrino the tiger — like you — is transparent. Thus for the neutrino there are neither tigers nor humans. You see the rainbow — but where is a rainbow save in your brain? The rainbow in a sense is ‘real’, since you even can take a snapshot of it with your camera, but you cannot grab it and bag it in to take it with you. You only can have memories and dreams of the rainbow. So how do you define the rainbow? The rainbow is at the same time virtual and real like a hologram.

If you are confused now it is a good state for a philosopher to be in and to start wondering and pondering.

Hubertus Fremerey at philosophos.org

Nawd asked:

Descartes, drawing on the success of the Copernican system, believes that many of his former beliefs must be false. How worried should we be about the fact that the world is not exactly as it seems?

Answer by Helier Robinson

Philosophy begins with the discovery that the world is not exactly as it seems. This is not a worry (unless you are deeply committed to your common sense beliefs) but it must be a concern, philosophically. One of the things about beliefs is that each one carries a piggy-back belief, a belief that the first belief is true. Everyone might say that ‘Other people have false beliefs but I do not, because all my beliefs are true: I would not believe them if they were false’. But if, rationally, you try to get away from this naive egocentricity, how do you decide which of your beliefs are false? The answer seems to be that you need to study both science and philosophy; you need both because scientists tend to be philosophically naive and philosophers, these days, tend to be scientifically naive (particularly with regard to the mathematical sciences). That’s quite a lot of study. Good luck!

Helier Robinson is Emeritus Professor in Philosophy, University of Guelph. His books are available from http://SharebooksPublishing.com.

geedeecee asked:

If animals were conscious isn’t it more likely that you would be be an animal? I mean there’s thousands more animals than humans so what’s the chances of finding yourself human? Doesn’t this mean animals are not likely to be conscious?

Answer by Helier Robinson

Your argument is valid only if the probability of a human being conscious is equal to the probability of a (non-human) animal being conscious; and why should they be equal? On the other hand, you might consider the possibility that some animals are in fact conscious: dogs, cats, and horses, for example, while others such as bumble bees are not.

Helier Robinson is Emeritus Professor in Philosophy, University of Guelph. His books are available from http://SharebooksPublishing.com.

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

This is a very strange but intriguing question. Let’s consider the notion of ‘what are your chances of finding yourself human’.

This seems to imply that (a) your existence in some form or other was necessary (has a probability of 1) (b) that ‘you’ could have been anything ‘conscious’ — whatever that means (I won’t go into that). If on some planet there were 100 conscious apes and a 100 conscious humans then your chances of being human would be 50/50. If there are 200 billion conscious animals and 4 billion conscious humans then your chances of being human would be 1 in 50. And so on. Is that the idea?

To do the calculation properly, one would have to include the time element: all conscious non-human animals who have existed or will ever exist, versus all humans who have existed or will ever exist. You could come into existence at any time, past, present or future — so long as (say) the Earth exists. (Then again, why not include the whole universe?)

However, there is a problem with this. Assumption (a) is problematic. Why did you have to exist? The picture this conjures up is that ‘you’ are some soul or essence waiting to be incarnated in a physical form. What grounds do you have for that assumption? Only your conviction that you had to exist, that you could not have not existed. Why must that be true?

I agree with you that this is how one feels, when you consider the seemingly miraculous fact of your own existence. The problem is making coherent sense of that feeling. I look at this in the fourth chapter of my book Semolina Pilchard — a philosophical journey (Download Preview), ‘I exist therefore what?’

"In order to be here, writing this, my father had to produce the sperm that fertilized my mother’s egg, which grew into a foetus and eventually became me. If the sperm and egg had not come together, I would not have existed. But exactly the same applies to the existence of my parents, and their grand parents, their great grand parents, and so on. If any one of those links in the chain had been broken — going right back to the beginning of the human race — I would not be here today.

Am I willing to grant the same about [you]? Not at all. I have not the slightest difficulty in supposing that [you]… might not have existed."

That’s the point. Whatever the source of your metaphysical conviction that you had to exist — the only question being who or what you were going to be — it seems much harder to maintain that conviction with respect to any other conscious being.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html

Joseph asked:

What are the objections to emotivism?

Answer by Graham Hackett

To see what the main objections to emotivism are, we would need to know what problems its originators thought it solved, in the first place.

Consider these problems:

1. are our moral judgements powered by our reason or our emotions?

3. can we say of our moral judgments that they are true or false?

One approach to these problems is called cognitivism. To be a cognitivist we would need to hold that statements about moral beliefs and values are ‘truth apt’, meaning that it is possible to say that they are true or false. Also, it is necessary to hold the view that the circumstances which make such statements true or false do not just depend upon us; they are objective in some manner. Cognitivists would say that there are ‘facts of the matter’ which are ‘out there’, and which make our moral pronouncements true or false. So, to take an example used by Simon Blackburn, if we say,

‘setting fire to cats is wrong.’

the cognitivist would be able to answer ‘true’ or ‘false’, and also say that there are objective facts they can refer to, in order to support the answer.

Some philosophers argue that this approach is all wrong, and they are referred to as non cognitivists. They say moral statements are not truth apt – it is just not possible at all to answer ‘true’ or ‘false’ to them. Secondly, there are no objective facts-of-the- matter to which one can refer when claiming support for moral pronouncements. Emotivists are non-cognitivists.

Emotivism was largely a development of the logical positivist A J Ayer. The logical positivists were concerned with reducing the real world to entities which were provable and discoverable by science and mathematics, or which were analytic truths (obvious to the unaided reason). There was no room in such a viewpoint for moral facts. Ayer would hold that moral statements are just not capable of being held to be true or false. Further, what we are doing when we are making moral judgements is making emotional statements of approval or disapproval. So when we say,

‘Setting fire to cats is wrong.’

we are actually saying,

‘Boo to setting fire to cats’.

You may already know the the sardonic reference to emotivism as ‘the boo-hurrah’ theory.

Opponents of emotivism argue that it removes the universally objective grounding for moral statements. If moral statements have no truth values, and if there are no moral facts in any case to ground such statements, then where does the authority for moral judgements come from? Some think this is quite a telling criticism, and there have been various attempts to answer it. C L Stephenson, who agreed with Ayer about the emotive nature of moral judgements thought that moral language had also a ‘magnetic’ quality about it, the idea being that it attracted (or repelled). It had an imperative quality which urged us to act. However, it could be said that this just resurrects the moral authority question in another direction; what gives moral judgements their imperative nature?

There is a view called Moral Fictionalism, which holds that non cognitivism is true, and that there are no such thing as objective moral facts. Nevertheless, it is possible to follow a pragmatic approach and hold that moral principles are a useful fiction, and we should behave as though they are true! You may find this a feather odd approach, and, in fact, there are few modern philosophers who advocate it. However, you should take a look at the view known as Quasi Realism developed by Simon Blackburn. Blackburn borrowing ideas from John Hume, holds that our emotions ‘gild and stain’ the natural world, so that although there are really no objective moral facts independent of us, it seems as though there are. Our moral susceptibilities are projected onto the real world. Blackburn has also developed a form of logic to help explain why we can legitimately talk about moral truths and untruths even though there are no such things actually in existence. It is also Blackburn’s long term project to develop a form of moral realism which is compatible with emotivism. It is a moot point how far he has been able to do this, and even whether it is possible, but he is very keen to deal with what he called the ‘schizoid attitude’ to moral values, which is one of the main criticisms of emotivism. The schizoid attitude occurs when we hold the position that there are no such thing as moral facts, yet pragmatically continue to behave as if there are.

Another problem for emotivism has to do with moral disagreement. Clearly, if moral statements are just expressions of approval/disapproval, then there appears to be no possibility of disagreement. If I say; ‘Abortion is wrong’, and you say; ‘Abortion is right’, then this might seem to be like a disagreement. Remember though, that these statements are really saying ‘Abortion ! Boo!’ and ‘Abortion! Hurrah!’ There is no argument going on. You might think that there is something wrong here, since experience seems to suggest that moral disagreement occurs all the time. Yet expressionism does not seem to be able to give a good account of it. Finally, we mention the Frege-Geach problem, which many seem to think is the chief problem for expressionism (and for other forms of non cognitivism).

Consider the following exchange

1. Murder is wrong.

2. If murder is wrong then it is wrong to hire someone as an assassin.

3. It is wrong to hire someone as an assassin.

This seems like a standard logical argument. However, In statement 1, ‘murder is wrong’ is an expression of disapproval, whereas in statement 2, it is not being asserted, so is not an expression of disapproval. This means that the statement changes its meaning between 1. and 2. This change of meaning is called a ‘fallacy of equivocation’, and means that expressions 1. 2. and 3. do not constitute a logical argument. It would mean that for non-cognitivists like emotivists, the ordinary rules of logic do not apply. Such a problem does not exist for cognitivists, because moral statements are propositions like any other, and are truth-assessable. This may sound like an abstruse problem, but what you should remember is that it seems to make logical argument about moral judgements and values impossible. Although there have been attempts to dissolve the Frege Geach problem, it remains in dispute whether the problem has been solved.

Graham Hackett is currently studying for the BA (Hons) in Philosophy with the University of London International Programme. He is a former student of Dr Geoffrey Klempner.

Greg asked:

Is hard determinism consistent with knowledge; that is, is it consistent with justified true belief? It’s the ‘justified’ condition that strikes me as problematic. If hard determinism is true, then wouldn’t my thoughts (including my belief in the truth of hard determinism) be the predetermined outcome of physical events in my brain? It may well be that natural selection favors my having certain (predetermined) thoughts in various circumstances, but the survival value of those thoughts is not necessarily the same as their truth value.

A final irony: In the discussions of hard determinism that I’ve run across, the writers often lapse into addressing the reader as if they have a choice of how to react to their exhortationsbut I suppose the writers can’t help themselves.

Answer by Helier Robinson

First of all, the survival value of your thoughts IS the same as their truth value. False thoughts have no survival value except coincidently, such as: you avoid walking under a ladder, believing that this averts bad luck, and then do not get shot in a street shootout immediately after; but such coincidences cannot be relied upon. Whereas if you believe that learning to swim has survival value, so you learn to swim and one day fall overboard and manage to swim ashore, then your true believe did have survival value. More accurately, all thoughts that do have survival value have to be true, but not all true thoughts have survival value; if you prove to your own satisfaction what is the only value of n that satisfies the equation n plus n equals n times n, the result is true but is unlikely to have survival value.

Second, free choice almost certainly IS an illusion. A supposedly free choice is either caused, or else it is not caused. If it is caused then it is not free. If it is not caused then it is a chance event and so not willed, so not a free choice. Putting this another way, causal chains of events stretch into the past and into the future. A free choice is the start of a new chain, having no past antecedents; but how can that be?

So if determinism is true then you have no free choice. Tough. And if determinism is false then there are chance events but you still have no free will. Tough.

Helier Robinson is Emeritus Professor in Philosophy, University of Guelph. His books are available from http://SharebooksPublishing.com.

Jennyfer asked:

Hello, I have a question about Descartes’ dualism. A lot of people have argued that with his dualism view comes the problem of interactionism: How can the mind have an influence on the body since it is a non-extended substance?

I was wondering how Descartes has defended his opinion when facing these criticisms. Did he consider that the union of the mind and the body (lying in pineal gland)was the reason of this interactionism? How did he explain that?
Thank you very much for your answer!

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

As you’re aware of his pineal gland hypothesis, you probably also know that he abandoned it, when told that dogs also possess a pineal gland. It did not seem right to him, as he had explicitly denied any form of conscious behaviour to animals. But whatever else may have been on his mind as a solution, it was no solution and, strictly speaking, that’s where his entire philosophy would have come unstuck, except for the fact that others (Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz et al) perceived it as a challenge.

Such a duality as Descartes proposed is, after all, highly intuitive. It is our daily experience. We tend to be a bit more graceful about it nowadays and accord intuition to animals as well. But the hard problem of how matter and non-matter can interact still leaves us between the devil and deep blue sea. Many of us (and our forefathers as well) have prematurely closed the question. In previous centuries by thinkers claiming that all matter is ultimately a derivative of the spirit; in our time by the opposite argument that all is matter and that therefore we only need to discover what kind of matter/energy equation settles Descartes’ issue.

As such problems always bring hardened dogmatists to the fore, it is appropriate to emphasise here that the Cartesian duality is not passe. It has been shoved under the carpet. Nevertheless, one prominent neurophysiologist — John Eccles, after all a Nobel Prize laureate — believed in Descartes’ proposition and spent years of research on it. Moreover, he believes to have discovered the interface where it all happens (not the pineal gland!). But this is much too complicated for a brief run-down. If you are interested, it is laid out in his book Evolution of the Brain — Creation of the Self, which I would therefore recommend for you to peruse. The section is entitled ‘The Microsite Hypothesis’ (p. 187ff in the Routledge paperback).

Jürgen Lawrenz at philosophos.org