Ruth asked:

‘Nothing can be known.’ What is a powerful objection to this claim?

Answer by Helier Robinson

It is self-refuting. If it is true then you cannot know about it. Any self-refuting statement must be false.

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

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

To expand on Helier’s answer.

There seems to be a way for the sceptic to have one’s cake and eat it, by stating, ‘Either nothing can be known, or just one thing can be known, that no other knowledge is possible.’

Now all the sceptic has to do is argue from the two alternatives:

Alternative 1. If nothing can be known then nothing can be known.

If nothing can be known then, a fortiori (from the stronger premiss) apart from the question whether anything can be known, nothing can be known. I.e. nothing else can be known.

Alternative 2. If it is possible to know that nothing else can be known then nothing else be known.

Conclusion (from or-elimination): Nothing else can be known.

Why go to all this palaver? The key, unstated, premiss in the knock-down argument against scepticism, is that the act of making an assertion implies knowledge. This might seem a rather strong claim when one looks at everyday idle talk, but even a statement like, ‘The weather is nice today,’ would be questioned if one learned that the person making the statement had not gone out of their centrally heated home or looked out of the window.

And yet, there does seem something very suspect about a self-professed sceptic, or global sceptic, making any assertions. You can’t say, ‘Nothing can be known’ if you don’t know this. It is irrelevant that a ‘case can be made’ for the truth of ‘Nothing else can be known’, because you don’t know that either.

However, there is another way to look at scepticism, not as a position or theory which one states, but rather as a performance. Whenever we want to state a belief, or a position or a theory, the sceptic steps in to silence us. Words aren’t needed for this. A wagging finger would suffice.

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

Christopher asked:

Why do philosophers use Latin? I can buy an English translation of a book, but there’s still Latin words in it. I am able to understand most of the Latin words, but it’s just sort of a pet peeve. Does the Latin word carry some additional connotation that the English translation doesn’t? Actually, it’s not only Latin that I’ve come across in an English translated book. I always see the French word for resentment in Nietzsche’s books as well. Is this just simply for aesthetic purposes? Just a preference of the author?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

All English literature is full of loan words from other languages. Somewhere in excess of 50% of all English words are Latin derivatives, generally through French: surely you must know that? Moreover, if you’ve ever come in contact with another language, then you would also understand that the connotations of even the same words in English and other languages rarely coincide exactly. So the Latin in philosophy fills the bill of this disparity, by giving you a Latin-derived or actual Latin word to ensure that the connotations are covered as best as possible.

It makes no difference with Nietzsche (despite the occasional irritation) that French words occur in translations, since they frequently cover his meanings more exactly than Anglo-Saxon equivalents. I hope this answers your question.

Jürgen Lawrenz at PhiloSophos.com

Answer by Craig Skinner

No, it doesnt usually carry additional connotation. But speaking for myself as one of the last generation to have routinely sat through Latin lessons at the local school, I intend to keep using Latin words ad nauseum, maybe ad infinitum, just to annoy those fortunate enough to have enjoyed computer studies lessons instead.

So, I will continue to update my curriculum vitae, examine viva voce, make a priori, a posteriori and reductio ad absurdum arguments and ad hominem objections, disagree with the tabula rasa view of the mind, and fertilize in vivo or in vitro as the mood takes me. Ceteris paribus of course.

Pull yourself together and think how much worse it was in days gone by when Latin was the language of Western scholarship.

Up to the 16th Century the Bible was only available in Latin (or Greek) and you could lose your life making an English translation for the masses to understand.

It was infra dig (if you’ll pardon the Greek) to write in the vernacular lest common people grasped it and got ideas above their station. Wanted to read Bacon’s new ideas? Sorry, in Latin (Novum Organum). Newton then? Same (Philosophiae Naturalis, Principia Mathematica). Even Descartes’ Meditations first appeared in Latin.

By the late 17th and 18th Century it was better. Only chunks of Latin verse in the texts but no translation (none being thought needed for the classically-educated reader).

By the 19th Century, any extended burst of Latin was translated in a footnote.

In the 20th Century, only the phrases which peeve you (and no doubt others).

By later this century it will all be over save for words which have become part of English.

Castigat ridendo mores.

I am

pro bono

Yours et cetera

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com

Gaurav asked:

I was an agnostic 3 years back. After reading some scientific books against god I became completely atheist. This transition however has not been an easy one. On the bright side loss of superstitious belief made me more rational, more free, which I admire however lack of single unifying belief system has left me confused. Someday I admire individualism other day I am impressed by existentialism yet on other day some other philosophy. I don’t just want to read philosophy want to live with it. I want to live as close to true and rational practices as possible. I also want philosophy to help me evolve as a person. But it doesn’t seem to be happening. Different schools of thought, different authors/philosophers, vast subject matter makes it all most difficult.

PS I don’t want to read ancient books of philosophy. In my opinion modern authors have considered such matters and are more comprehensible.

Answer by Craig Skinner

You are doing better than you think you are.

All of us feel the way you do some of the time, and some of us feel that way all of the time.

You have evolved, it’s just currently uncomfortable. You have relinquished some of the views you had, without yet replacing them all by other definite beliefs. Quite right, you are open to argument, holding some views as provisionally-all-things-considered, and staying uncommitted for now on others.

At risk of making you more confused, your talk of ‘scientific books against god’ and ‘loss of superstitious belief’ makes me wonder if you are suffering from an overdose of the New Atheists (Dawkins; Hitchens; Harris; Dennett; Hawking to some extent) They do not give a balanced account of the theism/atheism debate. Rather than engage with the philosophical arguments, they rather suggest that the only reasons people have for being religious are ignorance and superstition, and once people are science-savvy, such nonsense will fade away. I suggest that before leaving the agnostic camp and setting up your tent in the atheist one, you try the views of a philosophy-savvy scientist, say John Polkinghorne’s ‘Science and Religion in Quest for Truth’, and of a philosopher other than Dennett, say David Glass’s ‘Atheism’s New Clothes’. If you have already done this, fair enough.

Philosophy as a way of life? Yes. Some earn a living by it. Mostly in colleges and universities, occasionally by teaching outside the academic framework and/or by popular writing. More often, philosophy illuminates other lifestyles or jobs, and clearly this is what you mean. But I think the idea that you will come across one ‘system’ that will end your confusion and yield many of the answers you seek, is a mirage. Maybe a problem-orientated, rather than system- or philosopher- orientated approach would help. Pick a specific point or area where you are confused or uncertain, think, read and discuss round it trying to reach your own view on the matter.

For example my own views on morality-without-god owe something to Plato, to Aristotle, to Kant, to Hume, to notions in evolutionary psychology, and to other influences including my own life experience. I suspect that like most people you don’t have somebody who is further along the journey than yourself to discuss things with and bounce your ideas off (admitting to an interest in philosophy tends to be a real conversation-stopper down the pub or at the dinner table). The only way round this is to sign up for some formal study with supervision and feedback. I suggest looking at what Pathways can offer. I used Pathways support for my distance-learning BA and found it excellent value, both philosophical and financial, and you can sign up for less ambitious (but still pretty rigorous) modules. You say you can’t give much time. I understand this but it could be time well-spent.

You will already have appreciated that certainty isn’t among the contents when you open the philosophy box. If certainty is what you want, stick to maths/logic, but even there it may just be truth-in-the-story of maths/logic, rather than absolutely.

Finally, I too am keen on modern authors, imagining that philosophy is more like science than art, and that there has been progress. How we might measure progress in philosophy, and whether there has been any, are themselves nice points to reflect on. Whatever, many of the ‘ancient’ writers (I include what BA students still learn as ‘modern’ philosophy, namely Descartes onward) show terrific wit and wisdom, and are more than worth studying in their own right. A few write badly, but no more so than among moderns.

All the best in your quest.

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com

Keith asked:

The meaning of life…

Can an answer to that question then be used to give artificial intelligence developers a task for a computer program to execute? Such as robots build cars, computer programs create a better driving experience, is it that human life hasn’t been simulated by a computer program because the function of life/ the goal of life/ the meaning of life/ what life is out there doing/ life’s task is unknown? Hence if known, could then AI finally be able to be designed as that life like program.

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

It’s a good question to ask: why should anyone want anything or do anything? Writers of science fiction books and movies assume without even a moment’s thought that an android or AI would want to do stuff — that it would have a reason to obey our orders, for example, or fulfil its design function.

But that’s the whole point: human beings have been designed by evolution to pursue a range of tasks all hinging around survival and reproduction. But then we got conscious and discovered that we could give tasks to ourselves and pursue them. The result is human culture, and the history of philosophy.

In sci-fi comedies robots can get depressed (Marvin the paranoid android in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) but that would be the true test of success, much more appropriate than Turing’s easy option. You can’t get depressed unless life is a question for you. How does that happen? How did it happen?

There is no task. Any time you want you can get off the train of life. Provided, of course, that you understand that there will be no ‘you’ to hop on again later.

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

Answer by Stuart Burns

First of all, life’s task is known. The function of life, the goal of life, the meaning of life, what life is out there doing, is simply the ongoing continuation of life. So the answer to your question has to take that fact into consideration. If we haven’t built ‘life-like’ computer programs, it has to be for reasons other than not knowing the proper task to give the program.

Life is a chemical reaction. Or, more accurately, a complex interdependent network of chemical reactions. In most cases, you do not ask what the purpose of a chemical reaction is – it just is, or is not. When a lump of iron rusts, you do not ask what the purpose of the rusting is. When a lump of sugar dissolves in a glass of water, you do not ask what the purpose of the dissolving is. You thus have to be careful when asking what the purpose is of the complex network of chemical reactions that is life. It just is. On the other hand, unless those particular chemical reactions continue to take place in the proper networked sequence, they soon terminate. So the only meaningful sense in which there is a purpose to those chemical reactions, is the sense in which their purpose is to continue to take place in the proper sequence.

Applying this lesson to the realm of AI does not provide the answer you seem to think. You can setup a program to operate a robot to continue to build cars. This has been done. The difficulty is that a robot designed to build cars has no capability to withstand, or correct for, things that might interfere with its operation. Such a program for a car-building robot has no provision for reacting to a changing environment – either by modifying its behavior, or reproducing itself with modifications (ie. genetically). If you want an AI program that is ‘life-like’ then you have to provide the program with a means of adapting to the environment – either immediately like an animal, or through some kind of process of evolutionary adaptation like a plant.

As you can see, the challenge is not strictly a constraint on the AI programming. The challenge is coming up with a process that allows adaptation – either genetically or behaviorally. Whatever kind of robot the program is designed to operate, the robot has to have some means of reacting to the environment. Writing the program is not the hard part. Building a robot with the capability of reacting to the environment is the hard part. Mostly because it is expensive, and not economical for anything other than a research program. What car manufacturing company is going to want to pay for a car-building robot that can react to the environment in ways other than those useful to building cars. It is cheaper to design and build a made-for-the-robot relatively unchanging environment (model year changes aside).

http://www3.sympatico.ca/saburns/pg00cv.htm

Lisa asked:

Is homo sapiens simply another species of animal?

Answer by Stuart Burns

The simple answer is ‘Yes!’

But I have to wonder if the impetus behind your question is the thought that Homo sapiens is not simply another species of animal. And the only reason I can think of that might ground that thought, is the religious notion that Man (also known as Homo sapiens) is a special creation of God.

Unfortunately for the religious believers out there (and I don’t know whether that includes you), the Vast majority of scientists (especially those working in the fields of medicine, biology, anthropology, psychology, and sociology) agree that the evidence accumulated to date overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that Homo sapiens is just another evolved species of animal. To believe otherwise lumps you in with either the increasingly Vanishing proportion of educated persons who believe in Divine Creation or Intelligent Design, or the great bulk of the uneducated masses. (Note: to be uneducated is not to be stupid.)

http://www3.sympatico.ca/saburns/pg00cv.htm

Adam asked:

Everything needs a cause, right, or it couldn’t happen, right?

Or is time a cause in and of itself? And ‘drags’ things as time goes forward, like a replay in a video game? But then time would need a cause too, right?

Answer by Helier Robinson

Logically there are two possibilities, given your premise that everything needs a cause: either there is an infinite regress of causes, going back for ever, or else there was a first cause. I personally want nothing to do with infinity, on the ground that it is a weasel word: people use it when they don’t know the limits of something.

The first cause is usually called God, who is causa sui, or self caused; but it need not be: one could, like Leibniz, claim that the world that exists does so necessarily because it is the best of all possibles. That is, being the best includes its necessary existence as a predicate, so that it is self-caused. Leibniz was (and is still) much misunderstood on this. He was not referring to the empirical world that we perceive around us (which is clearly not the best of all possibles because there is so much evil in it), but to the world of underlying causes of empirical phenomena, the world that theoretical scientists say is described by theoretical science, an underlying mathematical structure.

Note that to say that the best possible being has necessary existence as a predicate is to invoke the ontological argument of St. Anselm. This is usually applied to God, but it can also be applied to the underlying world. The usual attempt to refute the ontological argument is to claim that existence is never a predicate (and this distinction is built into modern symbolic logic). But it is quite feasible to claim that existence is not a predicate except in the case of the best of all possibles. That is, the best of all possibles has, as part of its perfection, properties that nothing else has and one of these is intrinsic necessary existence. Another way of putting this is to argue that of all possible worlds, only one is actual. There must be a reason why this one is actual, rather than any other, and this reason cannot be extrinsic to this world, since nothing actual exists outside of it; so it is intrinsic necessary existence, which is part of its perfection. (If something has intrinsic necessary existence then it has to exist.)

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