Jane asked:

Which is most real, the chair you are sitting on, the molecules that make up the chair or the sensations and images you have of the chair as you are sitting on it?

Your help is very much appreciated.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

This is a really good question, even though it’s been asked 1000 times before. The trouble is, philosophers have a tendency to over-elaborate the simplest of matters. So I’m going to give you a short, but accurate explanation.

(1) There is only one chair. It is that with which your backside makes contact when you sit on it.

(2) The molecules are not a chair, but a heap of molecules. Molecules make matter, they don’t make chairs. So if you choose to call that heap of matter a chair, that’s your business. Like calling a heap of stars the Andromeda galaxy. Well, that’s what we humans do. But that’s our problem – a problem that has to do with language use. In the dimension where molecules live, there are no chairs. So the answer to (2) is, a chair defined as a heap of molecules is a misuse of a technical term. Has nothing to do with being real or not real.

(3) The chair in your mind is an image. Perceptions pick up visual data like chairs from the world. But they can’t bring chairs into your head, so they manufacture an image. How can this be real? If you reply, there are people who say so, you reply: if there was no chair in my field of vision, I would not see a chair. Therefore the chair image cannot be the real chair. Of course you can always imagine a chair, but then you can’t sit on it. And that’s the difference.

Answer by Craig Skinner

I will assume that there is an external world of material objects and other people who, like me, have a mental life. In short I wont consider either solipsism or idealism (a la Berkeley)

The things you cite are all three equally real, but don’t all have the same kind of reality.

To be real is to actually exist. To be an existent entity.

I exclude nonexistent entities (possible ones like unicorns, impossible ones like round squares) and fictional entities (like Sherlock Holmes). We may talk of these as having possible existence or fictional existence, but they don’t have actual existence, and that is the hallmark of reality.

There are no degrees of reality (real, more real, most real). Rather there are kinds of reality or ways of being real.

One classification of ways of being real, is that there are universal entities (includes properties, such as redness; and relations, such as betweenness) and particular entities.

Particular entities can be abstract (eg numbers) or concrete.

Concrete particulars can be things (physical, or mental) or events (eg collisions).

So, the three things you cite (chair, molecules, sensations) are all equally real but in different ways:

• The chair has reality as a physical concrete particular (thing).

• The molecules are similar. They are (smaller) physical concrete particulars (things).

• The sensations and images are mental concrete particulars (things).

To expand a little on each:

Chair:

It is a big physical object or thing, a physical concrete particular. It’s chairness lies not just in its being a collection of bits of wood: a pile of firewood or fallen branches is that. It was built AS a chair and is seen as this by those who have the concept. So, if floating in the sea, it would be seen by a dolphin as an entity but not seen AS a chair. An ant might crawl over it, and perceive it in an anty way, but not perceive it AS an entity. But none of this affects the chair’s reality, its actual existence, it affects only what we (and dolphins and ants) know and think about it.

Molecules:

Traditionally, unobservable entities postulated by science are not afforded full reality. They are theoretical rather than real, instrumentally useful in explaining what we find in the world. And so it was once upon a time with atoms and molecules. But now, in my view, they can be regarded as being as real as chairs. We can see molecules these days with ultra powerful microscopes (although strictly we don’t see THEM, we see enlarged images of them), and there must be few people nowadays who think DNA molecules are less real than chairs. Of course superstrings, dark matter and Higgs bosons have taken the place of atoms as unobservable postulated entities which may or may not be real.

Sensations and Images:

These are mental rather than physical entities. But the mental is just as real as the physical. It differs in being private, so that my sensations of the chair are mine only (and yours yours) whereas the chair or its molecules are publicly observable. Of course our sensations concur because we are aware of the same chair. So if we have normal vision and view the chair in good light we both see it as having the same colour. To be sure, mental entities depend for their existence on a physical substrate (or so I believe). Thus our images and sensations of the chair are the mental activity of our brains, probably patterns arising from coordinated nerve cell firings. But this doesn’t diminish the reality of the mental entities. Some mental entities are fleeting, such as the sensation in my elbow as I presently rest it on the arm of my desk chair, but others, such as my memory of my childhood by the seaside, have lasted longer than some of the chairs in my house, and these memories have been in (or can be recalled into) my mind for far longer than any of the atoms which currently comprise my brain have been part of my body.

As Richard Feynman, the famous physicist, put it when explaining the importance of a paper on the half-life of radio-phosphorus in rat brains: ‘We tend to overlook how astonishing it is that yesterday’s potatoes can, today, remember my boyhood in New York’.

Answer by Helier Robinson

First of all the word real has several meanings: (i) it is all that exists independently of being perceived (that is, it exists whether anyone perceives it or not); (ii) it is all that we perceive around us that is not illusory; (iii) it is what makes propositions true or false; (iv) it means genuine, as opposed to artificial.

Secondly, there is an important logical principle that is relevant here: qualitative difference entails quantitative difference. (Proof: whatever A and B may be, if there is a qualitative difference between them then there is some quality, Q, such that A is Q and B is not-Q (or vice versa); if A and B are one then one thing is at once Q and not-Q, which is impossible; hence A and B are two.)

The chair made of molecules is qualitatively different from the chair you are sitting on, which is made up of sensations and images, so they cannot be one and the same chair, they have to be two. (For example, molecules are not made up of sensations and images and the chair you are sitting on is so made up.)

In fact, the molecular chair is theoretical and the chair made up of sensations is empirical, and it is a curious fact that the theoretical and the empirical are disjoint: nothing theoretical is ever empirical and vice versa. (The empirical is known by the senses and the theoretical is known by the mind.) The theoretical is real if it exists, since no one ever perceives it, and the empirical is real if it is free of illusion; so these two meanings of ‘real’ are not equivalent, and it is impossible to say which of them is ‘most’ real.

However, there is a neat philosophical problem here. You use the word image in connection with sensations, implying that the empirical chair is an image of the theoretical chair; and, indeed, this is what we suppose from theory of perception. Does this mean that the empirical you, sitting on the empirical chair, is an image of a theoretical you, sitting on a theoretical chair? (Naturally, the empirical you is made up of sensations and the theoretical you would be made up of molecules; and the two have to be qualitatively different.) And, if there is this theoretical you, where is it, since two distinct things cannot exist in the same space? Think of this as an opportunity to discover how philosophically talented you are. (If you are really stuck on this problem, try going to SharebooksPublishing.com.)

Yuri asked:

First, sorry for my English. I’m suffering from strong depressions from time to time and have to take pills. My wife has a serious form of bipolar disorder. We met because of our problems and developed a strong and loving relationship. We’re not sure whether we should have at least one kid because there’s a probability of up to 40 that our child will suffer from one of our illnesses. Should we accept than in a way evolution doesn’t want us to have children, as to say it would be reasonable to put this issue aside or should we go for it?

Thanks.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

This is a very delicate issue.

If I understand your predicament correctly, you and your wife each have a genetic disorder that brings a lot of suffering into your lives.

Moreover the chances are that any child you put into the world has an almost 50/50 chance of suffering the same predicament.

This puts a lot of responsibility on your shoulders.

On one hand, having a child might bring a lot of happiness into your life and ease your suffering.

On the other hand, how would you face your child when it is grown up and understands that its suffering is due to your selfishness in procreating?

This, I think, is what you have to ponder. Whether it is a fair risk, that you make another human being go through life with perhaps little joy and constant suffering.

In the end, all children want to live their own life when they grow up. Very often the love you expect and hope for ends when they enter their teens. This has to be weighed in the balance.

I don’t know if I’ve answered your question. But in such a predicament an outsider can do no more than hope that you can cut through the fog.

Whatever your decision, you will have to consider that today, tomorrow, next year and in 50 years time you can be satisfied it was a GOOD decision.

Tim asked:

What is the earliest time when you achieve the state of having an identity? Not legally, but physically. At what point is the earliest which you can become something, inadvertently die, and then at this point you will never experience life?

Answer by Craig Skinner

Good question.

It depends whether you think ‘you’ are essentially a human animal (animalism), essentially a person (the psychological connectedness view), or essentially a disembodied soul.

If you think you are essentially a human animal (and hence were once an embryo, and will still be you if you suffer severe brain damage and enter a persistent vegetative state (PVS)), then the earliest time you were you is when the fertilized ovum that became you was beyond the point where it could give rise to two humans (by dividing to form identical twins). Up to 2 weeks after fertilization an embryo can do this (in 99% of cases the split occurs by day 8), and so can’t be said to be one particular human being. So the individual human animal achieves identity when a 10-14 day old blastocyst. And, of course, inadvertent death at this point or for some weeks after (natural abortion) is commonplace. So much so that you might expect the anti-abortion lobby to press for massive research funding to deal with this, the biggest killer of human life on the planet, but they don’t, rather suggesting that they don’t really think embryos are people.

If you think you are essentially a person (psychological connectedness required), then you begin when psychological connectedness begins and end when it ends. Thus “you” were never an embryo (it lacks any psychology), and the human animal in the PVS that you become is not you (likewise lacks psychological connectedness with earlier states). In short, a human animal spends most of its life as you, excluding the earliest times when the foetus wasn’t a person (and so wasn’t you), and, sadly, in some cases, later times when the human is in a PVS and is again no longer a person.

On this latter view of your identity, you begin when psychological connexion with later conscious states kicks in. Most people would say this is sometime after birth. Some (most notoriously Peter Singer) would say babies are not persons, and can be treated like embryos. Few of us remember anything about our first two years of life (although our mums and dads often tell us about it) so you could say that you begin when the baby that became you was two years old.

If you think you are essentially a disembodied soul (the wording of your question suggests otherwise), then you begin when God makes the soul. Some think God has a supply of souls ready to allocate at fertilization, or more plausibly after 2 weeks of embryonic life (or else identical twins would share the same soul), or creates a soul at the time of allocation. So you can either exist before birth (a la Platonic view of our knowledge as recollection) or begin at the same point as described for the animalism view, depending on your religious view.

Human identity is hugely important from the legal, medical and ethical viewpoints, so be aware that discussants often confuse or equivocate between the different views of identity. For example antiabortionists are inclined to say embryos are persons, as such deserving of protection, but in view of the implausibility of a fertilized egg or blastocyst having a mental life, may switch (if religious) to the view that they have souls, or (if not) to the view that human life is sacred, ignoring the carnage of natural abortion and the legal ending of brain-dead human life.

Further confusion is added by those arguing that whilst an embryo is not a person (I agree), it is a potential person (I agree that it is a potential person, potential miscarriage, potential stillbirth and potential anencephalic birth: what it isn’t is an actual person, although it is an actual human being).

Mendoza asked:

Explain the moral foundation of ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY and how
far you can extend such as to: 1. Human centered 2. Animal right
centered 3. Ecocentered environment.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

In a very fundamental sense, humans take responsibility voluntarily. There is nothing in the world to force us, except that:

(a) in social circumstances immoral behaviour is often punishable,

(b) in the sense of the survival of the species, immoral behaviour to the habitat may end up endangering human life on this planet.

So you could say that self-interest (the desire to avoid punishment, the desire to live rather than die, the desire not to become an extinct species) is the foundation of morals.

This assumes you do not accept the authority of the Bible or religious leaders that some guy up there in heaven wants us to be moral. That’s an entirely different story, although deep down it’s basis is exactly the same.

Accordingly all morals have their foundations in Point 1 of your question: They are human centred. They have (especially in recent times) become ecocentred, but not because we have a responsibility to the planet. The planet doesn’t care a straw. It is self-interest by looking at morals from the survival angle.

Point 2: Animals have no rights. In fact, humans have no rights either. Rights are a social convention – a mutual agreement on the basis of ‘don’t do to me what you would not have me do to you’. You know well that the conception of rights fluctuates widely in different human societies. In a tyranny, for example, you have no rights, in a democracy you have many rights. This is because tyrants usually want to dictate what’s good or bad in their state, and expect everyone to obey rather than agree. In a democracy people expect that their freedom is respected by others, and they are willing to respect the same freedom enjoyed by others.

Therefore animals rights are also a convention. Animals lovers do not wish us to treat animals badly, and so they invent the premise that animals surely have some rights, at least to live in peace. Well, that’s no different from the argument that humans have rights. Either there is majority agreement in a society (and then this can be turned into a law to protect animals) or there is not. In the end, however, the basis is once again survival. If we eradicate too many species of wildlife, we are doing ourselves a disfavour. Not only because we should love or at least respect life in any form, but also because we depend to a very large extent on the habits of other creatures from which we benefit (especially those which clean up all the filth we create).

In sum: ‘Rights’ are an abstract concept. Some philosophers have written fat books about them, and they’re not wrong, nor have they wasted their time. Because once such a convention exists, and we must all live by them, it is useful to analyse exactly what is involved in maintaining a moral basis in society. But the agreement and/or convention has to be in place first, and it must specify how far these moral obligations extend. Only then can we argue whether or not humans have moral responsibilities – to each other, to animals and the ecosystem.

Joshua asked

Can an argument have all true premises and a true conclusion, yet not be deductively valid?

Answer by Craig Skinner

Yes it can.

Just state some unconnected true statements:

Example 1

P1 Grass is green
P2 Paris is the capital of France
C A poodle is a dog

Ps and C all true, but argument not deductively valid.

If you object that this doesn’t count as an argument because there is no connexion between the Ps or between the Ps and the C, try

Example 2

P1 All atoms are tiny
P2 The smallest particle of helium gas is tiny
C The smallest particle of helium gas is an atom

All true, but not deductively valid. To see this, substitute ‘oxygen’ for ‘helium’ (the smallest part of oxygen gas is a molecule not an atom, so C false) or ‘pollen’ for ‘helium gas’ (the smallest particle of pollen is a grain, C false)

I find a Venn diagram useful here.
Draw a circle (T) to represent tiny things. Draw a smaller circle inside it (P) to represent smallest particles. You have illustrated that some, but not all, tiny things are particles. Now put another, yet smaller, circle (A) inside P to represent atoms, illustrating that some smallest particles are atoms. You can instantly see that all atoms are smallest particles, but that a smallest particle need not be an atom: and that all smallest particles are tiny, but not all tiny things are smallest particles.

As well as arguments that have true premises/conclusion but are invalid, we can have arguments that are valid and have a true conclusion but are unsound because a premise is untrue.

Example:

P1 Craig is a Scot
P2 All Scots are drunks
C Craig is a drunk

Here, P1 can be true, C follows from the Ps (validity), C can be true, but the argument is unsound because P2 is false. So, although the C is true we can’t rely on the argument to establish it. It is an unsound argument.

So, distinguish between validity and soundness.

Validity means that the C follows from the Ps. If the Ps are true, the C is necessarily true. Validity is a purely formal matter. Whether or not the Ps are really true doesn’t come into deciding validity.

Soundness combines validity and truth: the argument is valid, the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Sound arguments are what we want in philosophy and in life.

So, useful to distinguish truth, validity and soundness when you evaluate logical (deductive) arguments.

Finally, not all arguments are deductive. Some are inductive, some abductive. There is much to be said about these, but here I’ll only say that induction and abduction lack the logically watertight character of deduction.

Answer by Shaun Williamson

The answer to your question is yes. Consider this argument.

Premise 1 The earth orbits around the sun
Premise 2 The moon orbits around the earth.
Conclusion Some Birds can fly.

All these things can be accidentally true but that doesn’t make the argument
logically valid.

The definition of a LOGICALLY (or deductively) VALID argument is that it is any argument where IF the premises are true then it is IMPOSSIBLE for the conclusion to be false.

In our world, in the argument given above, the premises and the conclusion are all true but we can easily imagine a world where premise 1 and premise 2 are true but the conclusion is false.

Consider this logically valid argument.

Premise 1 If Frank is a rabbit then Frank wears white gloves.
Premise 2 Frank is a rabbit.
Conclusion Frank wears white gloves.

This argument is logically valid because we cannot imagine a world where
premise 1 and premise 2 are TRUE but the conclusion ‘Frank wears white gloves’ is false.

Marie asked:

I am a high school senior who is considering a major in philosophy in college. Everyone is telling me that this would be a horrible mistake, that I’ll never get a job, that I’ll end up flipping burgers, etc. I would like to know what I should tell people when they ask me what I’m going to do with my degree. What have other philosophy majors gone on to do with their lives?

Answer by Helier Robinson

Quite a few organisations seek employees with college degrees because they want people with the qualities that these degrees prove: intelligence, hard work, independent thinking, and the like. And philosophy degrees count in this. That said, the only work in philosophy is teaching, usually in a university, and getting that is a dodgy business: years of study to a PhD, and no guarantee of a job at the end. However another way of looking at this is that the study of philosophy is a luxury that few people get to enjoy, and if you can afford the luxury, in time and money, go for it. If you find that you are mistaken, you can switch to another subject; or else you can finish up with a fascinating education. I might add that there is an urban legend about people with PhD’s in philosophy driving taxis; if true, all I can say is that if you are going to finish up driving a taxi, then doing it with a PhD is much better that doing it without.

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

It’s funny you should give the example of making burgers, because I remember eating the most wonderful quarter pounder burger with aioli dressing at a local takeaway in Oxford back in 1979, after seeing Christopher Pettit’s film ‘Radio On’ at the Phoenix, Walton Street. Two unforgettable experiences. The proprietor, so I’d been told, had a doctorate in Philosophy. Of course there were a lot of PhDs about in Oxford, and not nearly enough jobs to go round. (Nothing’s changed.) I liked to think that the extra finesse this particular Doctor of Philosophy put into his burger recipes showed a greater intelligence than the average burger flipper, so the philosophical studies were not altogether in vain.