TheologyWeb Campus - Philosophy 201 http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/ Things that make you go hmmm... en Wed, 22 May 2013 12:37:18 GMT vBulletin 5 http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/images/misc/rss.png TheologyWeb Campus - Philosophy 201 http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/ Does Honesty require Openness? http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?155931-Does-Honesty-require-Openness&goto=newpost Mon, 20 May 2013 16:32:39 GMT I stumbled across a website called The Honesty Experiment. Basically, a group of people volunteer to be completely honest for 30 days (or attempt to).

It strikes me was weird, though, that many of the stories involve telling everyone exactly what you think. Which sets up the question: Do you have to say everything you think for it to be honest? Is it not possible to not say what you're thinking and still be honest so long as what you do say is truthful?

It's an interesting question that has direct implications on my near-future plans. I welcome your feedback. ]]> Philosophy 201 Carrikature http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?155931-Does-Honesty-require-Openness Rape and Responsibility (18+ Only) http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?155867-Rape-and-Responsibility-(18-Only)&goto=newpost Wed, 15 May 2013 04:26:12 GMT I can't stress how serious this topic is to me. That will become clear shortly. If you can't conduct yourself like an adult, please don't even bother posting. This is not intended as debate so much as open, in-depth discussion of a very important topic. I don't care about past histories between people. If you can't let them drop for this thread, leave. I will ask for this to be strictly enforced. Whatever the level below 'deadly serious' is, that's what this thread is to me. Respect that.



First, let me provide a little background. I am the oldest of three children. I'm the only male. Sister A is ten months younger than me (she was a bit premature). Sister B is eleven months younger than her. I will be 29 in about a month. My family is very fundamentalist, I suppose you could say. Dad was a deacon in a Southern Baptist church for a while when I was very little. My parents don't really do sex education. I had to test out of health class so that I could avoid the sex-ed bit. My mother found out it was possible to past the exam without knowing the reproductive section, so she tore that part out before my sisters could test out of health class. Sex was never discussed. My mother literally referred to bras as "unmentionables" in my presence, and insisted my sisters do the same. That should give you some idea of how things were. Movies and television were closely monitored, too. Any education would be by peers in junior high. This will be important later.

Sister A is the rebellious type. She's always been that way. Her values are her own, and she generally claims to not care who agrees or disagrees. Needless to say, she didn't share my parents' attitude towards sex. Many of the people she hung out with in high school were of questionable promiscuity, but that's neither here nor there. More importantly, Sister A tends to be rather naive. Sister A went to a small college. Her first year there, she attends a party. I'm sure there was alcohol. I have no idea if she was drinking or not. She hooks up with a guy, but she makes it clear that the fun is only supposed to go so far. The guy agrees to the limits beforehand. I don't know the specifics of where that limit was. I've only received partial, sketchy details of what all happened. The short version is that he didn't stop when he said he would. Part of a version I heard was that she didn't know immediately what he was doing at the time. That tells me something general about the nature of the limits, but not much. It pretty much boils down to date rape, though I haven't a clue that drugs were involved. I'm guessing probably not. She would have been 18 (maybe 19?) at the time.

Sister B lives in a decent sized city of approximately 100,000 people. It's the same city where she went to college. It's a pretty big college, with a significant football following. That's Texas for you. At some point in time, Sister B is walking by herself at night to her car. The car is parked by the football stadium. I have no idea if there was a game going or not. You see where this is going. I have no details whatsoever about this incident. I know that she was raped. I don't know if it was one person or many people. I don't know when it happened. I'm not even sure that my parents know. Sister A told me about this event about a week ago, and it was made pretty clear that she wasn't supposed to be telling me. Come to think of it, Sister B might have been in high school when this happened. My memory is a little fuzzy, and I can't really trust Sister A to convey details accurately. Regardless, Sister B is walking to a car by herself at night and gets raped.

That's the background. Now to my questions. Bear with me, as this might get jumbled a bit. I'm prepared to put my foot in it, too. I don't see any other way of hashing this out.

Recently there's been a lot of pushback against blaming women for getting raped. I can appreciate that. Saying that the woman looked too sexy or something is moronic. Rapists are screwed up in the head for any number of reasons. I would never suggest otherwise. I don't think any discussion of responsibility should lessen the culpability of the rapist. I just want to make that clear right now.

Having said that, I'm very conflicted. Our actions have consequences even if we don't always know what those consequences will be. As a general question, how much of the consequences do we take responsibility for? Are we only responsible for the things we knew would happen? I'm not sure it works that way. After all, you're still held accountable for manslaughter if you kill someone while driving under the influence. You couldn't know it would happen, but does that lessen the personal responsibility? I don't see how.

The extrapolation should be pretty obvious. Sister A is very naive. She's uneducated. She assumes that when she says stop the guy will stop. He doesn't. How much of this is her fault? Should she have known better? Remember that we had no sex education. She didn't have any insight into the male mind. She didn't even know what the f-bomb meant until she hit college (according to her). So again, should she have known better? Part of me says that she has *some* responsibility. She put herself into that situation. The consequences weren't foreseen, but that's a part of life. I don't think it's entirely her fault. She didn't ask the guy to do that. I don't think she's absolved, though it sounds like she thinks she should be.

Sister B is much the same. It seems like common sense that a woman should not be walking alone in the middle of the night to her car. If she was younger, say in high school, I can see her not knowing. As a grown woman in today's world it seems obvious. Did she expect those consequences? Obviously not. I certainly don't think she holds the same level of responsibility as Sister A. She presumably still put herself in that situation. How much responsibility does she have?

Sister B doesn't know I know about this. I haven't spoken to her about it. Part of me doesn't want to know more details. Part of me doesn't know what to say about it anyway. What good does knowing more do? I am pretty sure that Sister A blames my parents at least in part. The thinking is easy to see: if parents had taught her properly, she would have known better. I'm unconvinced. She made pretty clear last week that her attitude towards sex before marriage was accepting. She didn't see a problem with it. It's true that a good sex education *might* have included some discussion of the male psyche, but I rather doubt it. It's something to think about when it's my daughter's turn to be educated. I don't think Sister B blames my parents, but I honestly have no idea. I admit that my parents failed us in terms of sex education. I'm not sure it would have mattered in either case.

Lastly, I know that I'm a male. I'm sure I will never know what it's like to be raped. I'm not convinced that rape is somehow less damaging when it happens to men than when it happens to women, but that's neither here nor there. I tend to be pretty logical about things, so sometimes emotions get neglected. I get that. I don't really see what I'm missing, though. If our actions have consequences, are we not responsible for those consequences? I would say yes. I don't want a free will discussion here. Whatever gave rise to the action doesn't seem terribly relevant. So what do you think? Are my parents partly to blame? My sisters? Is it nobody's fault but the rapist? I honestly don't know what to think at this point, and I welcome your input. ]]> Philosophy 201 Carrikature http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?155867-Rape-and-Responsibility-(18-Only) Lives Worth Living, and Otherwise http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?155843-Lives-Worth-Living-and-Otherwise&goto=newpost Mon, 13 May 2013 16:56:55 GMT Open thread for the discussion of whether there can be such a thing as a life not worth living, what that means, how we could tell, and to what extent the law can address such concepts. Open thread for the discussion of whether there can be such a thing as a life not worth living, what that means, how we could tell, and to what extent the law can address such concepts. ]]> Philosophy 201 Seasanctuary http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?155843-Lives-Worth-Living-and-Otherwise Blog post on the Ontological and Cosmological Arguments http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?155714-Blog-post-on-the-Ontological-and-Cosmological-Arguments&goto=newpost Thu, 02 May 2013 00:45:22 GMT I was going through some philosophy blogs and saw an interesting post on one discussing the ontological and cosmological arguments for God's existence. The author of the post posits that the aforementioned arguments do not necessarily prove God's existence and could instead (and more powerfully in his view) prove the existence of "the plurality of all possible worlds". Keep in mind this is a blog post so the arguments aren't going to be top-calibre and ready for publication. Here is his paragraph on the OA:

Quote:
The Ontological Argument purports to establish God's existence by identifying God with the referent of the definite description "the greatest possible being." Since, it is argued, there is an inherent contradiction in the proposition the greatest possible being does not exist, it follows that the greatest possible being does exist. Ergo, God exists.

Okay, but by *definition* the largest class of possible things -- the greatest possible *being* -- is clearly the plurality of all possible worlds. Nothing, by definition, could possibly be greater than that plurality. It is *all* possible beings, and hence, as a mereological sum, the greatest possible being in the singular.
and the CA:

Quote:
Forget the details of the argument and focus just on the conclusion: the idea of a necessary being that explains its own existence as well as the existence of all contingent beings. What kind of thing could *be* a necessary being of this sort? Not God, as I see it -- for God is supposed to be some super-perfect *mind* of some sort, and it's hard if not impossible to see how such a mind could be the explanation of its own existence. Why not *no* Godly mind instead?

But now think of the plurality of all possible worlds, and Lewis' idea that possibility and necessity (all modality) are properly understood in terms of such possibilia. Well, can the plurality of all possible worlds explain their own existence? Yes, if possibility is simply *existence* (as [David] Lewis claims), then the plurality of all possible worlds explains its own existence. All possible worlds exist simply because to *be* possible is to exist. And of course the plurality of all possible worlds explains all contingent things, as the contingent things (e.g. things in our world) are just proper subsets of the necessary being that is the plurality of worlds.
I think the author has an interesting idea on the OA, but I feel he is using a different definition of "greatest possible being" than most theists in the line of Anselm would accept. I'm not sure how well his points would work with a Plantinga-esque modal OA (putting aside the issue of the soundness of it) either, since such an argument could be modified to argue that God is possibly necessary but not the only possibly necessary being (though reconciling this with certain theological viewpoints might be tricky).

On the cosmological argument, I think his argument misses the mark on multiple points. First of all, I would argue that it's not "hard if not impossible to see how such a mind could be the explanation of its own existence" under certain forms of the cosmological argument or by taking into account other premises. But even granting that point, I still don't think the cosmological argument can be used to establish the existence of the plurality of all possible worlds. For one thing I'd dispute the notion that possibility is identical with existence, but even granting that it seems declaring existence as equivalent to possibility is merely pushing the problem back, for that fails to explain why certain things are possible and others are not, or why anything is possible at all. Furthermore, if possibility simply is existence, then it seems the claim that the plurality of all possible worlds can explain its own existence because they exist by virtue of being possible is begging the question, for if possibility just is existence then what he is saying amounts to "the plurality of all possible worlds exists because the plurality of all possible worlds exists", which is a tautology that completely fails to explain their own existence!

What do you guys think about the author's points? ]]> Philosophy 201 GioD http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?155714-Blog-post-on-the-Ontological-and-Cosmological-Arguments JP Moreland Lecture about Moral Values http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?155661-JP-Moreland-Lecture-about-Moral-Values&goto=newpost Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:25:23 GMT I was listening to a lecture on DVD entitled, "Right & Wrong as a Key to the Meaning of the Universe", given by J.P. Moreland.

The following are my notes:

I. Introduction

C.S. Lewis argued that there cannot be objective moral values if there is no God.

There are four features of the moral life that cannot be explained by a naturalistic worldview, but they can be explained by the Christian worldview.

People know that there is objective morality. People who claim that there are no absolute moral values do not really believe that. Find what people care deeply about, relativize it, and watch what happens. J.P. Moreland was witnessing to a person who claimed to be a moral relativist. Moreland said that he and his buddies would go to a lake, put some money in pot, and dump some sulfuric acid into that lake. Each of them would guess how many fish would belly up to the surface. Whoever guessed correctly would get all the money in the pot. The moral relativist was furious; He thought that it was an absolute moral value that no one should dump sulfuric acid into a lake.

What scientific naturalism teaches:

1. Knowledge only comes from the hard sciences like physics and chemistry. If you cannot experience it with either one of your five senses, then you cannot know it.

2. The big bang creation story. Matter rearranges itself. Matter becomes larger chunks of matter.

3. Ultimately, everything is physical. Carl Sagan said, “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”

II. Four features of the moral life that cannot be explained by a naturalistic worldview

A. The sheer existence of the moral law itself.
-The moral law comes to us in the form of commands or imperatives.
-Commands or imperatives come from something that has a will.
-Matter does not have a will. All you get from matter is a rearrangement
of matter or larger pieces of matter.
-Matter cannot issue commands or imperatives. Matter cannot create
moral values.
-There are certain things that have intrinsic worth or value and matter
cannot create intrinsic worth or value.

B. Existence of equal human rights.

-Equal things should be treated equally and unequal things should be treated unequally.

-Human beings have equal rights because they share something in common that is equal.

-What do all people have in common? Some people say that we have equal human rights because we are human. If there is no God, then what is a human being? If there is no God, then a human being is just a kind of an animal. A human being would be only a set of molecules. According to the naturalistic worldview, since human beings are just animals, then they should be treated just like any other animal. Animals and human beings have the same rights.

-Some people say that we have equal human rights because we are persons. What is a person? Naturalists say that a person is someone that has an IQ and self-consciousness. Naturalists think that personhood is a set of degreed properties. If personhood is a set of degreed properties, then a human being can be a person to a greater or lesser degree. Hence, this would lead to the conclusion that some human beings have more human rights than others. There would be no equal human rights.

-According to the Christian worldview, every human being is created in the image of God. Being created in the image of God provides the basis for having equal human rights.

C. Proper function vs. dysfunction

-When people say, “This is functioning correctly”, implies that it is working the way that it ought to function. The notion that something ought to function in a certain way implies that there is a designer who gave it a certain function.

-When naturalists say that something is functioning properly, they mean the following:

1. Something is functioning properly when it falls within the statistical norm.
-If something falls within a statistical norm, then this would be a fact, but this does not mean that it ought to fall within the statistical norm.

2. Something is functioning properly when it enhances survival value.
-The fact that something enhances survival value does not mean that it should enhance survival value.

D. Why should I be moral?

-If you deny God’s existence, you cannot adequately answer this question.

-If there is no God, there are no absolute moral principles to live by and there is no purpose in life. Moral rules are just conventions of society.

-If there is no God, there is nothing wrong with acting only in accordance with your own self-interest. You can do anything you want as long as you don’t get caught. If an atheist denies this, then he is assuming that there are absolute moral values, but his worldview cannot account for absolute moral values.

-Stephen J. Gould was asked the question, “Why are we here?”. He said that we are here because lower forms of life evolved into human beings. His answer to the question had to do with efficient causes, but the question was asking for a final cause. According to the naturalistic worldview, there are no final causes, only efficient causes. Hence, there is no ultimate purpose in life. ]]> Philosophy 201 siliconwafer http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?155661-JP-Moreland-Lecture-about-Moral-Values