Format
Question
One question: Explain (can have an accepted answer) or Open (several argued answers)
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Was Kant an idealist in the same sense as Berkeley?
I mostly read medieval philosophy, so the eighteenth century is a foreign country to me. A friend in my book club said, rather confidently, that Kant is "just Berkeley with extra steps": both say the world is in the mind, Kant just…
Started by Siobhán Keane4 replies -
Restoring a panel painting: is the painting one thing with its wood and pigment, or two?
I restore Renaissance panel paintings in Florence. This month I have a fifteenth-century Madonna on a poplar panel that split badly. The question in the workshop is whether to replace one of the boards, which would mean transferring a strip of the…
Started by Chiara Bellandi5 replies -
When I look at a plate, am I seeing the plate or a picture my brain makes of it?
I draw picture books for a living, and the first thing every drawing teacher tells you is "draw what you see, not what you know". The standard exercise is a dinner plate on a table. You know it is round. But if…
Started by Rin Matsuda4 replies -
When sovereignty belongs to God, are rulers more limited or less?
Hebrew and Arabic, the two languages I work between, carry traditions that both, at various points, said that sovereignty ultimately belongs to God. I've noticed that the same premise has been used to reach opposite conclusions. In 1 Samuel 8 the people…
Started by Tal Rosen5 replies -
What was Hasdai Crescas’s case that an actual infinite is possible?
I translate between Hebrew and Arabic, mostly contracts. A client recently asked me to look at some passages from Crescas's Or Hashem (Light of the Lord) and I have been reading around them ever since, including Harry Wolfson's old study of Crescas's…
Started by Tal Rosen5 replies -
My son’s course says ‘don’t judge other cultures’. Is that a rule for studying or a rule for living?
This week my son sent me something on cultural relativism from his anthropology course, and we argued on the phone for an hour. His course says that to understand a people you must not judge their customs by your own standards, and…
Started by Akosua Mensah5 replies -
Why does asking “how do you know?” three times end every argument in our house?
My younger one is seven and has discovered the most powerful question in the world. I say the shop closes at nine. "How do you know?" Because it says so on the door. "How do you know the door is right?" Because…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
When I play a Bach suite from memory, is that the same “memory” philosophers argue about?
I play cello in a chamber ensemble and teach children. This spring I memorised the third Bach suite for a recital, and something happened on stage that I keep thinking about. Halfway through the Bourrée my mind went blank. I could not…
Started by Moon Ha-eun4 replies -
Can you get a proverb wrong, or only use it in a new way?
My son sent me an essay that quotes a proverb I have known all my life: Obi nkyerɛ abɔfra Nyame, "No one shows a child God". His essay reads it as saying children should be left alone to find religion for themselves.…
Started by Akosua Mensah4 replies -
I’m a scientific realist and, after twenty-two years in the army, a political realist. Is that inconsistent?
I retired from the army after twenty-two years, the last stretch on the DMZ. On a leadership course we read the classic realist authors on international politics: states pursue power and security, and moral principles do not govern what they do to…
Started by Choi Byeong-hun5 replies -
What is hermeneutical injustice, and how is it different from simply not being believed?
I work as an attendant on the maternity ward of a district hospital. In my work I see women not being believed all the time. A mother says the pain is not normal, and she is told every mother says that. Later…
Started by Farhana Akter6 replies -
Why did Hobbes think sovereignty could not be divided?
I have no formal background in politics, so this is train reading. I've been going through a history of the English Civil War and then dipped into Leviathan, and I'm puzzled. Everything I learned at school says separation of powers is obviously…
Started by Siobhán Keane4 replies -
Why do scholars keep saying “duty” is a bad translation of dharma?
I am translating some Malayalam devotional poems into English, and I've hit a word I can't carry across. The word dharma comes up constantly, and every English version I look at uses “duty” or “righteousness”. Then a lecturer in a comparative philosophy…
Started by Kavya Menon5 replies -
Is my red your red? Where does the inverted spectrum come from?
Is the red I see the red my sister sees? I have wondered since childhood. When I was eight I asked my mother and she said, "Of course, it's red." That was not an answer. Now I learn that this has a…
Started by Kavya Menon5 replies -
My son asked whether race is real. How can ‘race isn’t biological’ and ‘racism is real’ both be true?
My children ask the questions that keep me reading. Last week my nine-year-old came home from school in Penang, where his classmates are Malay, Chinese, Indian and mixed, and asked me if race is real. His teacher had said scientists have shown…
Started by Thamarai Raman5 replies -
Is Aristotle’s “final cause” an explanation, or just a story about purpose?
When I first read Aristotle's four causes I recognised my trade immediately. The material cause of a door is the cedar. The formal cause is the pattern, the geometry my father taught me. The efficient cause is my hands and my tools.…
Started by Hicham Ouazzani4 replies -
Where do Ubuntu and Confucian role ethics fit, if they are neither utilitarian, Kantian nor virtue ethics?
I teach capoeira Angola in Salvador, and I am new to academic ethics. In a free course online, the lecturer said there are three main moral theories: consequences, duties and virtues. Then, in a footnote, she said Ubuntu and Confucian ethics “don't…
Started by Jorge Bonfim4 replies -
Can someone walk me through the Frege–Geach problem without the jargon?
A friend recommended an introduction to ethics and I got stuck on one page for most of a week. The book explained emotivism, the view that “stealing is wrong” is not a statement of fact but an expression of disapproval, a bit…
Started by Siobhán Keane4 replies -
My daughter asked what mosquitoes are for. Is there an honest answer?
We were swatting mosquitoes on the balcony in Penang and my eight-year-old asked, quite seriously, "What are mosquitoes for?" I said something vague about food for birds and she said, "But that's what they're for for the birds. What are they for…
Started by Thamarai Raman3 replies -
My debaters keep talking past each other on gender. Are they even answering the same question?
Last season a practice round with my debate team on a gender-related resolution went off the rails, not because the students were rude (they weren't) but because after forty minutes nobody had engaged anybody. One side kept saying the category is grounded…
Started by Sam Ellery4 replies -
What do fa, shu and shi mean in Han Feizi?
Zhuangzi sat unread on my father's shelf for most of my life. Next to him was a battered copy of Han Feizi, which I've now started on as well. I'm not a scholar, so please be patient with me. I keep meeting…
Started by Liu Mingqiao4 replies -
If the One cannot be described, how did Plotinus manage to write so much about it?
Visitors to my workshop often tell me that this or that painting is "Neoplatonic", and I have learned to be wary of the word, because art historians argue fiercely about how much philosophy the painters actually knew. So I decided to go…
Started by Chiara Bellandi6 replies -
What is pragma-dialectics, and what makes a “critical discussion” different from ordinary arguing?
In a moot court workshop a visiting lecturer kept referring to "pragma-dialectics" and "the rules for a critical discussion", as though everyone knew what they were. I nodded and didn't. From what I've gathered, it comes from Frans van Eemeren and Rob…
Started by Deepa Kartha4 replies -
My daughter asked why Plato wanted to ban stories. What exactly did he ban?
I read to my children every night, a mix of the Panchatantra, Tamil folk tales and whatever they bring home from the library. My eight-year-old saw a book on my shelf and asked what it was about. I said, a little carelessly,…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
How much of just war theory is really in Augustine?
Every introduction I read says that Augustine founded the Christian theory of just war. So I went looking for the treatise. I have read a fair amount of The City of God for other reasons and could not find one. What I…
Started by Siobhán Keane4 replies -
What are the ‘four principles’ of medical ethics, and what do you do when they conflict?
A drug rep who also teaches a short course mentioned "the four principles" as if everyone knew them, and I nodded and then looked them up: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. I understand each one on its own. My problem is a…
Started by Hetal Shah3 replies -
Is Wiredu’s consensus democracy what Habermas’s discourse principle looks like in a council?
This term I have been reading Wiredu's essays on consensus alongside Habermas with a few older students, and they keep asking a question I want to put to a wider group. Wiredu argued that traditional Ashanti politics, at least at the level…
Started by Kwame Asante5 replies -
Does a Carmelite’s prayer of union and a Zen kenshō report the same experience?
Between sittings this winter, out of curiosity, I read Teresa of Ávila's Interior Castle, which she wrote in 1577. I expected it to be completely foreign. Parts of it were. Other parts, especially her descriptions of the faculties going quiet, felt uncomfortably…
Started by Aiko Tanabe6 replies -
My model was right for the wrong reason. Which answer to Gettier explains why that matters?
Last quarter one of our credit models flagged a small trader as high risk. She did default. But when we looked at the case, the default came from a long hospital stay, and the features the model had leaned on, irregular airtime…
Started by Wanjiru Njenga5 replies -
When someone dies, whose loss is grief about: theirs or ours?
My father died in February. In Addis Ababa people come to the house for days, the lekso, and sit with you, and much of what is said is about him: how young he was, what he would have seen. Thomas Nagel's account…
Started by Tsion Bekele5 replies