Unsolved problems in philosophy
Encyclopedia
This is a list of some of the major unsolved problems in philosophy
. Clearly, unsolved philosophical problems exist in the lay sense (e.g. "What is the meaning of life?
", "Where did we come from?", "What is reality?
", etc.). However, philosophers generally accord serious philosophical problems specific names or questions, which indicate a particular method of attack or line of reasoning. As a result, broad and untenable topics become manageable. It would therefore be beyond the scope of this article to categorize "life" (and similar vagaries) as an unsolved philosophical problem.
, but poorly realized in poetry
, because the essential components of the poetic medium are ill suited to convey the information of a chase scene. This idea may be further refined, and it may be said that the haiku
is a poor vehicle for describing a lover's affection, as opposed to the sonnet. Essentialism is attractive to artists, because it not only delineates the role of art and media, but also prescribes a method for evaluating art (quality correlates to the degree of organic form
). However, considerable criticism has been leveled at essentialism, which has been unable to formally define organic form or for that matter, medium. What, after all, is the medium of poetry? If it is language, how is this distinct from the medium of prose fiction? Is the distinction really a distinction in medium or genre? Questions about organic form, its definition, and its role in art remain controversial. Generally, working artists accept some form of the concept of organic form, whereas philosophers have tended to regard it as vague and irrelevant.
This problem originally arose from the practice rather than theory of art. Marcel Duchamp
, in the 20th century, challenged conventional notions of what "art" is, placing ordinary objects in galleries to prove that the context rather than content of an art piece determines what art is. In music, John Cage
followed up on Duchamp's ideas, asserting that the term "music" applied simply to the sounds heard within a fixed interval of time.
While it is easy to dismiss these assertions, further investigation shows that Duchamp and Cage are not so easily disproved. For example, if a pianist plays a Chopin etude, but his finger slips missing one note, is it still the Chopin etude or a new piece of music entirely? Most people would agree that it is still a Chopin etude (albeit with a missing note), which brings into play the Sorites Paradox
, mentioned below. If one accepts that this is not a fundamentally changed work of music, however, is one implicitly agreeing with Cage that it is merely the duration and context of musical performance, rather than the precise content, which determines what music is? Hence, the question is what the criteria for art objects are and whether these criteria are entirely context-dependent.
Epistemology may also be described as the study of knowledge.
suggests, in his Theaetetus
, Meno, and other dialogues, that "knowledge" may be defined as justified true belief. For over two millennia, this definition of knowledge has been reinforced and accepted by subsequent philosophers, who accepted justifiability, truth, and belief as the necessary criteria for information to earn the special designation of being "knowledge."
In 1963, however, Edmund Gettier
published an article in the periodical Analysis entitled "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", offering instances of justified true belief that do not conform to the generally understood meaning of "knowledge." Gettier's examples hinged on instances of epistemic luck: cases where a person appears to have sound evidence for a proposition, and that proposition is in fact true, but the apparent evidence is not causally related to the proposition's truth.
In response to Gettier's article, numerous philosophers have offered modified criteria for "knowledge." There is no general consensus to adopt any of the modified definitions yet proposed.
to John Locke
in the 17th century: if a man born blind, and able to distinguish by touch between a cube
and a globe
, were made to see, could he now tell by sight which was the cube and which the globe, before he touched them? The problem raises fundamental issues in epistemology and the philosophy of mind, and was widely discussed after Locke included it in the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
A similar problem was also addressed earlier in the 12th century by Ibn Tufail
(Abubacer), in his philosophical novel
, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan
(Philosophus Autodidactus). His version of the problem, however, dealt mainly with colors rather than shapes.
Modern science may now have the tools necessary to test this problem in controlled environments. The resolution of this problem is in some sense provided by the study of human subjects who gain vision after extended congenital blindness. One such subject took approximately a year to recognize most household objects purely by sight. This seems to indicate that this is no longer an unsolved problem in philosophy.
. Nevertheless, the question remains theoretically interesting.
even in fields such as logic and mathematics. According to this argument, the proof of any theory rests either on circular reasoning
, infinite regress, or unproven axioms.
is a product of the mind or an inherent property of objects. While most philosophers will agree that color assignment corresponds to light frequency
, it is not at all clear whether the particular psychological phenomena of color are imposed on these visual signals by the mind, or whether such qualia
are somehow naturally associated with their noumena
. Another way to look at this question is to assume two people ("Fred" and "George" for the sake of convenience) see colors differently. That is, when Fred sees the sky, his mind interprets this light signal as blue. He calls the sky "blue." However, when George sees the sky, his mind assigns green to that light frequency. If Fred were able to step into George's mind, he would be amazed that George saw green skies. However, George has learned to associate the word "blue" with what his mind sees as green, and so he calls the sky "blue", because for him the color green has the name "blue." The question is whether blue must be blue for all people, or whether the perception
of that particular color is assigned by the mind.
This extends to all areas of the physical reality, where the outside world we perceive is merely our representation of whatever is impressed upon our senses. The objects we see around us are in truth wave-emitting ([or] wave-reflecting) 'objects' which our imagination ([or] brain) shows to our conscious self in terms of form and color. What the object you see actually is, we may never know; and if the color and forms experienced are perfectly identical between person to person, may be never known. That people can commune and describe things accurately shows that the order by which 'things' are interpreted and experienced is constant for the individual, and holds the original proportional relationships with all other pieces of the picture. Giving rise to a (potentially) uniquely expressed world, differing in form from person to person, but the forms seen in each varying picture of reality still hold universal relationship to one another; between fluctuating conceptions of form and color, importance of one in relation to another is never contorted. Thus one's idea of reality is fully compatible and comparable to Another's idea of reality- no matter how abstractly different the form and colors appear, true importance lies in the structure of comparison; thing's consistent relationship with all other things- holding the ratios the same, not mattering which specific numbers fill that role of ratio. We can all see things widely different from one another, but the element of universal realness and similarity between our views of reality lies in the backbone of ordering, keeping things universally proportionate, no matter how the forms are expressed. -{forms only having to compare with each other, holding rigidity of ordered structure}-
For instance, a case of circumstantial moral luck: a poor person is born into a poor family, and has no other way to feed himself so he steals his food. Another person, born into a very wealthy family, does very little but has ample food and does not need to steal to get it. Should the poor person be more morally blameworthy than the rich person? After all, it is not his fault that he was born into such circumstances, but a matter of "luck".
A related case is resultant moral luck. For instance, two persons behave in a morally culpable way, such as driving carelessly, but end up producing unequal amounts of harm: one strikes a pedestrian and kills him, while the other does not. That one driver caused a death and the other did not is no part of the drivers' intentional actions; yet most observers would likely ascribe greater blame to the driver who killed. (Compare consequentialism
.)
The fundamental question of moral luck is how our moral responsibility is changed by factors over which we have no control.
when G.E. Moore
presented it to the Moral Science Club at Cambridge. The statement "Albany
is the capital of New York
, but I don't believe it" is not necessarily false, but it seems to be unassertable. The speaker cannot simultaneously assert that Albany is the capital of New York and his disbelief in that statement.
(Moore's explanation of what appears to be a contradiction when we assert that a proposition is true but claim not to believe it draws a distinction between what is asserted and what is implied. To claim that the capital of New York is Albany makes an assertion which is either true or false. Someone making this assertion implies that they believe it. When they go on to assert 'but I don't believe it', they contradict not the original assertion but the original implication. Moore realized, however, that it is the contradiction between the assertion and the implication that gives the expression the appearance of nonsense.)
s, sets, groups
, points
, etc.? Are they real objects or are they simply relationships that necessarily exist in all structures? Although many disparate views exist regarding what a mathematical object is, the discussion may be roughly partitioned into two opposing schools of thought: platonism
, which asserts that mathematical objects are real, and formalism
, which asserts that mathematical objects are merely formal constructions
. This dispute may be better understood when considering specific examples, such as the "continuum hypothesis
". The continuum hypothesis has been proven independent of the ZF axioms of set theory
, so according to that system, the proposition can neither be proven true nor proven false. A formalist would therefore say that the continuum hypothesis is neither true nor false, unless you further refine the context of the question. A platonist, however, would assert that there either does or does not exist a transfinite set with a cardinality less than the continuum but greater than any countable set
. So, regardless of whether it has been proven
unprovable, the platonist would argue that an answer nonetheless does exist.
.
had not invented the modern incandescent light bulb, then someone else would have invented it anyway." People use counterfactuals every day; however, its analysis is not so clear. Swan, after all, did invent the modern incandescent light bulb, so how can the statement be true, if it is impossible to examine its correspondence to reality? (See correspondence theory of truth
.) Similar statements have the form, "If you don't eat your vegetables, then you don't get any pudding." This is another clear if-then statement, which is not verifiable (assuming the addressee did eat his/her vegetables). Two proposed analyses have resulted from this question. First, some philosophers assert that background information is assumed when stating and interpreting counterfactual conditionals. In the case of the Swan statement, certain trends in the history of technology, the utility of artificial light, and the discovery of electricity may all provide evidence for a logically sound argument. However, other philosophers assert that a modal "possible world
" theory offers a more accurate description of counterfactual conditionals. According to this analysis, in the Swan example one would consider the closest possible world to the real world in which Swan did not create the modern incandescent light bulb. When a counterfactual is used as an argument to justify an illegal act, it is known as the 'dirty hands argument.' For example, "if I didn't sell him drugs then someone else would have, and those drugs might not have been cut
or more harmful."
, if-then is defined by material implication, which is not consistent with the common understanding of conditionals. In formal logic, the statement "If today is Saturday, then 1+1=2" is true. However, '1+1=2' is true regardless of the content of the antecedent in the conditional. The statement as a whole must be true, because the one way conditional only refers to a particular case, it says nothing of the truth value of the antecedent. Formal logic has shown itself extremely useful in formalizing argumentation, philosophical reasoning, and mathematics. However, the discrepancy between material implication and the general conception of conditionals is a topic of intense investigation. The two opposed camps are basically these: those who think the problem is an inadequacy in formal logic, and those who think the problem lies in the ambiguity of ordinary language
. A third opinion, championed by H.P. Grice
, asserts that no discrepancy exists at all.
framework, or to disregard dualism
in favour of monism
, or materialism
, which would solve the problem, as it states that the human mind is purely physical. Neurobiology and emergence
have further complicated the problem by allowing the material functions of the mind to be a representation of some further aspect emerging from the mechanistic properties of the brain. The brain essentially shuts down the portion which generates conscious thought during a deep sleep, and reactivates on dreaming or waking; the ability to restore this pattern is still a mystery to science and is a subject of current research.
Neurophilosophy
takes this view which is not universal among neurobiologists.
? What are the necessary components for defining consciousness
? Secondly, how can an outside observer test for these criteria? The "Turing Test
" is often cited as a prototypical test of consciousness, although it is almost universally regarded as insufficient. It involves a series of questions, by which a sentient entity can theoretically provide answers where a machine could not. A well trained machine, however, could theoretically "parrot" its way through the test. This raises the corollary question of whether it is possible to artificially create consciousness
(usually in the context of computer
s or machine
s), and of how to tell a well trained mimic from a sentient entity.
Important thought in this area includes most notably: John Searle
's Chinese Room
, Hubert Dreyfus
' non-cognitivist critique, as well as Hilary Putnam
's work on Functionalism
.
A related field is the ethics of artificial intelligence
, which addresses such problems as the existence of moral personhood of AIs, the possibility of moral obligations to AIs (for instance, the right of a possibly sentient computer system to not be turned off), and the question of making AIs that behave ethically towards humans and others.
is the question of what consciousness is and why we have consciousness as opposed to being philosophical zombies. The adjective "hard" is to contrast with the "easy" consciousness problem, which seeks to explain the mechanism of consciousness ("why" versus "how," or final cause versus efficient cause). The hard problem of consciousness is questioning whether all beings undergo an experience of consciousness rather than questioning the neurological makeup of beings.
to refer to ‘the problem of finding a criterion which would enable us to distinguish between the empirical sciences on the one hand, and mathematics and logic as well as "metaphysical" systems on the other’. Popper attributes this problem to Kant
. Although Popper mentions mathematics and logic, other writers focus on distinguishing science
from metaphysics
and pseudo-science.
Some, including Popper, raise the problem because of an intellectual desire to clarify this distinction. Logical positivists had in addition the aim of intellectual social enlightenment, which contradicted non-scientific disciplines such as metaphysics and theology that purport to describe the physical world. These non-scientific traditional disciplines overwhelmingly argue from the central foundation of belief in supernatural phenomena that could be neither proven nor dis-proven through objective observation due to the extreme variance between the individual cultures from which these beliefs emerge. An example of the positivists cultural influence can be observed through the separate church and state
policy instituted as a foundational tenet of the United States of America. This policy aims to preserve the freedom of intellectual self-determination toward dogmatic beliefs by prohibiting religious instruction from the public school systems to avoid state sponsored bias toward any of the innumerable faith traditions practiced within US society. However, science is taught to students to explain the physical world in objective terms, often lacking the completeness offered by supernatural forces of the faith based traditions. So the practical question becomes what to count as science when deductive reasoning leads one to conclusions that are as of yet unverifiable but accepted on faith in science? This ought not to be confused with debate as to the validity of 'creation science' given its dependence on belief in supernatural phenomena, revealing this modern term to be part and parcel to the non-scientific disciples of metaphysics and theology, though a monist interpretation of reality finds them reconcilable.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. Clearly, unsolved philosophical problems exist in the lay sense (e.g. "What is the meaning of life?
Meaning of life
The meaning of life constitutes a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of life or existence in general. This concept can be expressed through a variety of related questions, such as "Why are we here?", "What is life all about?", and "What is the meaning of it all?" It has...
", "Where did we come from?", "What is reality?
Reality
In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...
", etc.). However, philosophers generally accord serious philosophical problems specific names or questions, which indicate a particular method of attack or line of reasoning. As a result, broad and untenable topics become manageable. It would therefore be beyond the scope of this article to categorize "life" (and similar vagaries) as an unsolved philosophical problem.
Essentialism
In art, essentialism is the idea that each medium has its own particular strengths and weaknesses, contingent on its mode of communication. A chase scene, for example, may be appropriate for motion picturesFilm
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, but poorly realized in poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, because the essential components of the poetic medium are ill suited to convey the information of a chase scene. This idea may be further refined, and it may be said that the haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
is a poor vehicle for describing a lover's affection, as opposed to the sonnet. Essentialism is attractive to artists, because it not only delineates the role of art and media, but also prescribes a method for evaluating art (quality correlates to the degree of organic form
Organic form
A work is said to possess an organic form if the work's structure has originated from the materials and subjects used by the author, "as a plant". It stands in contrast to a mechanical form, a work which has been produced in accordance with artificial rules...
). However, considerable criticism has been leveled at essentialism, which has been unable to formally define organic form or for that matter, medium. What, after all, is the medium of poetry? If it is language, how is this distinct from the medium of prose fiction? Is the distinction really a distinction in medium or genre? Questions about organic form, its definition, and its role in art remain controversial. Generally, working artists accept some form of the concept of organic form, whereas philosophers have tended to regard it as vague and irrelevant.
Art objects
This problem originally arose from the practice rather than theory of art. Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, in the 20th century, challenged conventional notions of what "art" is, placing ordinary objects in galleries to prove that the context rather than content of an art piece determines what art is. In music, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
followed up on Duchamp's ideas, asserting that the term "music" applied simply to the sounds heard within a fixed interval of time.
While it is easy to dismiss these assertions, further investigation shows that Duchamp and Cage are not so easily disproved. For example, if a pianist plays a Chopin etude, but his finger slips missing one note, is it still the Chopin etude or a new piece of music entirely? Most people would agree that it is still a Chopin etude (albeit with a missing note), which brings into play the Sorites Paradox
Sorites paradox
The sorites paradox is a paradox that arises from vague predicates. The paradox of the heap is an example of this paradox which arises when one considers a heap of sand, from which grains are individually removed...
, mentioned below. If one accepts that this is not a fundamentally changed work of music, however, is one implicitly agreeing with Cage that it is merely the duration and context of musical performance, rather than the precise content, which determines what music is? Hence, the question is what the criteria for art objects are and whether these criteria are entirely context-dependent.
Epistemology
Epistemological problems are concerned with the nature, scope and limitations of knowledge.Epistemology may also be described as the study of knowledge.
Gettier problem
PlatoPlato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
suggests, in his Theaetetus
Theaetetus (dialogue)
The Theaetetus is one of Plato's dialogues concerning the nature of knowledge. The framing of the dialogue begins when Euclides tells his friend Terpsion that he had written a book many years ago based on what Socrates had told him of a conversation he'd had with Theaetetus when Theaetetus was...
, Meno, and other dialogues, that "knowledge" may be defined as justified true belief. For over two millennia, this definition of knowledge has been reinforced and accepted by subsequent philosophers, who accepted justifiability, truth, and belief as the necessary criteria for information to earn the special designation of being "knowledge."
In 1963, however, Edmund Gettier
Edmund Gettier
Edmund L. Gettier III is an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; he owes his reputation to a single three-page paper published in 1963 called "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?"Gettier was educated at Cornell University, where his mentors...
published an article in the periodical Analysis entitled "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", offering instances of justified true belief that do not conform to the generally understood meaning of "knowledge." Gettier's examples hinged on instances of epistemic luck: cases where a person appears to have sound evidence for a proposition, and that proposition is in fact true, but the apparent evidence is not causally related to the proposition's truth.
In response to Gettier's article, numerous philosophers have offered modified criteria for "knowledge." There is no general consensus to adopt any of the modified definitions yet proposed.
Molyneux problem
The Molyneux problem dates back to the following question posed by William MolyneuxWilliam Molyneux
William Molyneux FRS was an Irish natural philosopher and writer on politics.He was born in Dublin to Samuel Molyneux , lawyer and landowner , and his wife, Anne, née Dowdall. The second of five children, William Molyneux came from a relatively prosperous Anglican background...
to John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
in the 17th century: if a man born blind, and able to distinguish by touch between a cube
Cube
In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. The cube can also be called a regular hexahedron and is one of the five Platonic solids. It is a special kind of square prism, of rectangular parallelepiped and...
and a globe
Globe
A globe is a three-dimensional scale model of Earth or other spheroid celestial body such as a planet, star, or moon...
, were made to see, could he now tell by sight which was the cube and which the globe, before he touched them? The problem raises fundamental issues in epistemology and the philosophy of mind, and was widely discussed after Locke included it in the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
A similar problem was also addressed earlier in the 12th century by Ibn Tufail
Ibn Tufail
Ibn Tufail was an Andalusian Muslim polymath: an Arabic writer, novelist, Islamic philosopher, Islamic theologian, physician, vizier,...
(Abubacer), in his philosophical novel
Philosophical novel
Philosophical fiction refers to works of fiction in which a significant proportion of the work is devoted to a discussion of the sort of questions normally addressed in discursive philosophy. These might include the function and role of society, the purpose of life, ethics or morals, the role of...
, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan
Hayy ibn Yaqdhan
Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān is an Arabic philosophical novel and allegorical tale written by Ibn Tufail in the early 12th century.- Translations :* from Wikisource* English translations of Hayy bin Yaqzan...
(Philosophus Autodidactus). His version of the problem, however, dealt mainly with colors rather than shapes.
Modern science may now have the tools necessary to test this problem in controlled environments. The resolution of this problem is in some sense provided by the study of human subjects who gain vision after extended congenital blindness. One such subject took approximately a year to recognize most household objects purely by sight. This seems to indicate that this is no longer an unsolved problem in philosophy.
Infinite Regression
Overlooking for a moment the complications posed by Gettier problems, philosophy has essentially continued to operate on the principle that knowledge is justified true belief. The obvious question that this definition entails is how one can know whether one's justification is sound. One must therefore provide a justification for the justification. That justification itself requires justification, and the questioning continues interminably. The conclusion is that no one can truly have knowledge of anything, since it is, due to this infinite regression, impossible to satisfy the justification element. In practice, this has caused little concern to philosophers, since the line between a reasonably exhaustive investigation and superfluous investigation is usually clear, while others argue for coherentist systems and others still view an infinite regress as unproblematic due to recent work by Peter D. KleinPeter D. Klein
Peter David Klein is a professor of philosophy and chair of the department at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Peter Klein received a BA at Earlham College, and a PhD from Yale University...
. Nevertheless, the question remains theoretically interesting.
Münchhausen Trilemma
The Münchhausen Trilemma, also called Agrippa's Trilemma, purports that it is impossible to prove any certain truthTruth
Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
even in fields such as logic and mathematics. According to this argument, the proof of any theory rests either on circular reasoning
Circular reasoning
Circular reasoning, or in other words, paradoxical thinking, is a type of formal logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises. For example:"Only an untrustworthy person would run for office...
, infinite regress, or unproven axioms.
Qualia
The question hinges on whether colorColor
Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
is a product of the mind or an inherent property of objects. While most philosophers will agree that color assignment corresponds to light frequency
Frequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...
, it is not at all clear whether the particular psychological phenomena of color are imposed on these visual signals by the mind, or whether such qualia
Qualia
Qualia , singular "quale" , from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the...
are somehow naturally associated with their noumena
Noumenon
The noumenon is a posited object or event that is known without the use of the senses.The term is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to "phenomenon", which refers to anything that appears to, or is an object of, the senses...
. Another way to look at this question is to assume two people ("Fred" and "George" for the sake of convenience) see colors differently. That is, when Fred sees the sky, his mind interprets this light signal as blue. He calls the sky "blue." However, when George sees the sky, his mind assigns green to that light frequency. If Fred were able to step into George's mind, he would be amazed that George saw green skies. However, George has learned to associate the word "blue" with what his mind sees as green, and so he calls the sky "blue", because for him the color green has the name "blue." The question is whether blue must be blue for all people, or whether the perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
of that particular color is assigned by the mind.
This extends to all areas of the physical reality, where the outside world we perceive is merely our representation of whatever is impressed upon our senses. The objects we see around us are in truth wave-emitting ([or] wave-reflecting) 'objects' which our imagination ([or] brain) shows to our conscious self in terms of form and color. What the object you see actually is, we may never know; and if the color and forms experienced are perfectly identical between person to person, may be never known. That people can commune and describe things accurately shows that the order by which 'things' are interpreted and experienced is constant for the individual, and holds the original proportional relationships with all other pieces of the picture. Giving rise to a (potentially) uniquely expressed world, differing in form from person to person, but the forms seen in each varying picture of reality still hold universal relationship to one another; between fluctuating conceptions of form and color, importance of one in relation to another is never contorted. Thus one's idea of reality is fully compatible and comparable to Another's idea of reality- no matter how abstractly different the form and colors appear, true importance lies in the structure of comparison; thing's consistent relationship with all other things- holding the ratios the same, not mattering which specific numbers fill that role of ratio. We can all see things widely different from one another, but the element of universal realness and similarity between our views of reality lies in the backbone of ordering, keeping things universally proportionate, no matter how the forms are expressed. -{forms only having to compare with each other, holding rigidity of ordered structure}-
Moral luck
The problem of moral luck is that some people are born into, live within, and experience circumstances that seem to change their moral culpability when all other factors remain the same.For instance, a case of circumstantial moral luck: a poor person is born into a poor family, and has no other way to feed himself so he steals his food. Another person, born into a very wealthy family, does very little but has ample food and does not need to steal to get it. Should the poor person be more morally blameworthy than the rich person? After all, it is not his fault that he was born into such circumstances, but a matter of "luck".
A related case is resultant moral luck. For instance, two persons behave in a morally culpable way, such as driving carelessly, but end up producing unequal amounts of harm: one strikes a pedestrian and kills him, while the other does not. That one driver caused a death and the other did not is no part of the drivers' intentional actions; yet most observers would likely ascribe greater blame to the driver who killed. (Compare consequentialism
Consequentialism
Consequentialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness of that conduct...
.)
The fundamental question of moral luck is how our moral responsibility is changed by factors over which we have no control.
Moore's disbelief
Although this problem has not received much attention, it intrigued Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
when G.E. Moore
George Edward Moore
George Edward Moore OM, was an English philosopher. He was, with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of the analytic tradition in philosophy...
presented it to the Moral Science Club at Cambridge. The statement "Albany
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
is the capital of New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, but I don't believe it" is not necessarily false, but it seems to be unassertable. The speaker cannot simultaneously assert that Albany is the capital of New York and his disbelief in that statement.
(Moore's explanation of what appears to be a contradiction when we assert that a proposition is true but claim not to believe it draws a distinction between what is asserted and what is implied. To claim that the capital of New York is Albany makes an assertion which is either true or false. Someone making this assertion implies that they believe it. When they go on to assert 'but I don't believe it', they contradict not the original assertion but the original implication. Moore realized, however, that it is the contradiction between the assertion and the implication that gives the expression the appearance of nonsense.)
Mathematical objects
What are numberNumber
A number is a mathematical object used to count and measure. In mathematics, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers....
s, sets, groups
Group (mathematics)
In mathematics, a group is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with an operation that combines any two of its elements to form a third element. To qualify as a group, the set and the operation must satisfy a few conditions called group axioms, namely closure, associativity, identity...
, points
Fixed point (mathematics)
In mathematics, a fixed point of a function is a point that is mapped to itself by the function. A set of fixed points is sometimes called a fixed set...
, etc.? Are they real objects or are they simply relationships that necessarily exist in all structures? Although many disparate views exist regarding what a mathematical object is, the discussion may be roughly partitioned into two opposing schools of thought: platonism
Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it. In a narrower sense the term might indicate the doctrine of Platonic realism...
, which asserts that mathematical objects are real, and formalism
Formalism (mathematics)
In foundations of mathematics, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of logic, formalism is a theory that holds that statements of mathematics and logic can be thought of as statements about the consequences of certain string manipulation rules....
, which asserts that mathematical objects are merely formal constructions
Formal system
In formal logic, a formal system consists of a formal language and a set of inference rules, used to derive an expression from one or more other premises that are antecedently supposed or derived . The axioms and rules may be called a deductive apparatus...
. This dispute may be better understood when considering specific examples, such as the "continuum hypothesis
Continuum hypothesis
In mathematics, the continuum hypothesis is a hypothesis, advanced by Georg Cantor in 1874, about the possible sizes of infinite sets. It states:Establishing the truth or falsehood of the continuum hypothesis is the first of Hilbert's 23 problems presented in the year 1900...
". The continuum hypothesis has been proven independent of the ZF axioms of set theory
Set theory
Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects. Although any type of object can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics...
, so according to that system, the proposition can neither be proven true nor proven false. A formalist would therefore say that the continuum hypothesis is neither true nor false, unless you further refine the context of the question. A platonist, however, would assert that there either does or does not exist a transfinite set with a cardinality less than the continuum but greater than any countable set
Countable set
In mathematics, a countable set is a set with the same cardinality as some subset of the set of natural numbers. A set that is not countable is called uncountable. The term was originated by Georg Cantor...
. So, regardless of whether it has been proven
Mathematical proof
In mathematics, a proof is a convincing demonstration that some mathematical statement is necessarily true. Proofs are obtained from deductive reasoning, rather than from inductive or empirical arguments. That is, a proof must demonstrate that a statement is true in all cases, without a single...
unprovable, the platonist would argue that an answer nonetheless does exist.
Sorites paradox
Otherwise known as the "heap paradox", the question regards how one defines a "thing." Is a bale of hay still a bale of hay if you remove one straw? If so, is it still a bale of hay if you remove another straw? If you continue this way, you will eventually deplete the entire bale of hay, and the question is: at what point is it no longer a bale of hay? While this may initially seem like a superficial problem, it penetrates to fundamental issues regarding how we define objects. This is similar to Theseus' paradox and the Continuum fallacyContinuum fallacy
The continuum fallacy is an informal logical fallacy closely related to the sorites paradox, or paradox of the heap...
.
Counterfactuals
A counterfactual is a statement that follows this form: "If Joseph SwanJoseph Swan
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan was a British physicist and chemist, most famous for the invention of the incandescent light bulb for which he received the first patent in 1878...
had not invented the modern incandescent light bulb, then someone else would have invented it anyway." People use counterfactuals every day; however, its analysis is not so clear. Swan, after all, did invent the modern incandescent light bulb, so how can the statement be true, if it is impossible to examine its correspondence to reality? (See correspondence theory of truth
Correspondence theory of truth
The correspondence theory of truth states that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world, and whether it accurately describes that world...
.) Similar statements have the form, "If you don't eat your vegetables, then you don't get any pudding." This is another clear if-then statement, which is not verifiable (assuming the addressee did eat his/her vegetables). Two proposed analyses have resulted from this question. First, some philosophers assert that background information is assumed when stating and interpreting counterfactual conditionals. In the case of the Swan statement, certain trends in the history of technology, the utility of artificial light, and the discovery of electricity may all provide evidence for a logically sound argument. However, other philosophers assert that a modal "possible world
Possible world
In philosophy and logic, the concept of a possible world is used to express modal claims. The concept of possible worlds is common in contemporary philosophical discourse and has also been disputed.- Possibility, necessity, and contingency :...
" theory offers a more accurate description of counterfactual conditionals. According to this analysis, in the Swan example one would consider the closest possible world to the real world in which Swan did not create the modern incandescent light bulb. When a counterfactual is used as an argument to justify an illegal act, it is known as the 'dirty hands argument.' For example, "if I didn't sell him drugs then someone else would have, and those drugs might not have been cut
Cutting agent
A cutting agent is a chemical used to "cut" illicit drugs with something less expensive than the drug itself.-Overview:The classical model of drug cutting A cutting agent is a chemical used to "cut" (dilute) illicit drugs with something less expensive than the drug itself.-Overview:The classical...
or more harmful."
Material implication
People have a pretty clear idea what if-then means. However, in formal logicFormal logic
Classical or traditional system of determining the validity or invalidity of a conclusion deduced from two or more statements...
, if-then is defined by material implication, which is not consistent with the common understanding of conditionals. In formal logic, the statement "If today is Saturday, then 1+1=2" is true. However, '1+1=2' is true regardless of the content of the antecedent in the conditional. The statement as a whole must be true, because the one way conditional only refers to a particular case, it says nothing of the truth value of the antecedent. Formal logic has shown itself extremely useful in formalizing argumentation, philosophical reasoning, and mathematics. However, the discrepancy between material implication and the general conception of conditionals is a topic of intense investigation. The two opposed camps are basically these: those who think the problem is an inadequacy in formal logic, and those who think the problem lies in the ambiguity of ordinary language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
. A third opinion, championed by H.P. Grice
Paul Grice
Herbert Paul Grice , usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H...
, asserts that no discrepancy exists at all.
Mind-body problem
The mind-body problem is the problem of determining the relationship between the human body and the human mind. Philosophical positions on this question are generally predicated on either a reduction of one to the other, or a belief in the discrete coexistence of both. This problem is usually exemplified by Descartes, who championed a dualistic picture wherein the conceivability of one's self at one's own funeral seems to imply that the self and the body are separate and distinct. The problem therein is to establish how the mind and body communicate in a dualisticDualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
framework, or to disregard dualism
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
in favour of monism
Monism
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...
, or materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
, which would solve the problem, as it states that the human mind is purely physical. Neurobiology and emergence
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems....
have further complicated the problem by allowing the material functions of the mind to be a representation of some further aspect emerging from the mechanistic properties of the brain. The brain essentially shuts down the portion which generates conscious thought during a deep sleep, and reactivates on dreaming or waking; the ability to restore this pattern is still a mystery to science and is a subject of current research.
Neurophilosophy
Neurophilosophy
Neurophilosophy or philosophy of neuroscience is the interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy. Work in this field is often separated into two distinct methods. The first method attempts to solve problems in philosophy of mind with empirical information from the neurosciences...
takes this view which is not universal among neurobiologists.
Cognition and AI
This problem actually defines a field, however its pursuits are specific and easily stated. Firstly, what are the criteria for intelligenceIntelligence
Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....
? What are the necessary components for defining consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
? Secondly, how can an outside observer test for these criteria? The "Turing Test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...
" is often cited as a prototypical test of consciousness, although it is almost universally regarded as insufficient. It involves a series of questions, by which a sentient entity can theoretically provide answers where a machine could not. A well trained machine, however, could theoretically "parrot" its way through the test. This raises the corollary question of whether it is possible to artificially create consciousness
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
(usually in the context of computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
s or machine
Machine
A machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...
s), and of how to tell a well trained mimic from a sentient entity.
Important thought in this area includes most notably: John Searle
John Searle
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
's Chinese Room
Chinese room
The Chinese room is a thought experiment by John Searle, which first appeared in his paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 1980...
, Hubert Dreyfus
Hubert Dreyfus
Hubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley....
' non-cognitivist critique, as well as Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...
's work on Functionalism
Functionalism (philosophy of mind)
Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...
.
A related field is the ethics of artificial intelligence
Ethics of artificial intelligence
The ethics of artificial intelligence is the part of the ethics of technology specific to robots and other artificially intelligent beings. It is typically divided into roboethics, a concern with the moral behavior of humans as they design, construct, use and treat artificially intelligent beings,...
, which addresses such problems as the existence of moral personhood of AIs, the possibility of moral obligations to AIs (for instance, the right of a possibly sentient computer system to not be turned off), and the question of making AIs that behave ethically towards humans and others.
Hard problem of consciousness
The hard problem of consciousnessHard problem of consciousness
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. David Chalmers contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc...
is the question of what consciousness is and why we have consciousness as opposed to being philosophical zombies. The adjective "hard" is to contrast with the "easy" consciousness problem, which seeks to explain the mechanism of consciousness ("why" versus "how," or final cause versus efficient cause). The hard problem of consciousness is questioning whether all beings undergo an experience of consciousness rather than questioning the neurological makeup of beings.
Problem of induction
Intuitively, it seems to be the case that we know certain things with absolute, complete, utter, unshakable certainty. For example, if you travel to the Arctic and touch an iceberg, you know that it would feel cold. These things that we know from experience are known through induction. The problem of induction in short; (1) any inductive statement (like the sun will rise tomorrow) can only be deductively shown if one assumes that nature is uniform. (2) the only way to show that nature is uniform is by using induction. Thus induction cannot be justified deductively.Demarcation problem
‘The problem of demarcation’ is an expression introduced by Karl PopperKarl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
to refer to ‘the problem of finding a criterion which would enable us to distinguish between the empirical sciences on the one hand, and mathematics and logic as well as "metaphysical" systems on the other’. Popper attributes this problem to Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
. Although Popper mentions mathematics and logic, other writers focus on distinguishing science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
from metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
and pseudo-science.
Some, including Popper, raise the problem because of an intellectual desire to clarify this distinction. Logical positivists had in addition the aim of intellectual social enlightenment, which contradicted non-scientific disciplines such as metaphysics and theology that purport to describe the physical world. These non-scientific traditional disciplines overwhelmingly argue from the central foundation of belief in supernatural phenomena that could be neither proven nor dis-proven through objective observation due to the extreme variance between the individual cultures from which these beliefs emerge. An example of the positivists cultural influence can be observed through the separate church and state
Separation of church and state
The concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....
policy instituted as a foundational tenet of the United States of America. This policy aims to preserve the freedom of intellectual self-determination toward dogmatic beliefs by prohibiting religious instruction from the public school systems to avoid state sponsored bias toward any of the innumerable faith traditions practiced within US society. However, science is taught to students to explain the physical world in objective terms, often lacking the completeness offered by supernatural forces of the faith based traditions. So the practical question becomes what to count as science when deductive reasoning leads one to conclusions that are as of yet unverifiable but accepted on faith in science? This ought not to be confused with debate as to the validity of 'creation science' given its dependence on belief in supernatural phenomena, revealing this modern term to be part and parcel to the non-scientific disciples of metaphysics and theology, though a monist interpretation of reality finds them reconcilable.