TSR Philosophy Society (TSR PhilSoc)

Grrr - Nozick.

*raises left-wing hackles*

Reply 662

Calvin

14

Really? The insurance salesman guy? I mean, he's a good start you off philosopher. Good name. Some nice thought experiments. But I don't know I'd ever take him seriously enough to get riled by it. Is he really that provocative?

Reply 663

Calvin

Really? The insurance salesman guy? I mean, he's a good start you off philosopher. Good name. Some nice thought experiments. But I don't know I'd ever take him seriously enough to get riled by it. Is he really that provocative?

Nozick basically founded the philosophical bit of libertarianism. I broadly agree with Rawls on political philosophy - Nozick was opposed to Rawls, and his really famous book, the name of which has momentarily escaped me, was written against 'A Theory of Justice'. And libertarianism really winds me up. Almost as much as objectivism. Don't get me started on Ayn Rand ...

Reply 664

Calvin

14

Anarchy, State and Utopia.
I've never done much political philosophy. I'm not sure why. I guess in my head it is right there next to ethics so I avoid it. Not rigorous enough for me really. But I should read some (as if reading was something I don't have enough of) :rolleyes:

Reply 665

Calvin

Anarchy, State and Utopia.
I've never done much political philosophy. I'm not sure why. I guess in my head it is right there next to ethics so I avoid it. Not rigorous enough for me really. But I should read some (as if reading was something I don't have enough of) :rolleyes:

I was brought up as a political animal. It is kind of like social ethics, but I think its probably more important in practice than ethics is.

Reply 666

coldfish

12

Anarchy, State and Utopia is a wonderful read. It's got these fabulously short little sections, each of which claiming to do massive things and seeming to succeed. "Why Consequentialism is Self-Defeating" in a dozen pages. Good luck, Mr Nozick.

Reply 667

rahmara

hello everybody

havent been on here for a week

did everyone get their results for philopshy?

how did you all do?

Reply 668

rahmara

hello everybody

havent been on here for a week

did everyone get their results for philopshy?

how did you all do?

A on Ethics coursework. Nice to have.

Reply 669

SupaJenn

Hey guys!
In need of sum philosophical essay writing help! I'm taking a module in philosophy and religion, and Ive got to write a 1000 word essay for the end of march. Having never done it before i now realise it was probabaly a bit stupid to embark on this course, but Im here now so never mind. Anyway I only need 40% to pass as this an optional module for me, so doesnt really count too much, i just gota pass.

The question is : State and assess two different objections to the cosmological argument.

I think one of them is Hume? But I'm not really sure. I got a whole bunch of books outa the library, but am a bit baffled by it all.
Also am currently reading Sophies World cuz I was told it mite help me understand it all a bit better. It's a bluddy good book thats for sure, but kinda running out of time now and have 2 other essays that need doin as well.
Sorry for waffling on, I'll leave now, but please, help anyone? I'll be eternally grateful.
Jenn. x x x

Reply 670

Zarathustra

Jenn,

Which criticisms you choose will depend upon which version of the Cosmological Argument you're talking about, or if you're using it as an umbrella term to cover all of them. Presumably you'll set out in your intro whether you're criticising the argument from motion / from efficient cause / from necessity and contingency, or all, and that'll effect your choice of criticisms.

I guess it's main 'big' critics are Hume, Kant, Russell, but there is some interesting stuff from more modern critics (Kenny etc). I have notes on all this, so once you've sorted out the first question I can help a lot more :smile:

Cheers,

ZarathustraX

Reply 671

Try: http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/cosmological.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/ or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument

Be aware that tutors will have seen these sites, so simply stealing text from them is a bad idea. However, they give a good summary of the argument and its major objections.

Reply 672

SupaJenn

Well I'm not really sure bout al that stuff u sed cuz like i sed im not a philosophy student, but I think I'm starting off wif: everything is caused by something so if you follow the regresion back something must've created itself, type thing!
I get that bit! It's the rest that confuses me! I'm a journalism student, so al this thinking is stressful, I can do the whole reporting and finding stories bit, being pro-active and getting out and about, but sitting down and thinking? I get bored too quickly!

Reply 673

SupaJenn

I'm a journalism student

I'd never guess from the sloppy txt spk that you insist on using, despite its being against TSR rules. If you want to be taken seriously in journalism, you need to write properly, not sound like an illiterate 12 year old. *

Now I have that rant off my chest, I'm not sure what to say. I'm certainly not going to write your essay for you. The sites I gave all have reasonably simple explanations of the cosmological argument and the major objections. Let's cut & paste from Wikipedia:

Framed as a formal proof, the first cause argument can be stated as follows:

1.

Everything has a cause(s).

2.

Nothing can cause itself.

3.

Therefore, everything is caused by another thing(s).

4.

A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.

5.

Therefore, there must be a first cause(s), to which premises 1, 2, 3 and/or 4 do not apply.

The cosmological argument can only speculate about the existence of God from claims about the entire universe, unless the "first cause" is taken to mean the same thing as "God." Thus, the argument is based on the claim that God must exist due to the fact that the universe needs a cause. In other words, the existence of the universe requires an explanation, and an active creation of the universe by a being outside of the universe—generally assumed to be God — is that explanation.

One objection is that this does not even attempt to ascribe this First Cause with attributes necessary to call it "God," not even with extremely basic prerequisites such as self-awareness and will (though there are some theists who actually do make such attempts when using this argument [1]). It simply names the First Cause as "God" without proving that it has the characteristics that that name implies. Furthermore, the argument only requires God as a first cause, but fails to prove that God continued to exist after serving that purpose. Some deists agree that the argument proves that God created the universe, but nevertheless maintain that God then ceased to exist, or ceased to interact with the material universe.

Modern quantum physics is sometimes interpreted to deny the validity of the first premise of this argument (that everything has a cause), showing that subatomic particles such as electrons, positrons, and photons, can come into existence, and perish, by virtue of spontaneous energy fluctuations in a vacuum. Though such occurrences do not violate the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy, Bell's theorem shows that these are impossible to predict. Because the "nothingness" from which the subatomic particles arise from a sea of fluctuating vacuum energy, it may be that such processes contradict the assertion that all effects have causes.

Now expand on that a bit (try following the links) and you'll have a decent start.

* Before anyone says I'm being too harsh, I used to be a regular writer for the Financial Times, so I know a little about journalists and their attitudes.

Reply 674

Oooh, a bit in that made me feel like ranting - I get really, really annoyed with science being used in a sloppy way in religious philosophy. We were actually taught in A level philosophy of religion that chaos theory shows that nature is full of things happening at random, and therefore determinism has been refuted. Chaos theory shows nothing of the sort. And I'm sick of hearing that quantum mechanics refutes determinism and makes way for free will. Technically, it does get rid of determinism, but what replaces it is no more accomodating towards libertarian free will than classical determinism.

Reply 675

wanderer

I'm sick of hearing that quantum mechanics refutes determinism and makes way for free will.

It doesn't even get that far. QM depends on which interpretation you prefer. I took a course during the MA on quantum physics and religious belief, and the lecturer there used QM to demonstrate absolute determinism. He does have a PhD in quantum physics (as well as another in theology) so he wasn't speaking from ignorance. He has an interesting thought experiment which refutes Heisenberg and the Copenhagen interpretation.

Reply 676

grumballcake

It doesn't even get that far. QM depends on which interpretation you prefer. I took a course during the MA on quantum physics and religious belief, and the lecturer there used QM to demonstrate absolute determinism. He does have a PhD in quantum physics (as well as another in theology) so he wasn't speaking from ignorance. He has an interesting thought experiment which refutes Heisenberg and the Copenhagen interpretation.

Hmm, I'm sceptical - I'm sure we would have heard about it by now if they'd gone down that easy. Especially if by refuting Heisenberg you mean the uncertainty principle - if that goes down, so does everything else.

Reply 677

wanderer

Especially if by refuting Heisenberg you mean the uncertainty principle - if that goes down, so does everything else.

It's relatively easy to follow. Imagine you have a light-proof box, a lamp and a slit which allows a single photon at a time to escape. Now have a detector 1m away which picks up that photon. You now know both the position of the photon and its direction. It can't have QM tunnelled that far so it must have travelled there in a straight line at the speed of light.

Cheerio Heisenberg. :smile:

Reply 678

grumballcake

It's relatively easy to follow. Imagine you have a light-proof box, a lamp and a slit which allows a single photon at a time to escape. Now have a detector 1m away which picks up that photon. You now know both the position of the photon and its direction. It can't have QM tunnelled that far so it must have travelled there in a straight line at the speed of light.

Cheerio Heisenberg. :smile:

Well done, you just overthrew quantum mechanics. :rolleyes:

If it was that simple, do you think that the vast majority of scientists would have accepted the uncertainty principle as the basis of one of the most fundamental models in current science?

Basically you're talking about a measurement in retrospect. The idea that you can go from gaining accurate information now, and work backwards to get accurate information. Which would be fine, except for one major problem - you can't get accurate information now either. The uncertainty principle applies to your detector just as much as it does to everything else. You will never know with complete accuracy exactly when the photon arrives at the detector, what direction it arrives from, or even where the detector picks it up. I think you might have trouble showing that its the same photon as well, although I'm not sure about the details of that.

Reply 679