W. O., Russian by disposition, challenges Geary's questions as philosophical. I argue they are: In a message dated 6/28/2009 1:12:06 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: (1) The obvious one, of course: why is there anything rather than nothing? --- This is a question of ontology and axiology (as the theory of value). The question 'why' is usually _philosophical_. The answer to this question is philosophical. Some appeal to 'teleology'. I.e. for a given x (Grice's example, a tiger), the existence of x is justified by the _telos_ of the tiger, to tigerise. Geary seems to be wanting a further justification for _that_ 'telos'. (2) What does "is" mean? That is, is it possible to define existence? I'm thinking no. --- In predicate logic, existence is notably _not_ a predicate, so the issue has been raised that 'to be' indeed has no connotation or denotation. The clue is in the 'predication' relation. P predicated of S, without use of the copula. The various categorisations of 'existence' are interesting per se. Strawson, my favourite metaphysician, considers 'spatio-temporal continuant' as a definition for 'existence', disallowing things like beauty, value, etc. can _exist_. The term is mediaeval and formed out of in- plus sist. 'being' is better and less 'pedantic'. (3) Does anything have meaning in and of itself, that is, outside the meaning we ascribe to it? How could we know that? 'Meaning' is a trick of a notion, in English. Grice distinguished some uses and it usually comes out as a dyadic relationship ('those spots mean measles') or a triadic relation ('those spots mean measles to the doctor'). There are other notions behind 'meaning'. I would think Geary has in mind 'importance', or 'import'. "meaning" itself is related to 'mind', and an anglicism only. (4) Doth God exact day labor, light denied? That is to say, is there any moral concept that is not culturally contingent? How can we know that? Mackie in Inventing right and wrong argues for the negative. Ditto Philippa Foot. Grice, while not engaged in 'cultural studies' argues for some objectivity of value in terms even of a constructed item. (5) Is a thought a thing? Does it have existence? That is to say, is intentionality just another form of masturbation? For phenomenologists or semantic externalists (like Grice in his best days), indeed, thought can be de re, not just about mere thought or flatus vocis. Indeed, a justification along transcendental lines (i.e. to prove the impossibility of otherwise) can be provided that thought _cannot_ be just masturbatory. (6) Where do new ideas come from? Heidegger seems (it seems to me) to suggest they develop out of a misunderstanding of words / concepts -- is creativity then a child of ignorance? Heuristics, or the study of creativity, is a big mystery for philosophers of science. Abduction is to me the ticket. The best argumentation seems to be abductive in nature, rather than deductive (where no new ideas are generated) or inductive (where new ideas are generated, but weakly so). But the example of the centaur is interesting to me in that imagination seems to be overrated. The idea of a centaur is the old idea of horse and man combined. (7) Belief in a god is shared by something like 90% of the human race. Why? And why is it that the extremist religious fanatics are almost always men? (I say it's fear of women -- is religion then but a male bulwark against their own cupidity? Surely it is.) Theology figured large in Greek philosophy and I always wondered. Since the Greek tradition was preserved by the monks, one has to suspect something. Aristotle, 'theos' and theos as 'gnosis gnoseos' comes to mind (God as the thinker of thoughts). In general, vintage Greek philosophy -- Socrates and the Athenian School pre- Aristotle -- does not seem to be God-dominated. Religion is the opium of the people. (8) Was Michael Jackson a real human being or a product of Pixar? I can't decide -- his life was so screwed-up that it had to be fiction, either that or it had to be true. I'm glad I wasn't Michael Jackson. He must have gone thru hell many, many times in his life. But watching him perform was equivalent to what philosophy means to me. See if you can decipher what that means. Let me know. I need to know. The study of specific cultural phenomena can be done philosophically. The analogy of philosophy with a Michael Jackson performance is good, although perhaps a bit superficial. You _enjoy_ a performance, but do you have to _enjoy_ philosophy? Grice said yes, "Philosophy has to be fun"; and convivial at heart. Philosophy is more of a collaborative performance, though -- not just _see_ Michael Jackson. I particularly find a one showman performance of the philosophical kind -- I could name a few -- boring. In lectures, I tend to want to provide a question, but this is tricky, since not all philosophers 'welcome' questions. There is a connotation of 'passion' in what Geary writes, "Watching him perform WAS (is no more?) equivalent to what philosophy means to me." Philosophers can be passionate. I would think Grice got the more passionate when interacting philosophically with Strawson, but there was Oxonian rigueur and inhibition in that, too. "People would complain that our dialogues were so brief to be unintelligible to a third party" -- and this is bad when the third party is the student of their collaborative seminars! Cheers, JL Speranza Buenos Aires, Argentina **************A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! 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