Thursday, October 25, 2007

open question argument

As I sit here, lap top in my face as i research topics for my first essay, I run into an article on Wikipedia on ethics and the "Open question argument." As some may know this argument was presented by the British philosopher G. E. Moore which sets out to illustrate the "indefinably" of the word "good" (which I assume to mean the word cannot be defined). As I read on click on links to help me understand the problem and argument a bit more and all I do is get more confused. A quote from Moore's book later helps me understand it a bit more but still I sit and ponder what exactly he wants to say. This is the quote...

"That "pleased" does not mean "having the sensation of red", or anything else whatever, does not prevent us from understanding what it does mean. It is enough for us to know that "pleased" does mean "having the sensation of pleasure", and though pleasure is absolutely indefinable, though pleasure is pleasure and nothing else whatever, yet we feel no difficulty in saying that we are pleased. The reason is, of course, that when I say "I am pleased", I do not mean that "I" am the same thing as "having pleasure". And similarly no difficulty need be found in my saying that "pleasure is good" and yet not meaning that "pleasure" is the same thing as "good", that pleasure means good, and that good means pleasure. If I were to imagine that when I said "I am pleased", I meant that I was exactly the same thing as "pleased", I should not indeed call that a naturalistic fallacy, although it would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics."
– G. E. Moore, PE § 12.

I can understand Moore argument a bit more than the responses by the naturalist such that, I believe Moore sees "good" as a word that can only be defined with other words such as nouns or verbs but can not actually by simplified because it already at it's simplest point and his reasoning behind it is empirical. There are no actual facts on how to define what is good but naturalist want to say one has to experience what what is good. I ask the question though, which i guess is similar to how i started writing this, how do we know what we are experiencing is "good" if we cannot even define the word?

Thursday, October 4, 2007

facts

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Generally, a fact is something that is the case, something that actually exists, or something that can be verified according to an established standard of evaluation. There is a range of other uses, depending on the context. People are interested in facts because of their relation to truth."

Fact in philosophy

"In philosophy, the concept fact is considered in epistemology and ontology. Questions of objectivity and truth are closely associated with questions of fact. A "fact" can be defined as something which is the case, that is, the state of affairs reported by a true proposition.
Facts may be understood as that which makes a true sentence true. For example, the statement "Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system" is made true by the fact that Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. Facts may also be understood as those things to which a true sentence refers. The statement "Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system" is about the fact that Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system."


With the many definitions through out the many online dictionaries, in the terms of philosophy, I find a fact as something that can be proven true, or is actual, such as " My car has a dent in it" can be true when one observes the actual dent in my car. Now "my car has a BIG dent in it" could be a false statement, depending on the how someone sees it and what they feel is big.