Learn Philosophy

Reader Comments
Back to article

Please bear with me as I say this again: I really like the idea of teaching youngsters to think carefully, but I question the wisdom of engaging young people in open-ended conversations—or any kind of conversations—which purport to help them see that “there are wrong answers but no right answers.” Think about it. There are wrong answers but no right answers. Really? If this claim is wrong, then we shouldn’t believe it (because it’s wrong). If this claim is right, then we also shouldn’t believe it (because there are no right answers). Either way, whether a conversation is open-ended or not, we shouldn’t believe the claim. The claim is false because it self-refutes.
MJL of FL thinks I'm mistaken here, because, according to MJL, the above claim is only about ethics, and thus doesn't include itself in its field of reference, and thus doesn't self-refute. I appreciate MJL's attempt at clarification. I think, however, that MJL is mistaken. It seems to me that the topic of the article has in the last two paragraphs shifted from ethics in particular to philosophy in general, so the claim is not merely about ethics.
But let's suppose, in good Socratic fashion, that I am mistaken and MJL is correct, and let's see what follows logically. In other words, let's concede, for the sake of argument, that the claim—that "there are wrong answers but no right answers"—has to do only with ethical claims, not philosophical claims in general. What follows?
Yes, my self-refutation charge would no longer hold; but now the claim in question would be false not because of self-refutation but because it contradicts what we know to be true morally. Think about it: THERE ARE WRONG ANSWERS (in ethics) BUT NO RIGHT ANSWERS (in ethics). Really? If this claim were true, then we would never be right in saying that the following are actual moral evils: (a) poking pins into a baby's eyes for fun; (b) Josef Fritzl's 24-year imprisonment and ongoing rapes of his daughter in his basement; (c) the Nazi genocide of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals; (d) slavery and human trafficking; (e) dipping wildlife into crude oil only to light the animals on fire to enjoy watching them writhe as they burn alive. Surely, in response to the question—Are the previously described acts truly unethical?—we can answer, rightly, YES! Surely, there are some right answers in ethics, and we know this to be the case.
Please bear with me as I say this again, too: Probably it would be better to engage young people in conversations to help them see that sometimes there are wrong answers (and sometimes only wrong answers) but sometimes there are right answers. Right?
(For further critical thinking about ethics and other philosophical topics, please feel free to read my newspaper column "Apologia," available here: http://apologiabyhendrikvanderbreggen.blogspot.com/search/label/Moral%20relativism .)

Hendrik van der Breggen 6:39PM May 30, 2011

Hendrik,
As the article points out, this is philosophy in the Socratic style. Socrates seems to have had the idea that there are different kinds of knowledge; there's technical knowledge, which can have a truth value determined as being either correct or incorrect, but then there is another kind of knowledge which we can't treat in the same way, but we can often say that we know things that are certainly false (although commonly thought to be true) in regards to their truth value. It turns out this is knowledge that has an ethical temper, which is what this article purports to be about.
I see your point about how the wording of the sentence might be construed as being a contradiction, or at the least, a confusing hermeneutic approach when given in such short terms (as magazine articles are wont to be); on the other hand, her statement has no ethical import and thus isn't subject to itself.
Of course, this all depends on if you believe in such a thing as a correspondence theory of truth; so maybe I am wrong, but as the article is primarily about ethics, I think that maybe this is what that statement is geared towards as well.

MJL of FL 3:38PM May 11, 2011

I really like the idea of teaching youngsters to think carefully. But I question the wisdom of engaging young people in open-ended conversations—or any kind of conversations—which purport to help them see that “there are wrong answers but no right answers.” Think about it. There are wrong answers but no right answers. Really? If this claim is wrong, then we shouldn’t believe it (because it’s wrong). If this claim is right, then we also shouldn’t believe it (because there are no right answers). Either way, whether a conversation is open-ended or not, we shouldn’t believe the claim.
Probably it would be better to engage young people in conversations to help them see that sometimes there are wrong answers (and sometimes only wrong answers) but sometimes there are right answers. Right?
I suspect that the article’s author intended to communicate this, but stumbled (as we all do from time to time). Still, at the risk of sounding like a nit-picker, I think it’s important to ensure clarity on the matter—for the sake of doing good philosophy.

Hendrik van der Breggen 8:43PM March 03, 2010

I love this. I can't believe no one has commented on it. I'm on my way to publishing my first novel, at 56. And if no one wants to buy it, I'll do what my dad did, at 82! Publish it myself.
Also, to suggest a return to Philosophy is so cool. People used to tell me my Philosophy BA and 50 cents would get me a cup of coffee. Well, it also helped me get a Doctorate in Psychology. I love it!
I just wish I would have thought of the Ethics Bowls.
Peace.

Stephen Bailey of AZ 7:22PM October 09, 2009