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Philosophy!
| Thu Jun. 18, 2009 10:19 AM PDT
Matt Yglesias translates some questions from Le Bac, France's college admission test/high school leaving exam. These are from the philosophy test:
— Does objectivity in history presuppose the impartiality of the historian?
— Does language betray thought?
— Explicate an excerpt from Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation
— Are there questions that are un-answerable by science?
Matt says the correct answers are "no, no, I don’t know anything about Schopenhauer, and yes." That's surely wrong. The correct answers are no (but it helps); sometimes; I don’t know anything about Schopenhauer; and yes.
That last one is especially strange, isn't it? The answer is obviously yes in a trivial sort of way: science will never determine whether chocolate ice cream tastes better than vanilla, for example. But that's so dumb it makes you wonder if something got lost in translation. So here's the original: "Y a-t-il des questions auxquelles aucune science ne répond?" Anyone care to retranslate?
As for the question getting the most mockery — "Is it absurd to desire the impossible?" — I would use the standard dodge of philosophy students everywhere: please first define "absurd." That should be sufficient to derail the conversation long enough for everyone to get bored of the whole topic.
Relatedly, Dana Goldstein asks, "Could you ever imagine the SAT or ACT asking students to write an essay on such complex, intellectual topics?" No, I couldn't — though I could imagine questions of similar difficulty showing up on an AP philosophy test. If there were an AP philosophy test, that is. Which there isn't. However, I'd be very careful before using this as evidence of the superiority of French education. It's different, surely, but not necessarily better.
Continues Below
Continued From Above
Comments
French translation
Submitted by Jmonkey (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 10:30 AM PDT.
Technically, the question says, "Are there any questions to which no science can respond?" In French, I believe that "science" has a broader meaning than it does in English and can refer generally to areas of study. Mathematics and philosophy, I believe, would both be covered.
Been a long time since I studied French, though. Perhaps others will correct me.
You are correct. This is
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 1:23 PM PDT.
You are correct. This is exactly what it means. And yes, the word science has a broader meaning.
Franch
Submitted by Drew Steen (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 10:31 AM PDT.
The french looks about right to me. What is the point of these questions, though - are they graded as right or wrong, or more like (I think) SAT essay questions to which there is no right answer, but the quality of the reasoning is judged? In the latter case you can ask more or less any question and judge the response usefully.
I agree that its different,
Submitted by Amanda in the South Bay (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 10:36 AM PDT.
I agree that its different, not exactly better.
I don't see poor students, or students in small town high schools, having the ability to take any high school class that even resembles a philosophy class.
Maybe if I had gone to a fancy pants ivy league feeder school, my reaction would be different.
The connotation is more like
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 10:38 AM PDT.
The connotation is more like "Are there questions to which science poses no response?" which is a bit different from questions science can't answer.
Both JMonkey's translation
Submitted by dbeach (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 10:42 AM PDT.
Both JMonkey's translation and the Yglesias version are, I would say, pretty accurate, though to be completely literal: "Are there questions to which no science responds?" No "peut repondre," in other words.
But to counter Kevin Drum, I would say the question of whether chocolate or vanilla ice cream tastes better could be answered scientifically, and very probably has been. You can certainly construct a falsifiable hypothesis and test it. "Is there a God?" Not so much.
translation
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 2:28 PM PDT.
"repond" in this case is used more as in "address" rather than "respond to". I.e., are there questions that cannot be addressed by any of the sciences? And yes, the meaning of sciences is broader here, too.
I'm a liberal-arts major
Submitted by Yellow Dog on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 10:58 AM PDT.
which is perhaps why I assumed that the science question referred to factual science questions, not matters of individual taste.
So, while there may be questions of factual science that that cannot answer today, there are no questions of factual science that science is not capable of answering.
The answers are:
not if you count Doris Kearns Goodwin as a historian
yes, obviously
Schopen who?
no
French Education
Submitted by Thomas (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 11:00 AM PDT.
French education in high school is definitely superior to anything offered in the U.S. except in elite private schools, but the average French University is so much worse than the average U.S. school that there's practically no comparison. Except for a very few elite institutions, French universities provide a worse education than a U.S. Community College.
"So, while there may be
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 11:04 AM PDT.
"So, while there may be questions of factual science that that cannot answer today, there are no questions of factual science that science is not capable of answering."
Ah, your liberal arts major is showing! There are classes of mathematical/computer science problems known as being NP-incomplete. We basically cannot calculate a correct answer nor prove a correct answer for these problems. And these are not matters of individual ice cream preferences.
"Ah, your liberal arts major
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 1:53 PM PDT.
"Ah, your liberal arts major is showing! There are classes of mathematical/computer science problems known as being NP-incomplete. We basically cannot calculate a correct answer nor prove a correct answer for these problems. And these are not matters of individual ice cream preferences."
Your computability is a bit rusty. ;) NP-complete problems are easy to find a way to solve, it's just that calculating them takes an inconvenient amount of time. The unsolvable problems are the ones like the halting problem, or Godel's incompleteness theorem.
As is the case with most
Submitted by Dave Nelson (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 11:16 AM PDT.
As is the case with most translations, this term is a little loose. Repondre - to respond/answer, has changed meaning over time, and the philosophical question may have more to do with the student's application of the word then the principle of "are there questions science cannot 'answer.'"
Upon the 4th iteration of the Dictionnaire de l'Academic Francaise , (from 1762) Repondre had a precise connotation - the dictionary states, "respond/answer here and now, appropriately, pertinently, precisely."
By the 8th edition (1935), the word had many additional meanings, including to "conform to, be in accordance with, satisfy". These and other new definitions introduced an ambiguity about the absence of a response that had not previously accompanied the earlier, binary definition.
Thus, the original meaning stands, somewhat. Given the overwhelming use of the term as a command to students on exams in a rigidly hierarchical and painfully unforgiving curriculum in France and many francophone countries where the French education system still exists as a colonial legacy, it would be easy to interpret the question as "Are there questions that are un-answerable by science?" However, in the spirit of the French philosophes, who codified notions of existentialism, I like to think that the term is a little less stringent.
individual taste
Submitted by WoofWoof on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 11:16 AM PDT.
But questions of individual taste are, I suggest, answerable by science. At some point that taste translates into some kind of measurable physical reaction, which science can in theory interpret at some point. Kevin's contradiction concerning chocolate vs. vanilla seems relies on the fact that if there are differing reactions to things, you can't really define the reaction as the state of the object. And there's points to make on both sides of that, but they're points about language rather than science.
But that's the idea behind questions such as these. Can you form some basic arguments concerning an abstract concept and coherently put them to paper? I think most Americans would be absolutely stunned by the percentage of students (or adults) in the US that are simply incapable of doing that.
By the way, this particular question has been jumping around various French blogs and discussion boards as well, and one interesting point constantly being raised and debated is whether the definition of science includes philosophy or not. I think in English it clearly doesn't, but in French it's a bit up in the air. That should shed a little light on the shades of meaning between the word in English and in French.
Ah, your liberal arts major
Submitted by Walker (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 11:22 AM PDT.
Ah, your liberal arts major is showing! There are classes of mathematical/computer science problems known as being NP-incomplete. We basically cannot calculate a correct answer nor prove a correct answer for these problems.
You are thinking of the undecidable problems (e.g. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem).
NP-complete problems are decidable, they just take a long time (and even that is debatable, as P = NP is unanswered). Furthermore, by definition, the solution to an NP-complete problem can be verified (e.g. proven correct) very quickly -- it is just hard to find the solution in the first place.
Could these questions be
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 11:24 AM PDT.
Could these questions be asked under Title VII?
How does asking philosophy questions relate at all to the course requirements of a physicist, or literature major?
These questions are racist.
is whether the definition of science includes philosophy or not
Submitted by optical weenie on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 11:27 AM PDT.
Of course it does. You get a PhD in science. Doctor of Philosophy with a specialty in physics, for example.
And now, as a scientist, let me answer the question whether chocolate ice cream tastes better than vanilla ice cream. The answer is neither win, CHUNKY MONKEY
reigns supreme!
Professional French translator weighing in
Submitted by Andrew Levine (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 11:39 AM PDT.
Matt's original translation is the best one proposed so far. I would answer no to it; it is not as obvious as Kevin implies that science can make no judgment as to which ice cream is best (since it all comes down to physiology and brain chemistry in the end), so it does not seem as ridiculous as he would make it out to be.
I'd translate differently...
Submitted by Mike (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 11:45 AM PDT.
Are there questions which are not addressed by any form of science?
I think (tentatively) that
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:00 PM PDT.
I think (tentatively) that there may be Russell's teapot sorts of claims that, if they are sufficiently well constructed, science won't have anything to say about. The existence of undetectable gremlins surrounding us without having the slightest effect on our physical universe, perhaps.
Thomas: That's very odd.
Submitted by Kevin Drum on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:04 PM PDT.
Thomas: That's very odd. It's true, from everything I've read about French universities (aside from the elite grand ecoles), but odd. Why such strong high schools but such lousy universities?
The ice cream question is indeed largely one of language. But that's the point: there are lots of topics that are impossible to precisely state in English (or French or whatever). Those can't really be dealt with by conventional science. As a pure materialist, however, I'd pretty much argue that those are the only kinds of questions that can't, in principle, be answered by science.
Anyway, the answer is chocolate.
The question is, could a
Submitted by rahzayfon (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:18 PM PDT.
The question is, could a wise Latina, with the richness of her experience, answer these questions better than a white male? if not, then the questions need to be rejected as being culturally biased. I must assume that since this is a French college entrance exam, there must be a section on Islam and Arab history too.
Let's make it more complicated. . .
Submitted by Ribbit (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:20 PM PDT.
Student: Are there any questions that science can't answer?
Professor: Of course there are.
Student: Well, if science is so great why can't it answer them?
Professor: Because it doesn't have a mouth!
Let's be really particular and admit that science is not in the business of answering questions. Scientists are. Science, like math, is a tool we use to understand the world around us, but we humans are the ones doing the leg work. Another note is that any question can be anwsered, but whether or not that answer is correct is wholly different. So let's rephrase this question a bit more realistically so it removes the bias against science and scientists. Is there anything that human will never know or can't ever know about the world around them? Of course.
Now let's ask another more realistic question that might get more to the heart of what the original was trying to ask. Is there any natural phenomena to which the scientific method is inapplicable? The answer to this is no. While it is impossible to study everthing in the universe there is nothing in nature that can't, at least in theory, be scutinized by using the scientific method.
Full marks
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:48 PM PDT.
OK, I'd say you would have gotten full marks on this particular question.
Yes and No
Submitted by Margrave (not verified) on Fri Jun. 19, 2009 7:02 AM PDT.
He might get full marks as a student on an entrance exam for good powers of reasoning but he's still wrong.
The question, "Is there anything that humans will never know or can't ever know about the world around them?" is much to all-inclusive to be answered with "Of course" or even with yes. While, at a stretch, we might concede that we "will never" know something, it is too much to say we "can't ever" know it. It is also possible that the purpose of human life is to eventually know everything there is to know about the universe. Given this possibility and the possibility that humans may fulfill this purpose, the answer to the second part of this double-barrelled question has to be "No."
But that is not even the question posed by the exam. The question asked in the posting, "Is there any natural phenomena to which the scientific method is inapplicable?" is as good as any at getting at the heart of the original French question and the answer has to be "Yes". The scientific method exists to give objective results by removing the observer from the evaluation to get consistent, reproducible results. By definition, any natural phenomenon which includes the observer as an integral part, must be subjective and the scientific method cannot apply. The taste of ice cream is a good example. The scientific method can't give any consistent results about what preferences a particular individual might have, especially since that preference might change at any time.
It is coherent to ask "why
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:30 PM PDT.
It is coherent to ask "why do atoms behave the way they do?" and the answer would be in terms of the properties of electron, neutrons, positrons. And it is is coherent to ask "why do electrons, et al. behave the way they do?" and the answer would involve the properties of quarks. So the question of why quarks behave the way the do seems by analogy clearly coherent, and science (logically) might one day answer it. Or it (contingently) might not ever be able to.
Chocolate or Vanilla?
Submitted by kahner on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:32 PM PDT.
The question as asked "whether chocolate ice cream tastes better than vanilla" is nonsensical since the answer is clearly different for different tasters. So yes, science cannot answer a malformed question. By the same token it can't answer "which weights more, a cat or a dog?" since it depends on which cat and which dog. But science could certainly answer the question "whether chocolate ice cream tastes better than vanilla" for a specific taster.
But are there questions unanswerable by science? I would imagine so but its not a trivial question. Off the top of my head, if you believe modern quantum theory will hold up, then you can say that there are certain questions that science cannot answer simultaneously. As for the question of god's existence, its may be impossible to answer if he does not. But if he does, who's to say science can't prove it? Maybe he left a message in our DNA or the value of Pi or something that we'll find by and by.
Nonsensical?
Submitted by apk01004 (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 1:05 PM PDT.
Don't be silly. The question "which tastes better, chocolate ice cream or vanilla" is in no way nonsensical. Go up to a hundred people on the street and ask them that question, and you'll get a hundred people who understand you perfectly, and a hundred reasonable answers (either "chocolate" or "vanilla"). Nobody is going to reply, "huh? I don't understand what you mean," the way they might if you had asked your cat/dog question, or if you had asked "can colorless green ideas sleep furiously?"
Asking "which tastes better etc." might not have a universally agreed upon answer, and it might not even have an objectively true answer, but that doesn't mean it's not a well-formed question. Indeed, if you're going to insist that only questions with an objective, empirically verifiable answer count as *questions*, you've practically begged the question. Every day, in every part of the world, people ask and answer questions of opinion and personal taste. To insist that these questions are meaningless implies that a lot of meaningless conversation is going on without anybody's realizing it.
Holy cow
Submitted by Douglas McClean (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 10:51 PM PDT.
Holy cow! This thread is impressive. The poster above actually used "begged the question correctly" and one even further up gave a coherent explanation of the difference between NP-completeness and undecidability. My faith in the internet is restored!
Ooops
Submitted by Douglas McClean (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 10:51 PM PDT.
Obviously "correctly" belonged outside the quotes. Oops. I ruined the moment.
2 more cents
Submitted by SRW1 (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:40 PM PDT.
Y a-t-il des questions auxquelles aucune science ne répond?"
Literally:
Are there questions to which no form of science provides an answer.
In other words, I'd support what Matt @ 12:48 said.
translation
Submitted by nickt (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:42 PM PDT.
"Are there questions which are not dealt with by any science?" or "Are there questions to which no science provides an answer?"
Yes.
Before going into this I should remind everyone Kevin has written about this before and he still doesn't seem to get it. Heh.
Actually, I think it's a dirty Frenchie trick: in reality the ONE question is this, "Are you a Frenchman or a bastard barbarian?"
The proper answer is to write either a very short sentence which is nasty or a very very long book which is nasty and arrogant.
Any stupid attempt at actually answering the question the way an American would indicates you are, in fact, an American.
Those French, they have a lot of gall using a different word for everything. They outdo the Republicans easily, as the People of Ne.
mu
Value vs. reaction
Submitted by Epiplexed on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:49 PM PDT.
This is quibbling, but .... there's a difference between asking whether a particular individual likes chocolate better than vanilla, and asking whether chocolate is *better* than vanilla. One can claim that the second is a disguised version of the first, of course, but they start out as different claims. And to play with the system a bit, given the right working definitions, both of those are answerable on the basis of empirical evidence (all I have to do is define "better" in such a way that anything that contains theobromine and is not a product of a member of the orchid family is considered higher on the scale than a theobromine-less orchid product. Those shoddy, plebeian, theobromine-less orchidae!). I'd just have no way of making anyone agree with my definitions, and it would be agreement that would drive any sense of my claim "meaning" something. You have to use working definitions to do "science," but there's no empirical way to validate the working definition itself.
On the test itself though -- if I were grading it, I'd have the same reaction one of the previous posters had: I'd be far more interested in how the student argued than what position s/he ended up taking.
The most interesting ones
Submitted by lisainvan (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 12:50 PM PDT.
The most interesting ones are the ones both Kevin and Yglesias left out:
- Expliquer un extrait de De la démocratie en Amérique, d'Alexis de Tocqueville.
Note that French HS students can be expected to have read Democracy in America. Can the same be said of American HS students? I think not. Why? Because a French guy wrote it of course.
- Que gagne-t-on à échanger ?
They are also expected to know something about game theory.
- Le développement technique transforme-t-il les hommes ?
And whether technological development changes humans (note the ambiguity between human life and human nature here).
- Expliquer un extrait de l'Essai sur l'entendement humain, de John Locke.
And to have read, Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. How many readers of this blog have read the founding text of empiricism?
Now to weigh in on the proper way to understand: Y a-t-il des questions auxquelles aucune science ne répond ?
I would read it as this: Are there questions to which a systematic effort to acquire knowledge is unresponsive? (That is, I would read science in its tradtional and historical sense.) It seems being unresponsive is subtley different from not answering, as every press secretary knows.
(I should also add that I am a gainfully employed philosopher and really would love to have a set of students who came to university having begun to think along these lines. The reason why our universities are better, it might be argued, is that our HS education stinks, and University has become remedial HS.)
French education, pluses and minuses
Submitted by david (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 1:06 PM PDT.
In high school the French educational system is much more academically rigorous than that in the US (on average), but that doesn't make it better. For some kinds of students, yes, it is better. But for others, important things are missing. Opportunities for sports, art, music, and drama are more limited. Support for students who could benefit greatly if the schools would show a little bit of flexibility or creativity (eg students with dyslexia or attention-deficit disorder) is much harder to come by than in the US. The French system is quite good if you fit its profile and conform to its expectations, but it is also very rigid and unforgiving.
The higher you rise in the French system, from the creche to the university, the more the system is optimized toward benefiting the elite at the expense of doing right by the average student.
What happened before the big
Submitted by The Bobs (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 1:27 PM PDT.
What happened before the big bang?
The big foreplay. At least
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 3:21 PM PDT.
The big foreplay. At least 15 minutes of it.
What big bang ?
Submitted by daCascadian (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 4:47 PM PDT.
There was no "big bang". There have been lots & lots of small & medium size bangs and they are still occuring. Note gamma ray bursts.
"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept." - Ansel Adams
I believe that the question
Submitted by JS (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 2:15 PM PDT.
I believe that the question is much less fanciful than it appears. It is simply checking to see whether the student knows that an important part of philosophy (metaphysics) deals with questions which are not answerable by science. Wikipedia says "Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science".
The main subject of metaphysics is ontology. Quoting again from Wikipedia: "A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into what types of things there are in the world and what relations these things bear to one another. The metaphysician also attempts to clarify the notions by which people understand the world, including existence, objecthood, property, space, time, causality, and possibility".
So this was supposed to be an easy question, and any student who read the introduction of their introductory text on philosophy should be able to get easy points on it.
And to demonstrate that the
Submitted by JS (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 3:23 PM PDT.
And to demonstrate that the French have nothing on us when it comes to Philosophy exams, here is a question for Kevin from a Sparknotes quiz on Kant (can't insert links in these comments?):
What am I seeing when I see my brown cat?
(A) A pure intuition
(B) An appearance
(C) A thing in itself
(D) A spatial relation between objects
Presumably, it applies to cats of other colors as well.
"But that's the idea behind
Submitted by Socrates (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 4:15 PM PDT.
"But that's the idea behind questions such as these. Can you form some basic arguments concerning an abstract concept and coherently put them to paper? I think most Americans would be absolutely stunned by the percentage of students (or adults) in the US that are simply incapable of doing that."
THIS is exactly true. Absolutely correct.
I'm willing to bet that the answers from a majority of students and adults in America would be a gold mine of comedy.
Just the fact that these questions are asked and expected to be answered is a clear indication of a superior education system.
High school!
"However, I'd be very
Submitted by MaynardHandley on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 4:53 PM PDT.
"However, I'd be very careful before using this as evidence of the superiority of French education. It's different, surely, but not necessarily better.
"
I've no idea what the situation in France is today. However in the 60s in high school French students split into different tracks, basically physical sciences, biological sciences, and humanities. The humanities students were still required to take a small amount of mathematics (2 hrs a week). Yet France called what its students studied in High School calculus, and tested its 2hrs-a-week humanities students on calculus, which some of the at least passed.
How was this done? The students were shown particular canned examples of problems, and told which canned formulas applied to which problems. The examiners diligently made sure that only canned problems of the appropriate sort were placed on the exam. Two hours a week was wasted, no-one learned anything useful, and an outsider could be told about the wonders of French education.
WHENEVER you compare educational systems you have to be really sure you're not being stupid.
Are the populations comparable (AP students vs "normal" students vs all students including "special needs)?
Are the ages comparable (US students tend to graduate at about 18, German at 20 or 21)?
How much nonsense of this sort of "teach to the test" is going on?
Personally I have no problem with teaching to the test IF THE TEST is not designed by morons (or those with an agenda). Unfortunately all too often tests are designed by people who are both morons and have an agenda; and this is the case world-wide, not just in America.
The question is not CAN
Submitted by MaynardHandley on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 5:01 PM PDT.
The question is not CAN language betray thought? (which obviously has the answer yes).
The question is DOES language betray thought?
This is an altogether different issue, not least because if you're thinking without language, how are you thinking?
I'm firmly in the camp that any thinking above the level of "sunlight nice, warm and pretty" equates to language, and so the question makes no sense --- language and thought are the same thing. Obviously you can confuse yourself and others with language, but that is an issue of language-small, language as instantiated in me and you. The DOES question is rather about language-large, the very idea of language, assuming it's working the way it should.
(The difference is like asking "Can you see galaxies with a telescope". Obviously we can give a dozen reasons why the answer might be no --- it's a cloudy night, the telescope is pointed the wrong way, the telescope is broken, the telescope is too small --- but when the issue is one of telescopes-large, the answer is yes.)
Re "These questions are
Submitted by MaynardHandley on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 5:07 PM PDT.
Re "These questions are racist." and "Wise Latinas" --- oh grow up.
Do you seriously think it is WORSE to teach children about world history than to teach them only about US history?
Do you seriously think it is WORSE to teach children about world literature than to teach them only about US literature?
If you're going to waste our time making snarky comments about how terrible it is to have children who are not ignorant provincials, please enlighten us as to exactly why it is in America's interests to have children who know nothing of the history of the Middle East or China or Africa.
Back in the dark ages, I was
Submitted by trotsky (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 5:11 PM PDT.
Back in the dark ages, I was an exchange student in a French Lycee for a year. Those kids worked their tails off. I was in the language stream, and in the 11th grade they took three foreign languages and basic calculus.
That said, when it comes to literature, it's a very regimented curriculum that involves highbrow material but not a lot of it. They might be given 25 (if memory serves) specific short texts over the course of the year, which they'd be required to analyze and explicate. Frankly, most of the philo students would know the specific text and have already had the explication drilled into them. It's not as if they're expected to know all of Schopenhauer, de Toqueville and Locke. (Of course, knowing any would be good for an American student of the age.)
At least, that's how it worked with the Literature section, whose exam is taken at the end of their equivalent of the 11th grade. (Why? Ask a Frenchman.)
FWIW, I recall reading that Japanese high schools are intensely difficult, the colleges are one long drinking party.
> Are there questions to
Submitted by joel hanes (not verified) on Thu Jun. 18, 2009 5:17 PM PDT.
> Are there questions to which no science provides an answer?
Mais oui.
I can think of several famous ones :
What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything ?
Why does the porridge bird lay his egg in the air?
Where was the stooped and mealy-colored old woman I used to call "Poppa" when the merry-go-round broke down?
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
French exam
Submitted by artemesia (not verified) on Fri Jun. 19, 2009 12:43 AM PDT.
There are many questions beyond science -- e.g. 'why is there something rather than nothing at all?' -- is there a god? what existed before the singularity?
Many reputable philosophers
Submitted by Jason L. (not verified) on Fri Jun. 19, 2009 7:53 AM PDT.
Many reputable philosophers would argue that the question, "what existed before the Big Bang?" is meaningless, since "before the Big Bang" has no referent. I think this has something to do with temporality being a feature of the universe which is bounded by the Big Bang (and may be bounded by a Big Crunch--we don't know yet). It would be like asking, "what is the molecular mass of a D major triad?". There are plenty of grammatically sound questions that are meaningless in this way. Some, even--the "theological non-cognitivists"--argue that "Is there a god?" is also such a question.
If anyone fluent in French
Submitted by Jason L. (not verified) on Fri Jun. 19, 2009 7:59 AM PDT.
If anyone fluent in French is still reading this, it seems that "response" and "answer", which have distinct (though overlapping) usages in English, both map onto "réponse" in French. In English, it seems to me an answer to "why should we be ethical?" would be something like, "we should be ethical because. . . .", whereas a response could just say, "I cannot provide an answer.", or it could reject the question as malformed, arguing that why one *should* do something is a question meaningful only within the bounds of an ethical system, and so an extra-ethical "should" is as meaningful as the molecular mass of a D major triad, or it could say "that question isn't worth our time--let's go find a way to grow algae for biodiesel!". Does the essay question call for an *answer*, or just a *response*?
answer vs response
Submitted by SRW1 (not verified) on Fri Jun. 19, 2009 12:47 PM PDT.
Whow, you really took a highflying approach to lead to your question (I just hope I didn't didn't miss something entirely).
The word 'répond' in the question comes from the verb 'répondre' and what is being asked in my understanding is whether there are questions to which no form of science (no scientific discipline) provides an *answer* in the sense of a substantive full or partial explanation.
