Play along...

[tinyjo]

OK, just for fun, here is the essay question I will be answering this afternoon:

‘It is wrong to tell lies, so patients should always be told the truth about their condition.’ Is this a good argument?

I've turned off emailing comments on this and I promise not to look until I've written the essay (1000 words, in case you're interested). What do you think?

Comments

[yalovetz]

Whoah. Okay, so, yeah, there's a philosophy of language question in there for sure if we're talking about "truth".

First off, for this to be a good argument I'd expect it to be both logically sound and based on reasonable assumptions. Whether it's sound or not actually depends on what the assumptions are in this case, I think, and how you define the terms involved.

The first set of assumptions to tackle would be about what it means to lie, what it means to tell the truth, and whether not telling the truth is necessarily the same as lying. This is primarily a philosophy of language question.

The second assumption to tackle would be about whether lying (however it's defined) is wrong. This is primarily an ethical question and can only be dealt with once the philosophy of language question has been answered in some way or other.

I think I would actually be inclined to skip the second (ethical) question altogether and just argue that it's a bad argument because the conclusion doesn't logically follow from the proper definition of "lies" and "truth". But that's because I like arguing philosophy of language and dislike arguing ethics, so....

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't have the training to make the philosophy of language argument properly but I made a really basic dictionary definition stab at it because it was the first thing that leapt out at me too. Given that the course is called Ethics in Real Life though, I decided it was best not to skip over the ethical question entirely :) It just comes out as a bad argument either way, which is good - I think if the two had contradicted, I would have had to do some research on philosophy of language that I really don't have time for, given the submission date is today!