Sanneetha asked:

is the glass half empty or half full? my friend and I have been arguing over this for quite sometime. I
say that it depends on if the person is drinking or pouring but she says that its half empty because
you are always drinking. We are only 14 and it seems as if this question will bug us for the rest of our
lives and a whole lot of life left to be worrying about a question like this so please help us!

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It's interesting to me that this is so important to you. Why do you think that it is? Consider that we
might say "empty" and "full" merely refer to static states. "Empty" then would be just a sort of hole
sitting there, and "full" would be a container with no space unfilled. So the dynamic considerations of
whether you're drinking or pouring, that is, what direction the volume is changing, would be irrelevant.
Why not use this idea? On the other hand, it's certainly fascinating and original to bring up the
dynamics of the container's filling (or emptying) as part of the criteria for it being empty or full... but
why is it anything beyondinteresting; why is it important? What furtherimplications does it have? If
there are none, then it is notimportant.

Think about it. Here you are, feelingthat this is an important issue. Where does this feeling come
from? Why does it matter? Consider this: right now, at your age, you are beginning, just beginning, to
understand the world around you. What that means is that you are forming categories, classifying
things, putting them into relationships.And this issue, "full", "empty", etc., is important to youbecause
it involves your structuring of the world. But, you know, there are otherways to structure the world,
and in addition, as you get older, what happens is that, if you keep learning, the categories and
relationships you are now forming, that seem so important (indeed that areimportant, right now),
become more flexible, more vague, more fuzzy. And they shouldbecome that way. After all, those
relationships that you are struggling with are merely a human way of looking at objects... and why,
ultimately, is that important? Howis that important? Shouldn't they be able to be made more flexible?

And so you might reflect that the generalprocess you're going through will ultimately need to be
questioned, quite thoroughly... and so will your conclusions, however clear they might seem at this
point. And if you do notdo that, you will become stuck in a rigid net of categories, as so many adults
you see around you, who have not continued learning and changing, are.

Steven Ravett Brown

I agree with you, Sanneetha, that the glass can be regarded as half-empty or as half-full, depending
on how you look at it. This is what you're trying to get at when you say 'it depends on if the person is
drinking or pouring'. A lot of issues in philosophy depend heavily on how you look at them!

It all depends on the attitude of mind we bring to the situation; the glass contains the same amount of
liquid when half-full as it does when half-empty! I don't agree with your friend's argument that 'you are
always drinking'. As you say, sometimes one is pouring, and there must come a point, during the
filling of a glass, when it is already half-full, but you have not yet finished filling it!

Whether you regard the proverbial glass as half-full or half-empty is really a metaphor for your attitude
to life. Do you see events in terms of how good they are (how full), or how bad they are (how empty)?
It is the contrast between pessimism and optimism. Have a look at your views on other subjects. Do
you tend to hold a balanced, realistic view, with your friend being more pessimistic? I'd be intrigued to
know.

Katharine Hunt

Two answers to this age old question:

1) According to physics, the glass is completely full, half with water and half with air. (Half full to the
human eye, half empty from the perspective of air content.)

2) According to a linguistic analysis, the glass is half full, because the word 'full' and the word 'glass'
are related in the same contextual meaning. A glass is primarily filled and not emptied, so if it
contains water, it should be considered upmost filled with something and not emptied of something. In
other words, the glass is a container and not a "emptier". The same conclusion comes from a
pragmatic and even finalistic approach — the glass should be looked as it stands, and not as a part of
a process of emptying or filling.

As our reality comes foremost from perception, and we make our own reality happen, in a matter of
speaking, I would consider the glass half full. Mainly because we relate to the world by the way we
construct linguistic manners of understanding it. As a glass is a functional object, meant to be filled, if
it contains liquid, it should be analysed in a perspective of being x amount filled.

Nuno Hipolito