Ok,this may sound like a stupid question but I'm just worried about my marks. So,next year I'll be in High School and it will be my first year studying philosophy. All my friends say: " Oh,philosophy it's SO hard!" or "If you don't work a lot you will get negative marks.." and etc,.. I'm just starting to be worried about it. I think it's normal that someone that goes to high school worry about new subjects,difficulty levels,.. But I'm just too worried! I consider myself an inteligent person but I'm afraid of failling Philosophy and it ruins my marks! I think I may be a bit "dumb" or immature to understand all that "complicated thoughts" .Although I have no idea what I'm going to learn lots of people say I need to have a great reasoning and know how to express what I'm thinking. And I think that's the big problem because I think I've got a good reasoning and I'm good at writing (I'm good at English,Portuguese,..) but I'm just bad when I wan't to make another person understand what I'm thinking :S Do...

Many people do find philosophy quite difficult, but most people find that doing philosophy at least at some level is profoundly natural and fundamentally human. Aristotle said "philosophy begins in wonder." I think that's right. So my advice to you would be to allow your "wonder" not to be stunted by the artificial limitations of worries about grades. If you do start doing badly, have a chat with the teacher to see what you can do to improve. But here is something you probably already know: You do better at things when you find a way to enjoy them. This can be hard, yes; but it can also be great fun and very interesting...actually wonderful . So try to enjoy it, rather than fretting about grades!

Is there anything right about this characterization of a philosophical problem: a person torn because she doesn't know what to do about her marriage would not be a philosophical problem in the sense that no philosopher or no moral theory could tell the person what to do, in the sense of giving her the one correct moral answer; but asking whether the personal has any reality, whether we can really speak of a person making a responsible moral decision at all, that would be something philosophers would try to prove against skeptical challenges. Is something like that what philosophy is about?

The latter sort of question certainly is philosophical, but there is also such a thing as applied philosophy, and in particular, normative theory, which do attempt to provide grounds for specific kinds of decision-making. I do think that normative theories could at least provide reasonable grounds for making one decision or another about one's marriage, depending upon the circumstances of that marriage. For example, it seems to me that (other things equal) most normative theories would counsel abandoning an abusive marriage, especially where reasonable efforts to end the abuse (via counselling, say) have failed or have been rejected.

When it becomes painfully obvious that an adult child is embarrassed by her working class roots should she be confronted by the parent? Or is this a right any child has to recognise or reject their background regardless of how feeling are going to get hurt?

As someone inclined to virtue theory, I am not really very sensitivee to sorting out claims of "rights." Is it a "natural right" to reject one's background? Weird question! Instead, let's ask whether it is a good thing to reject one's background, just because it is working class. If being from (or in) the working class is not a bad thing, then rejecting anyone (especially one's own family members) for being in or from that class seems like it is a bad thing. Rejecting one's own background sounds on the face of it to be a kind of self-rejection--can't say I find that something I wwould generally recommend. Of course, some backgrounds do deserve to be rejected--those involving abuse or violence, for example. But just because a family is working class? I don't really see that as a good ground for rejecting one's own past and family! I suspect there may be other factors at work here--some a bit more complicated. "Working class" may also be a kind of code for a set of values that one...

What are we doing when we censor expletives? Even when a person's speech has been censored (on the TV airing of an R-rated film, say), it's often perfectly clear exactly what he is saying or intends to convey. In this sense the content and meaning of the speaker's explicit speech is completely intact--so what exactly is being censored?

As you say, even those of us not trained in reading lips can often make out what is being said. So all that is censored is the actual sound of the word(s) being spoken. Don't ask me why people find this comforting or morally improving. In my view, most allegedly bad language is simply in bad taste. Etiquette is not the same as morality, no matter how vigilantly it is someetimes enforced. Of course, not all bad language is simply bad taste--hate speech actually is immoral, I think. And I also would allow that the border between hate speech and other "bad" language (e.g. certain obscenities) can be somewhat blurry. So *+#!~+%$* that!

Why does it always seem that inner beauty, or beauty in personality and character is more often believed to be more beautiful than just outer beauty? As such, you will hear people saying, "I'd rather have an ugly wife with a beautiful soul than a gorgeous woman with an ugly soul?" Should this kind of attitude towards beauty be followed?

It doesn't look that way to me! OK, seriously, then... I think we are doing just a little bit of apples and oranges here. I would certainly rather spend the rest of my life with someone who was decent and kind and patient and nururing and... (we can see where this is going), than someone who was all of the opposites of these, but physically attractive. But I don't think this is correctly depicted as an "attitude towards beauty." Good ethical/moral/social characteristics can make someone attractive in these ways (ethically/morally/socially), but do not make someone attractive in that way (physically). So if we must talk about "inner" and "outer" beauty, then let's be clear that we are talking about two completely distinct qualities or characteristics, and these qualities are not really commensurable--each has its own value and counts as more important in some areas of endeavor. Physical attractiveness has been shown to be a significant benefit in career advancement, social success,...

Is time-wasting immoral? The books I read tell me many times not to waste my life doing nothing, but if I choose to do it by the way, would it be immoral?

Like so many questions in ethics, this one seems to me to depend on which actual ethical theory we apply. If we take a very strict kind of consequentialist theory (according to which the goodness or badness of an action is to be measured by the value of the consequences of that action, "wasting time" will be fairly neutral--not as good as actions that yield good consequences, and not as bad as those that produce bad consequences. On some version of deontological theory, "wasting time" would also be neutral in any case in which no moral duties needed to be satisfied at that time. On the other hand, it does not look like "wasting time" could possibly satisfy Kant's notion that right actions are those we are prepared to universalize for all agents and times--plainly, if everyone "wasted time" all the time, we'd be in pretty bad shape! From a virtue-theoretic point of view, we might ask whether the best sort of person would be one who "wasted time," and the answer would seem to be "no,...

I have been thinking a bit about the so-called Intelligent Design argument for the existence of god and have wondered if the question I raise here is a viable criticism of the argument. I find the argument problematic, in particular, because of the idea or notion of “design” itself. It seems to me that “design” is a construct that human beings employ to explain what we perceive, or maybe infer from what we perceive, in observing the universe. We look at things and perceive order, or some kind of harmony and consistency to them; this is the way our minds happen to work. It is possible, however, that beings elsewhere in the universe observe it and have no conception of “design”, or see no such order or harmony. If design truly is an inference relative to human minds it seems like it would hardly point to the existence of a designer; from the premise that design is a human construct perhaps the most we can infer is that design is not a “feature” that is intrinsic, or built into the structure of the universe...

I don't think you have a valid criticism of intelligent design here. I actually find the very idea of beings who did not see order in the universe as rather more difficult to imagine than you seem to think--after all, it seems to me that they would have to see some degree of such order just to survive. (Imagine not seeing enough order in the universe to support decisions about whether or not certain things you perceive are edible or drinkable). But more than this, I don't see why the relativity of perspecive in your case proves anything. Why do you think it follows that if A (one group of organisms) sees something one way (e.g. as orderly) and B (a different group of organisms) sees it otherwise (not orderly) that this proves the relevant judgment is (only) a subjective one? Some animals (e.g. dogs) are color-blind, but we don't take this to show that colors are purely subjective. Maybe your aliens are "order-blind"! Their loss!

Is it right to kill in self-defense or use any type of violence?

I think there is a difference between saying that something is right to do, and saying that something is morally justified (or justifiable). I think, accordingly, that killing in self-defense should be understood as morally justifiable (and justified in some cases), rather than insisting on saying that it has to be either right or wrong . The same goes for violence--it can be morally justifiable (and justified in some cases). Understanding this, we will not have to think of it as (simply) right or wrong.

Is there a philosophical value placed on the experience of deja vu? Does it work towards one philosophy's standpoint?

I'm not aware of any philosophical uses of this phenomenon. I myself would be inclined to think that unless we can show that these experiences are veridical (in other words, if by some scientific process, we could show that those who experience deja vu actually were "there before"), we should not count them as evidence for anything other than the (obviously true) claim that many human intuitions and experiences can be highly unreliable, and so we should be extremely cautious about which of these we allow to count as evidence for or against anything.

On May 28, 2009, Jennifer Church wrote: "A more abstract reason for disallowing suicide concerns the apparent contradiction in the idea that we can improve a life by ending a life. The suicide's thought that she will be better off dead seems to contradict the fact that, if dead, she will not be anything. Her desire to retain control over her life by ending it in the way she wants to end seems to contradict the fact that there is no control over a life that has ended. There are other ways to express a suicidal intention, though, that do not lead to such contradictions." This has been haunting me since I first read it. As suggested, I am unable to devise a non-contradictory logic of suicide (for argument, base this thought on life being a biomechanical phenomenon, no after-life, and really no proof that anything at all remains in existance if you (the contemplator) are not conscious of it. This has taken on a particular poignancy as a friend has recently killed himself. I see existence continuing...

I hope Jennifer Church will also answer this one. But I don't quite see why the decision to commit suicide must be based upon the fallacy of thinking that one will be better off. The value of eliminating something bad does not have to derive from some (other) benefit achieved in the process. (See step (C) in the argument below.) (A) S's life now involves unbearable and irremediable pain and/or suffering of some other sort. (B) If the life is ended, so will the pain and/or suffering of some other sort. (C) Ending unbearable and irremediable pain and/or suffering of some other sort is at least sometimes a good reason to do something. Hence, (D) There can be a good reason to end a life of unbearable pain and/or suffering of some other sort. I see nothing in this argument that presupposes the fallacy you mention--for example, it is not assumed that by ending the pain and/or suffering of some other sort that the one whose pain or suffering has been ended will be "better off." As...

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