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Ethics

Your marriage of 10 years is "in a bad place" and you find yourself seeking "compensatory" emotional gratification through extra-marital sex, with a) an acquaintance and then b) briefly, while drunk, with the spouse of your sibling. You realise your mistake. You tell no-one, out of cowardice, but also out of sorrow that it has happened and a knowledge that you love your spouse and you know that your spouse would be devastated by what you have done. You return to the marriage with determination to do better and the behaviour never reoccurs. You devote yourself to loving and caring for your spouse and you both enjoy a deepening relationship in which both parties commit and contribute wholeheartedly. Over the next ten years your spouse becomes progressively more sick and eventually dies without ever discovering your earlier treachery. Almost simultaneously, your sibling's marriage breaks up and the "in-law" behaves shittily, claiming that the break-up of the marriage is entirely the fault of your (innocent...

Some approaches to ethics hold that dishonesty can never be the correct policy, on the ground (very roughly, for brevity here) that such a policy could never be recommended generally (or universally), and/or because dishonesty is in itself and inherently wrong. One can understand some sympathy for such a view but still not be completely convinced by it in some given case. So much as we might well have serious misgivings about dishonesty generally, we should also be extremely wary of the potential for a given case of honesty to amount to unwarranted (and unjustifiable) cruelty. You feel guilty. Well, you should! But you obviously don't need me to tell you that, because you're "in agony" over what you have done and what some of the ramifications are now. But what to do about it? First, the situation with your spouse sounds like, once the wrongdoing ceased, you handled things about as well as you could, given that you changed the relationship in fundamental ways and permanently by your...
Children
Ethics

Should prominent adults (e.g. athletes) be held responsible as role models for young children even if they do not consider or present themselves as such?

I do not think we have a right to expect prominent adults who do not represent themselves as role models to serve in that capacity, or to be held responsible for failing in that capacity, when they do. To take a very controversial recent example, Tiger Woods became a celebrity because he is extraordinarily good at golf. He did allow and encourage that celebrity to be constructed into a highly marketable persona for endorsements and advertisements, and for these, he did take on a certain responsibility to behave in certain ways--or at any rate, not to behave in certain other ways (and I am sure that, as a matter of contract, his responsibilities were stipulated clearly). In failing to live in accordance with these quite legal stipulations, many of those who had contracted his services or used his name have now decided to hold him responsible for some things he has been discovered to have done, and many of his most lucrative contracts have thus been revoked or not renewed. But he is still, we...
Logic

Hello. How do you prove that a certain logical fallacy is a fallacy indeed? Are there "fallacies" about which there is a controversy if it is a fallacy or not? And if in the future, a new fallacy will be discovered, what will be the outline of the proof that one will have to use to prove that it exists? (Just an application of the first question.)

From the point of view of deductive logic, your question is very easily answered: a fallacy is an argument form in which the premises may all be true, but the conclusion false. To prove this, one provides what is called a "counterexample," which is simply a substitution instance that has the above characteristics. For example, take a fairly common deductive fallacy, called affirming the consequent: (1) If p, then q. (2) q. Therefore, (3) p. Here is a counterexample: If 2+2=5 (p), then 5>3 (q) 5>3. Therefore, 2+2=5. In inductive logic, however, fallacies may be controversial, because there can be some unclarity about how to calculate or assign probabilities. An example of this kind of problem (to be brief) can be found in the philosophy of religion. For example, some philosophers have claimed that probability arguments can be used to show that it is more likely than not that our world was created by an intelligent designer, because the likelihood of this world coming to...
Philosophers

Was it Socrates who first said we should all question authority?

Socrates said that "the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being" (Plato, Apology 38a) and plainly applied that maxim in questioning everyone he encountered, often those in positions of authority (see Plato, Apology 21b-e). As far as I know, he never expicitly said "question authority," but as I say, he certainly lived as if this was one of his beliefs.
Philosophy

What does it take to write a scholarly journal article in philosophy? In other fields you have to do research. How does research look like when it comes to philosophy? Do you just have to form an argument in an original way, or come up with an idea or a thougt experiment? How would you suggest someone with no experience start with trying to accomplish this task?

Professional publications in philosophy are always embedded within a context of contemporary controversy in some subfield of philosophy. Except in experimental philosophy, philosophers don't do research by conducting experiments, but we do still have to do research--keeping up with the controversies in our fields, and when we think we have something to add to those controversies, writing our books or articles in such a way as to make clear just how our own view differs from those others have argued. A philosopher simply won't be in a position to publish an article until he or she has already been adequately trained in the broad basics of that area, and then also mastered the contemporary scholarly literature in the specific area of some controversy. One does not just sit down one day, without all this training and mastery of the literature, and decide to write a journal article just because one thinks one has a lovely new idea. Superb undergraduates have sometimes published professionally, and...
Education

Are those Republican criticism against women's studies and black studies programs valid at all? Are there "real" philosophers arguing for their abolition?

"Real" philosophers argue for nearly every position articulable! But I think the kind of issue that is most likely to come up among philosophers and other academics about such programs is more likely to be about resources. Resources for higher education right now are extremely limited, so judgments about the money required for academic positions and operating budgets to sustain such programs must always be made in the context of competing needs and demands from other academic units. Administrators must always confront the very real problem of where the scarce resources will bring the best value to the institution. Moreover, different institutions have very different identities and missions. For an institution mostly dedicated to providing the kinds of education that will advantage their students vocationally, for example, such programs arguably do not fit well into that institution's mission. Where liberal studies is the institutional mission, then such programs would seem to be more viable...
Ethics
Medicine

Should people who engage in health damaging choices like smoking, drinking, drug abuse, overeating be denied organ transplants if their organs where to fail as a result of their actions?

I don't see why. If there is reason to think that these bad choices would continue in such a way as to make the transplant likely to fail, then I can see having them be a factor. But if a patient needs a transplant, then it does not seem to me to be up to the medical profession to deny that transplant on some moralistic ground. Consider two cases, where both need a kidney transplant. In one case (A), we have good reason to believe that the patient needs the transplant because of drug abuse earlier in their lives. (Let's not complicate the issue further by going into how likely we think it is that the person might return to drug abuse if the transplant is done successfully.) In the other case (B), we see no such evidence, but we also do know that B has been guilty several times in his life of physically or sexually abusing members of his family in numerous ways. Imagine finally that only A and B could be plausible candidates for this transplant--the kidney will spoil and be useless to anyone...
Love

Is it better to marry someone you like and get along with or to marry someone with whom you are passionately in love? I am married to a man who I get along with and have some affection for but I do not love him and now realise that I never did. However, I get on fine with him. The fact that I am largely indifferent to him means that I am not really affected by his lack of love, affection or regard for me - nor do I generally want his company. The same applies for him - as he feels more or less similarly for me. We have not discussed our feelings with each other - but it is obvious. We have children and we stick together for their sakes and for convenience. I do not see our marriage breaking up. Some years ago I fell deeply in love with another man. I am still in love with him and I think that he feels the same. However, nothing happened between us nor will it ever happen - nor do I want anything to happen as I know that I would not be able to cope with any form of rejection from him. If I was...

While it is difficult for me to think that your marriage is anything close to an ideal, the very fact that it seems stable--you do not see the marriage as breaking up--is a big plus in its favor. That means that your marriage is working better than all of those that do end up breaking up, and that in itself is a considerable accomplishment. The one worrisome note you really sound in your description is that you have stayed together at least partly for the sake of your children. That motive, plainly, will be removed wwhen they leave the home, leaving only "convenience," as you put it, as a basis for staying together. What you describe is, I think, at the low end of what is true in most marriages that stay together. Many people who regard themselves as madly in love get married, but find that their affections cool over the years. One sometimes hears about people who claim that their relationships remain as "hot" and passionate as ever throughout the years, but I really think this is either...
Knowledge

Is it possible for somebody to know nothing?

It depends on your theory of knowledge, but several theories would support the idea that someone with ordinary cognitive capacities could actually know nothing. Obviously the most important such theory is the one known as "global skepticism," which holds that absolutely everyone knows nothing! We might have justified beliefs, even justified true beliefs, according to this theory, but never justified enough to qualify as knowledge. Other theories might hold that a person would know nothing if that person's cognitive capacities were sufficiently damaged or defective. So a "reliabilist" about knowledge is one who thinks that we have knowledge only if we have a true belief that is generated or sustained in a way that reliably produced true beliefs. This obviously requires that the knower have the capacity to produce true beliefs reliably, so one who did not have such a capacity could never know anything (even if he or she might still sometimes have true beliefs). Obviously, this would have to...
Love

Can love happen more than once in life? Aman India Bangalore

Of course it can! Each loving relationship is different, I think, and so the sense of complete uniqueness in love, though accurate, does not show that there could not be another relationship that qualified as a loving one. Best wishes to you!

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