Of course actuality entails possibility too, so another reading would be consistent with there existing an actual orange elephant (in 'this' world, the actual world), whether or not there exists one in any other possible world. The most direct response to your question (I think) might be to say that the original english expression is ambiguous between the two readings you give (and the third I offer). Although I think even a fairly loosely speaking philosopher would be inclined to disambiguate, and use an expression such as this -- "it is possible that this object,t his elephant x, be orange' -- to indicate your second reading, leaving the original English expression to pick out the first reading you give ... ap

Great question -- one that deep thinkers have been worrying about ever since they came up with the idea of God! As the great 4th century Catholic thinker Augustine said, when asked what God was doing all that time before creating the universe he was tempted to answer: preparing Hell for those who ask stupid questions! ... But then he recognized that it was an important question, and gave his own answer to it: since one of the things that God creates is time itself, there IS no time 'before' the creation of the universe -- so you don't have to say what God was doing! ... Now whether this answers your question or not -- i.e. WHY did God create anything -- is not clear, but it may take away a little incentive for raising that question: if God never 'changed' (from not creating to creating), then perhaps we don't need to look for a 'cause' to his changing in the way you framed the question .... hope that's useful! (If you're interested, I present some of the classic answers to this question in my...

Good question, and space is of course too short for any serious arguments about it --BUT one classic line fo thought is that you decide whether entities x/y are identical by comparing their properties, and if they differ in properties they must be NON-identical ... This is the line you hint at in the way you frame your question: since the child and man are so different in their properties, they must be distinct. (Then whether the child must be declared 'dead' I don't address -- but that might just come down to how we choose to stipulate our use of the word 'dead'.) ... But now another line of thought, rather popular in recent years, is that we can think of an entity as having a set of time-indexed properties: i.e. it's not that you 'like toys', but that you 'like toys at time t'. On this view you can say that the child and the man are just two stages or parts of one entity, an entity who 'likes toys at age 5 and does not like toys at 45'. Note, this view need not quite identify 'man' and 'child', but...

Thanks for your comments/questions. It's perhaps hard to judge what is 'central' to a discipline or a pursuit, particularly one with as long and varied a history as the 'phil. of religion' (broadly construed). In fact lots more ink (or parchment space) has been devoted to questions of God's nature (perhaps) than to God's existence (as well as to the relationship between God's nature/existence of course, a la the ontological argument). [My own book, The God Question, presents the rather long history of discussion of different aspects of God's nature ...] And anyway re: the kinds of things you lean to at the end of your comments: it seems to me that many of the traditional ways of attempting to prove God's existence proceed exactly as you recommend, ie by 'considering whether the world can be evaluated in terms of God's existence.' The classical versions of cosmological and teleological arguments, as well as their more contemporary updates, seem to do precisely that [again my book presents a number of...

Rather than answer I will merely invoke a classic Sesame Street episode. Grover is counting oranges: one, two, three etc. And again: one, two, three. Then someone else comes in with a basket of apples and asks him to count these as wells. But he breaks into tears. Alas, he can count oranges but he has never learned to count apples. ap

Suppose we individuate concepts by "reference," so two mental states/thoughts are identical if they are about the same things, otherwise different. If (arguably) one twin's thoughts 'refer to' H2O and the other's 'refer to' XYZ, then they would count as different thoughts or concepts. What you are merely presuming is that the notion of 'concept' should be narrowly individuated (ie defined only in terms of what's 'in the head', so the two twins shoudl have the same concept). But that is the very thing that is explicitly being debated in the classic papers by Putnam, Burge, and all the rest ....! best, ap

No doubt many people feel, particularly around the turns of centuries, that something big/new/different is unfolding. But whether something big etc IS unfolding is probably only something that can be appreciated in retrospect, historically, long after the fact -- by historians, as you suggest. We tend to look back and see major shifts (cultural, intellectual, political etc) with the rise of the renaissance, and then the enlightenment -- whether that is just our tendency to carve things up into neat categories and narratives in retrospect, or in fact reflect "real changes", is a matter for the historians and philosophers of history to debate ... So to respond to your question more directly: first you must specify exactly the ways in whcih you think the 20th century marks a distinct break (cultural, intellectual, political, esp. technological i'm sure). Then you must meanignfully, on the basis of historical research, examine the kinds of distinct breaks earlier periods have displayed -- and then you must...

Not sure this is a standard expression, and so it's not likely to have an particular definition ... However I could imagine using such an expression when I am complimenting a student, with stress on the 'philosophical' part -- it takes a certain kind of philosophical talent to appreciate certain issues, problems, arguments etc., and while the majority of (let's say beginning) students can make 'moves' in a discussion, only a small subset of these can make the 'philosophical' moves -- by raising the kinds of ideas, comments, objections, arguments that someone more trained and experienced in philosophy might make ... Perhaps more specifically, I might be inclined to use that adjective "philosophical" when someone in the course of discussion calls into question what most people would never even think to call into question, some fundamental tenet of common sense perhaps ....

Just a brief answer -- but to me (anyway) the idea of there being a property-dualism, closely related to a concept-dualism, is more plausible (and even more intelligible) than the idea of there being a substance-dualism, as implied by the phrasing of your question. Certain kinds of properties (such as being a sensation, or a thought, or some aspect of consciousness) may well be non-identifiable or non-reducible to standard physical properties (such as being a brain state/event/property) -- but to go from there to the conclusion that "there exist non-physical souls or minds" seems like a very large, hard to defend, and unnecessary leap .... (and then from there to "immortal" -- well that brings in a whole extra set of religion-related issues that probably are best left out of discussions of dualism itself, IMHO) .... As you probably know, the locus classicus of substance dualism is Descartes -- though my own feeling is that the substance part of it is a little overblown by his subsequent interpreters,...

It's a "good" question, suffering only from the very common problem that all its terms are rather vague! ... Surely you want your premises to be more plausible than their negations, but wouldn't it be rather arbitrary to define "good" by that cut-off point? I mean we could ... but what would be the purpose -- everyone already aims to produce "good" arguments, and everyone aims to make their premises as plausible as possible (often by defending them with further arguments) -- should one stop that effort once they pass the 'more plausible than their negation' level? No doubt, too, in different contexts different criteria might apply. What counts as "good" to professional philosophers may well, perhaps ought to be, different from what counts as "good" to (say) undergraduate philosophy majors, and different again from what counts as good in ordinary public discourse, or political discourse ... (In popular politics these days it's rare enough that people even make arguments at all, much less arguments...