Are TV shows like "Dr. Phil" or "Jerry Springer", etc. unethical? They do after all exploit people's problems - which should really be discussed in a private setting - to win viewers.

Considering that the primary drive which motivates human behaviour is the ubiquitous drive to reproduce; does happiness to a significant extent depend upon how physically attractive you are? From personal experience it seems like this is indeed the case; but how can we make sense of a world in which the ultimate goal of life (happiness) can be dependent upon such a superficial thing as physical attractiveness?

If you look at the leaves of a tree, they are seemingly randomly arranged. We call it chaos. If you take 100 pennies and arrange them on a flat surface in rows and columns of 10 it's called order. We assign the label chaos to something that occurs naturally and has done so for billions of years. Wouldn't that occurrence be considered order if it had been there a long, long time and the human species and our perceptions are very new in comparison?

If causality is a category of perception as Kant claims why are so many scientists unfazed intellectually by the claim that the Big Bang theory must be an incomplete theory of the universe because the existence of the big bang must have been caused by something prior to the big bang? Personally I side against the scientists in my firm belief that they are defying commonsense in their rejection of the idea that the existence of the universe at the time of the big bang must have had a prior cause. So scientists seem to be rejecting the idea that all occurrences have a cause.

In the context of human rights, there is often talk about so-called "group rights." One such group right is the right to protection against genocide - i.e., against mass murder. Why is a "group right" necessary in such cases? If one accepts the validity of human rights at all, then one almost certainly accepts that all individuals, including all members of a minority group, have the right to life. Why provide an additional group right against genocide? Anyone committing genocide is necessarily and directly infringing upon the right to life. What is gained by formulating extra group rights, besides an additional offence to add to the records of human rights offenders? Other "group rights" are also, or could easily be, covered by individual rights (right to speak the language of one's choice, right to teach one's children the language and culture of one's choice, etc.). Groups, unlike the individuals that make up the group, cannot be said to suffer at all unless their constituent individuals suffer,...

Why do we seem to consider the life of a child more valuable than that of an adult in many situations? When we consider the actual qualities of a child versus that of an adult, we should find that the adult usually wins on any measure of intelligence, capability, moral faculties, and so forth. Is there any ethical reason why we should value the life of a child more than that of an adult? (And just to be extra clear, I can think of a very compelling evolutionary reason why we would value a life of child more, but I'm not looking for an answer from biology or psychology.)

In the Platonic theory of forms, one could imagine a thing participating in many different forms at once. E.g. a large oak tree could participate in tree-ness, oak-tree-ness, bark-ness, leaven-ness, green-ness, brown-ness, large-ness, beauty, etc. One could imagine this could go on ad infinitum (i.e. ever more specification leading to ever more forms). Where is the limit? Or is there no limit? Or in reality, is there really only one form? (The Good?) or to put it another way the Form of "being." It might remind one of Parmenides....it is or it is not.... It seems to me that sensible things either participate in infinite forms or one form. Thoughts? Lou, New York

In everyday common sense, as I've always experienced it, a beaver dam or hut, a bird's nest or a termite mound are generally considered natural, while a human house is considered artificial. Given that beaver dams and beaver huts involve quite a bit of logging and engineering, termite mounds involve digging and using termite-produced chemicals to solidify the material, and bird nests can involve a bit of either technique, what is it that makes a human dwelling, such as a simple log cabin, more "artificial" than these animal-built structures? Where does "natural" end and "artificial" begin?

What can make a philosophical theory "trivial"? Is triviality different from circularity?

What is the accepted date for the setting of Plato's Phaedrus and when was it written?