Some people believe that removing someone from life support is wrong and is "playing God" because it could most likely cause death. With that line of thinking, shouldn't life support be considered "playing God" since they are sustaining life (especially when there is almost no chance for recovery)?

I recently read a philosophy book and it got me thinking about morality. Is not morality a tool of society to make it run smoother? If an action effects the world in a positive way than the action is good. If it effects in a negative way than it is bad. Now each human beings deepest desire is happiness and thats what each human strives for so I can only assume that society, as a group of humans, must strive for happiness as a whole as well. If this is true than the way society would decide if an action is good or bad would be the overall effect on happiness. So if we take all of this as true than it would seem that the morality of a decision can be measured and morality itself even made into a science. Is this not so?

Alright, I have a small problem. I am applying to graduate schools for my ph.d. My application is OK, decent grades, great writing sample, but there's this one credential that I definitely want to include but can't put on the online application. These days, the applications are all online, and for a lot of schools what you can't upload to the application, you can't mail in either, because they simply won't accept it. I wrote a book on skepticism and philosophical naturalism, and I am getting it published by an academic publisher, and I desperately want to include what I think is an important credential with my application. I don't just want to mention the book on my resume and in my personal statement, I actually want to send it. I can send it to a couple of places, but other places (that I want to get into) don't accept supplemental materials. I'm definitely not bragging or anything, because my book has a lot of flaws, but I think that if the admissions committee sees the actual book that will definitely...

There was a question recently about whether "language" was necessary for "thought" and no one mentioned music! if I "hear" a tune running through my head, is that "language" and is that "thought"?

In a chapter on regression to the mean (Thinking Fast and Slow) Daniel Kahneman resorts to "luck" as an explanation for why one professional golfer shoots a lower score in a round than his/her rivals given that the talent pool is reasonably even. While a "lucky" (or unlucky) bounce can impact one's score, I find luck as a concept a poor explanation for performance. What is the philosophical status of luck, and are there different flavors of luck depending upon the philosophy? Is luck to chance as evidence is to data?

Why did Descartes pick thinking of all possible attributes to logically establish existence? Rocks exist but don't think. What exactly did he have in mind to establish? Was it really existence? Did he have any valid reason to doubt his or our existence? Wouldn't pain be a better criterion? Or movement? Or change? If a non-philosopher raised such a question we would certainly look askance at him and not value his "evidence" either way.

My question concerns epistemology and "post-modernism". Why do philosophical books on epistemology fail to discuss the problem of how one knows what a text means? Postmodernism have raised various questions about the possibility of how one knows what a text means, but the only books on epistemology I've seen talk about things like foundationalism, coherence, Gettier counter-examples, etc, but miss talking about Derrida's deconstructionism, and the positions of people like Fish and Foucault. Furthermore, who are the philosophers working on epistemology "answers" to postmodern thinkers? Is there a must read rejection of postmodern scepticism? I am aware of important critiques amongst Christian thinkers (e.g. D.A. Carson's "The Gagging of God") but I suspect there must be more philosophical responses.

In one of my classes, we had to pick a topic and a side. All through out my research my- for the lack of a better term- opponent kept saying "euthanasia is the work of the devil!" I beg to differ, but I was wondering if my main arguement was valid: there is a creature in the prime of its age, suffering like no other in existence, and they are begging for it to end. Let's say this creature was a dog, we'd do it no problem. But I'd this creature was human, we would avoid euthanasia at all costs (or so it would seem). Why is this? And I don't want the overused "it's the law" stuff. I want the individual's view, not the government's or society's view.

Compatiblism is attractive because it finds room for human freedom in a deterministic world. But objections that compatiblism is evasive or incoherent strike me as persuasive. Setting aside the indeterministic defense of free will, how might the hard determist endorse the claim that humans generally do bear moral responsibility for their actions? Or would the hard determinist have to bite this bullet and conclude that moral responsibility is illusory if we have no free will?

I was wondering if Nagel's argument in "what it is like to be a bat" or the Qualia "Knowledge argument" can be used to prove that certain non physical knowledge can only be attained through experience? For example, could I say that I could read about being an enterpeneur, learn everything there is to know about running my own business but that there is certain knowledge I will only attain when I actually start my business? Thank you Mike