Many philosophers teach courses and/or write textbooks on topics such as reasoning, argumentation, informal logic and critical thinking. And they do so in a world where many people, including politicians, teachers, celebrities, activists, etc., sometimes make specious arguments in a deliberate attempt to persuade listeners about various social and political issues. I am curious to know if there are contemporary philosophers who address the ethics of rational discussion in this context, and if there are philosophers who are concerned about how the "Machiavellian" use of specious arguments may undermine their efforts to teach people to be better reasoners, arguers and critical thinkers.

According to value theory, does manufacturing an object (e.g. a bicycle) always result in more value than performing a service (e.g. giving a haircut) since the object can be used again and again, can be resold, and cannot be destroyed (by law of conservation of mass). Or is this question out of the domain of value theory and limited to philosophy of economics?

Is artistic merit necessary for a work of art to be considered art and how can it be assessed? Is a thirty minute pornographic clip of two people having sex merely bad art or is not art at all? If I consider it better than Schindler's List and Roger Ebert does not, how do we determine which view is "right?"

Is there a name for a logical fallacy where person A criticizes X, and person B fallaciously assumes that because A criticizes X he must therefore subscribe to position Y, the presumed opposition of X, although A does not, in fact, take that position? For example, if A criticizes a Republican policy then B assumes that A must be a Democrat and staunch Obama-supporter,even though A is in fact a Republican himself, or else an Undeclared who regularly criticizes Obama as well.

Is it possible to make scientific observations through armchair philosophy while bypassing the scientific method? For example, a caveman with a powerful brain might have been able to hypothesize and describe in detail what radio is despite not a single radio message even being sent until tens of thousands of years later. Wasn't that caveman right anyway that radio does exist even though he had no way to prove it? Isn't much of metaphysics like this too?

What do people mean when they say (as when cautioning against the validity of a scientific study, for example) that "correlation does not imply causation"? Isn't causation just perfect correlation? And if so, doesn't that mean that the caveat in question does not concern causal claims per se, but inductive claims more generally?

On a Philosophy Bites podcast I heard Daniel Dennett mention the following thought experiment, which he attributed to Galileo. Suppose that heavier objects fall faster than light ones. Take two objects, A and B, where A is lighter than B. Connect A and B with a string and drop them. Since A is lighter than B, A will act as a drag on B, and B will fall more slowly than it would have alone. Yet since A and B are jointly heavier than B, and heavier objects fall faster than light ones, B will fall faster than it would have alone. We have a contradiction. Therefore, heavier objects do not fall faster than light ones. I thought that this was really marvelous and also very surprising. I had been under the impression that one could not arrive at ostensibly substantive empirical claims like the one in question just by considering thought experiments. I was hoping that one of the panelists could explain exactly how Galileo's thought experiment works here.

Descartes's argument: ''I think, therefore, I exist'' is an ontological argument? If Descartes said that It is, if he did (?), where (book) he says it? Thank you very much.

For a while now there have been controversies about professional sports teams that use Native American characters or tribes as mascots (the Washington Redskins, for example). One point often made by people that support keeping the mascots is that there are surveys that indicate that Native Americans themselves don't find the mascots offensive. Ironically, they say, it is only white liberals who seem upset about this alleged racism. Suppose it were really true than a strong majority of Native Americans did not find Native American mascots offensive. Would this show that there is indeed nothing objectionable about them? Or might we dare to say, "Well, Native Americans don't think that they are being insulted or harmed by these mascots, but they're just wrong about that."

Immanuel Kant remarked that the Jews lived in a culture that encouraged selfishness and dishonesty in business dealings. More recently it is generally accepted that gypsies produce a culture that centers on cheating gullible non gypsies into spending money on fortune telling while also engaging in other forms of cheating or theft. The latter assertion is generally regarded by both academics and the public as truthful but the claim made by Kant is regarded as anti-semitism. When we attribute anti-semitism to Kant is that because we know a priori that his remarks were in egregious error over facts or is it because the historical record shows that Jews were not a part of a culture of a kind that Kant imagines that culture to be? If he was wrong then could he be simply misinformed? Why should we believe what is said by supposedly reputable sources about gypsies if people have been so wrong about the Jews or conversely why should we be disposed to doubt Kant's claim since he may be simply conveying what was...