Has the idea of responsibility for NOT having a certain thought been addressed in the free will literature? Certain forms of compatibilism seem to hinge on denying that we are 'bypassed', a term described very well by Professor Nahmias as referring to "the idea that our conscious deliberations, our desires, or our reasons play no role in what happens" (quoted from his response to question 3236 on 6/1/10). But what about thoughts and ideas that simply don't occur to us? There is no grand buffet of potential thoughts that I (whatever "I" means) get to choose from, I can't prevent myself from having something occur to me and I can't force something to occur to me. So how could I be responsible for the absence of a certain thought. Clearly there are uncountably many situations in which someone's failure to act or someone's decision to act lead to consequences that may not have happened had a different thought occurred to the person. But, in a certain sense, they were definitely bypassed in the ...

I think killing in self-defence is perfectly acceptable yet I strongly oppose the death penalty. Is this consistent?

A friend of mine self identifies as a Christian but rejects the concept of a personal anthropomorphic god. It appears to me that a person who rejects that concept of god seems to have much more in common with an atheist than a Christian since it seems that many Christians subscribe to the view of god which my friend rejects. Does it make sense to identify with the Christian tradition when one is rejecting-it appears to me- a fundamental part of the religion?

I've just graduated with a B.A. in the humanities and hope to attend graduate school for philosophy in the near future. I didn't major in philosophy-even though I have taken many courses in the subject I know that it will be a challenge to get into a good Ph.D program. Would it best suit me to undergo a master's in philosophy first-assuming that I'm accepted to such a program- before undergoing a ph.d? I'm also interested in the subject of religion and am wondering whether a master's in religious studies- e.g. an MTS from Harvard- would hurt my chances at getting into a good philosophy Ph.D program? What do you think of undergoing a master's in religious studies in lieu of a master's in philosophy? Aside from religion my primary philosophical interests are in ethics, social philosophy (esp Marx),philosophy of science, Kant, the history of philosophy and feminist philosophy. Thank you for your time...

Suppose Jane, while growing up, somehow learned the wrong meaning for the word "migraine," and came to believe that any particularly strong headache, regardless of whether it occurred on one or both sides of the head, was a migraine - i.e. that "migraine" and "headache" were mostly synonymous terms. Suppose Jane then has what we would call a headache, a severely painful sensation in her head distributed across both sides of her head, and tells us "I have a migraine." According to her understanding of the term "migraine," her statement is true, but according to her community's differing understanding of the term, her statement is false (because we call them migraines only if they affect one side of the head only). Is there a hierarchy between the contexts in which we can understand her claim? Is her claim ultimately either true or false, or is its truth-value ambiguous?

Are there any histories of philosophy that focus on the ideas of the philosophers in their effort to philosophically ground ideas about the universe that reveal it as profound, mysterious, or divine? I sometimes I think that histories of philosophy gloss over the more obscure religious and metaphysical thinking of philosophers and they don't really elucidate the gravity and spiritual ambitions behind those philosophers ideas and instead focus on their technical significance. (Spinoza was doing far more than just healing a contradiction in Descartes's concept of finite being for example) Those few things I've read that do talk about the spiritual ideas of great philosophers of the past however just state those great ideas without any reference to the intellectual basis the philosophers had for making those claims. I want a real philosophical introduction to the history of "profound" thinking about the universe that actually attempts to elucidate the grounds of their thinking.

What are your views on Slavoj Zizek's work? Too many fallacies of equivocation? Or is he successful in what he claims to accomplish; that is, rehabilitate Hegel. I have talked to many who greatly disliked him and pointed out Slavoj's supposed 'play of words' that is aimed to confuse rather than clarify. According to them, Zizek ends up sounding profound precisely because of this equivocating word play. It'd be interesting to see what philosophers think of the matter.

In describing Kant's idea of the "thing-in-itself" Thomas Pogge (in response to a recent question on this site) recently wrote that "According to this explanation, space and time are then features only of objects as they appear to us." I'm having a difficult time deciphering this statement. To me when you speak of a feature of an object you are referring to that object in-itself almost by definition. It seems like space and time could be either a feature of the world or a feature of our mind/cognition or psychic tendencies which we project onto the world but not both. To say that space/time is a feature of the world as it appears seems to involve a confusion of how language is used to speak about being. Appearances can reveal or distort being but I don't see how they can contribute to being. We don't speak of colors as features of the (outer) world as they appear to us do we? We try to figure whether colors originate in the mind or in the world and though we allow that there is some degree of interaction...

Are first principles or the axioms of logic (such as identity, non-contradiction) provable? If not, then isn't just an intuitive assumption that they are true? Is it possible for example, to prove that a 4-sided triangle or a married bachelor cannot exist? Or must we stop at the point where we say "No, it is a contradiction" and end there with only the assumption that contradictions are the "end point" of our needing to support their non-existence or impossibility?

What is a good reason to have kids? Is desiring to have somebody to love a good reason to have kids? Is desiring to be a parent a good reason to have kids? Is desiring to have someone who unconditionally loves you a good reason to have kids? What on earth could justifiably compel someone to instigate such an ontologically significant event fraught with perhaps, if not infinite, vast moral significance, as creating another human existence?