I recently asked a question about cops and robbers, and as Mr. Pessin pointed out, it's difficult to answer such a question when the subjects are children, who are often considered unable to grasp complex ethical problems. Having thought about it a bit, I'd like to ask about a related phenomenon, but with adults. There are more than a few adults who engage in Live-Action Role-Playing (LARPing), which frequently involves dozens, even hundreds of participants coming together in an area (often a rented campground) and engaging in unscripted role-playing. In fantasy LARPing, they take on the role of an imagined person (such as a wizard or a knight), speak in-character, "kill" each other with styrofoam swords, save each other from giant puppet "dragons," and so on. In doing so, they, too, simulate acts of violence against one another. I wonder whether these acts of pretend violence can be subjected to ethical evaluation, or whether the pretend nature of the activity frees the adult LARPers from needing...

Are there any bona fide philosophers who have concluded that philosophy is mostly specious rationalized intellectual imagination and raw speculation dressed in the guise of logical argument? When I studied philosophy in school that is how it struck me. For example, I recently read the claim that mathematics is a difficult subject because it deals with infinity but our minds are finite. This strikes me as a perfect example of specious gibberish. I've been looking but have not found a philosopher who is critical of the entire enterprise. Are there any? It seems clear to me that we are creatures of such belief and metaphor that we are easily duped by clever definitions and distinctions and arguments that have no basis in reality. Has this not struck anyone else? If it has, I'd love to read what they say. I mean no disrespect but I am concerned with what is real and what is just elaborate smoke and mirrors, however earnestly created. Thank you. Respectfully, George F.

What is the name of the logical fallacy that describes an argument in which facts are selectively chosen to support a predetermined conclusion? Is it "begging the question"? If not, what is it? (And, no, this isn't an exam question or paper topic; I'm a professional writer trying to remember something he was taught 30 years ago in a writing class.)

As far as I am aware, according to virtue ethics, we are supposed to cultivate a virtuous character. Suppose a person with a non-virtuous character engaged in an activity that expressed, but did not cultivate, his problematic character. Would it nevertheless be preferable for him to suppress this expression of his character, even if that suppression didn't contribute to improving his character? Or is virtue ethics only concerned with behavior that leads to a change in one's character?

Socrates (or perhaps Plato) seems to have been opposed to writing. As I understand it, the objection was twofold - first, that writing "offloads" mental effort (memory, communication, reasoning, etc.) into physical media rather than leaving it in the mind, and second, that writing is unable to react to the reader and thus aid the latter in the pursuit of truth. Both of those suggestions seem to hold true for writing, yet it seems that for the past several hundred years, we have consistently thought of writing as the intellectually superior form of communication. What has changed? What makes these earlier objections loose their power?

Recently someone asked: I wonder about the notion of a masochist as somebody who enjoys suffering. Is it possible, logically, to enjoy suffering? Doesn't suffering necessarily preclude enjoyment and vice-versa? Would it be more accurate to say that a masochist enjoys something that non-masochists consider suffering? And a philosopher responded: I think that one definition of suffering is 'pain'. And someone could gain pleasure from pain, physical, or indeed psychological. So to say that a masochist enjoys suffering sees fine to me. Well.....I don't see much clarification here. Am I the only one? I think it might be just as hard for the question asker to imagine the relationship between suffering and pleasure and pain and pleasure. Maybe suffering is a larger category than pain that logically precludes pleasure so it's not hard to see a paradox there but with the narrower connotation of pain as a physical kind of suffering you can imagine that their can be an accompanying pleasure somehow. But the...

With regard to opening doors many women assert that men who do so are being "gentleman" and those who don't are ungentlemanly. Likewise some feminists assert that men are sexist if they open a door for them. I've tried to research this issue very thoroughly so I know what I am talking about but among the many many websites I've read about this none have ever said that it was wrong to assume why a person is or isn't opening a door for you, until ironically while I was writing this I came across this one video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coi1Sc5ss_s where a self-described feminist does in fact acknowledge that "[I] do recognize most people do it just to be polite." In fact all of the websites other than that Youtube video I read come down under two opposed factions- those who say that men who open doors for women are sexist and those that say that men who don't open doors for women are impolite- with no nuanced opinion standing in between. On the one hand I don't like to be thought of as...

It is hard to believe that aesthetical value is objective. Whatever you choose as the most beautiful person, sunset or painting, it seems easy to imagine an appropriate alien who would find it ugly or uninteresting. My question is whether non objectivity of aesthetical value should count as an argument against the objectivity of moral value. After all, there seem to be some important common points to ethics and aesthetics. Isn't ethics concerned with what we should do as aesthetics is concerned with what we should enjoy to perceive?

I've been thinking about why good people disagree with each other about important things, like whether to support or oppose a particular law.  One, there may be some sort of mental deficiency or some crucial lack of knowledge. (Not truly common causes, in my opinion.) Two, there may be terminology issues. These may be legitimate differences in defining terms being used but sometimes I wonder if this is really more the side-effect of a basic disagreement rather than the cause. Three, and most important I think, there may be underlying differences in values (beliefs, morals, motivations, and even personality) that guide 'good' people to take opposite sides on important social debates. My questions for the philosophers here: A: is this a reasonable scheme to categorize disagreements among people? B: What have philosophers had to say about this topic?

St. Augustine wrote that he once stole some peaches. When he reflected on that experience he observed that he got a rush from breaking the rules. He then concluded that he broke the rules for the sake of breaking the rules and that more broadly this meant that at least some human sins are committed for the sake of sin. I think that St. Augustine was using this example to refute the Socratic claim that lack of knowledge was the cause of sin. Is St. Augustine's claim valid? Does it follow from the fact that he got excited from breaking the rules that he broke the rules for the sake of breaking the rules rather than the excitement it generated? Are there other reasons why breaking the rules might be exciting other than a desire to break the rules for its own sake? Maybe he got excitement from stealing the peaches because it was risky or because he wanted to challenge authority or to feel less confined by rules.