It is said that average IQ in prisons is well below the average among the whole population. The most selfish people I know are either very young children or mentally impaired adults. Do you think it probable that there is a positive correlation between intelligence and morally correct behavior?

It's absurd to say "If I were him I would have behaved differently" right? I mean, if you were him you would BE him, all his atoms and neurons and flesh, etcetera, and you would have the same thoughts, desires, impulses, everything. (Unless there's some transference of my Cartesian Ego or soul or something that can rise above the fact that I'm simply just him now, but at this point that seems ridiculous unless there's a god, although I know some dualists might disagree). We so often speak as if we can judge other people's actions by just inserting ourselves into "their shoes", but can we really do that and make any sense? Thanks a lot!

Hi, First let me say that I truly appreciate the time you all put in to answering questions from the public. Hopefully I can add one more decent inquiry. I've been reading Parfit's fascinating "Reasons and Persons" and there's something that's been nagging at me. Since I'm reading it for pleasure and I'm not a formal student of Philosophy, I don't have access to professors for assistance. I was hoping one (or some) of you might be willing to help me out. In general I find the book brilliant and, needless to say, illuminating. I think my life will be changed by it. However, I'm struck by several sentences in which Parfit seems to let his personal judgements guide the direction of his work after he says many times in the book that we might need to shelve certain personal judgements in light of the strength of the arguments. For example, at the end of section 105 (page 318 in my copy), where he is discussing a particular "discount rate" applied to our actions' effects on our future selves, he writes: ...

I've been trying to learn a bit about communitarian philosophy, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. The thrust of the line of thinking seems to be that individuals are socially constituted beings and that the community should therefore be the focal unit of ethical and political action, rather than the individual (which is what is advocated by the liberal theorists communitarians criticize). That is, at least, the impression I'm getting. I may be confused, but there seems to be a problem here. Communitarians seem to want to exclude contingent "lifestyle enclaves" from their thought, defining community instead in geographical, historical and familial terms - i.e. communities we can't escape being defined into, no matter how hard we might try. But just because a person is part of a particular racial, geographical, linguistic and socioeconomic community does not mean logically imply that that community is the best place for them to flourish in the way they desire. What does...

If an intellectual who publicly advocates for justice and claims to practice fair ethics commits a plainly unjust act (e.g. if it's a professor, sexual harassment and assault of a student), does that discredit the merits of his work?

Could someone please explain to me what Sartre meant by "negating the absolute."

When playing games, be they sports, board games, video games or what have you, there are almost always fixed rules, and violating these rules is usually accepted to be illegal within the game. However, there are also often informal rules of good sportsmanship and fair play which would prohibit certain kinds of behavior. However, such informal rules aren't explicitly a part of the game, and it seems that violating them is still within the rules of the game. If a person participates in a game, expecting good sportsmanship of some kind or another, but is instead treated to a game where their opponents demonstrate poor sportsmanship, is it within the player's rights to complain about that poor sportsmanship? Has the player been wronged? It seems that on the one hand, in consensually participating in a game without explicit rules of conduct punishing poor sportsmanship, the player has set themselves up for a situation in which they have no right to complain. On the other hand, it seems entirely...

A website I came across reads: "Can I Kiss You?" Ask any woman and she will tell you – a man should NEVER "ask" for a kiss. Asking for a kiss goes against EVERYTHING a woman is looking for in a man… you may as well just tell her right there that you are a BOY. Her answer might be "yes" if she is being polite… but her attraction meter on the inside will read a firm, "No!" Now assuming this is true--------Aren't women essentially demanding that men are supposed to risk a violation of their boundaries during the courtship ritual? According to academically sanctioned feminists (most of whom are ironically put in place by the predominantly male controllers of the universities) "unwanted sexual attention" is always a problem that men impose on women unfairly. People who advocate for men's rights (who are actually trying to help women realize their true powers) say that actually women's courtship demands often require that men take a risk that might be unwanted and that the expectation that men always read...

I have read that authors such as Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler write in such a way as to intimidate or subdue the reader into accepting what they have to say, using rhetorical techniques as well as obfuscation. The accusation that Derrida practiced "obscurantisme terroriste" is a good example of the kind of accusation I'm talking about; Martha Nussbaum made a somewhat similar critique of Judith Butler, and there are several other such instances besides. The core idea seems to be that these writers write using disjointed, heavy-handed rhetoric and difficult-to-decipher prose in order to discourage the reader from challenging their ideas. What do you think? As someone who is not a professional philosopher, I sometimes find myself hard pressed to distinguish between things I am not equipped to understand and things that are actively trying to make me stop trying to understand and simply submit. Do the authors named above engage in such practices, and if so, to what extent? Are there...

Why is Schiller's reductio ad absurdum of Kant's argument considered unfair: “I like to serve my friends but unfortunately I do so by inclination. And so I am bothered by the thought that I am not virtuous. There is no other way but this! You must seek to despise them. And do with repugnance what duty bids you.” Kant does argue that for an action to have moral worth and elicit our moral esteem it must be done from duty and not from inclination. Surely then, because Schiller serves his friends by inclination and not from duty, according to Kant he is not virtuous?