How can we justify using juries in our court systems when there are significant problems of discrimination and stigmatization against certain groups? Don't such common biases in society undermine the role of the jury as a supposedly neutral judge of evidence?

Greetings philosophers! I’ve always wondered if free will is a problem for atheism. In particular, if there was no designer (God), isn’t it unlikely that something as strange as free will would arise?

As a student of law with a vivid interest in logic (in a broad sense), I find myself intrigued by the possibility of combining these two subjects. From what I so far have found, the implementation of the latter field of thought to legal discipline is mostly only done with regard to informal logic, with fairly simple overviews of the rules of inference etc.; the scope is mostly one aimed to serve the practical law-man in, say, procedural contexts. The ones that serve the academic community, seem not to be quite technical. Yet, the legal system seems highly infested with what logic is concerned. The relation between propositions of facts and norms, the norms being constructed with the help of sentential connectives, say, material conditionals or bi-conditionals to name just a few. Yet other phenomena could be named: judgments and other propositional attitudes, the normative "it is the case that", whose descriptive accuracy depends on what legal institution one is in(e.g. penal-law demands higher...

Is it logically possible for there to "be nothing" since for anything to "be" it must exist?

Are certain artistic mediums more adept at expressing human experience than others?

It seems today that in mainstream media and political discourse proponents of neoliberalism equate freedom with consumer choice. Many arguments about the restructuring of safety net programs, such as social security and medicare, along market logic of private competition and less government involvement, usually mention how this would bring about more "choice" for individuals and thus more freedom. Neoliberalism has brought a shift in discourse about freedom and liberty more inline with market type of discourse. The shift seems to be from having the freedom OF choice, to freedom IS choice. Much can be said about this from many different philosophical perspectives (an interesting one that comes to mind being Foucault and governmentality), but I want to go back to further, to Kant. My question is what would Kant say about this idea of freedom, that freedom is equated with choice - specifically- consumer/market choice? This type of questions plagues me because this neoliberal logic seems to reduce,...

Prior to the mass availability of condoms, and reliable birth control it seems to me that the act of sex had a very different meaning than it does now. It seems to me that "lust" had a very logical and sane basis for it to be feared. If you had sex then babies would likely happen as a result and unless both parents were prepared to take care of that baby then that would be a bad thing. Of course there were institutions like prostitution or even sacred prostitution that I imagine involved some kind of blunt surgery to prevent child birth. I don't know really what kind of evils which were really tangible in a way that a baby is tangible, or lack of evils that that institutions provided that may have lead people to condemn prostitution as products of an evil called "lust". Anyways people tend to want a lot of sex and prostitution has a limited availability. So when people say that we live in an age where people are more "enlightened" about sex I can't help but to wander if that is the case? Isn't our so...

A recent questioner asked if there are any more dialogue-based--as opposed to strict question-and-answer format--places on the internet to discuss philosophy. The replies took the questioner to be implying a kind of unregulated "philosophical chat room" where anyone can throw out their dubious reasoning and call it philosophy. That may characterize many internet forums, regardless of the subject matter, but there is, I think, a middle ground between this site's ask-the-experts format (which I greatly appreciate, don't get me wrong!) and chats/blogs by people who are totally unqualified to comment meaningfully on philosophical issues. Are there any blogs that you would *recommend* for the level of discourse that, at least sometimes, is displayed there between professional philosophers and, perhaps, thoughful "lay-people" (i.e., where philosophically disciplined and thoughtful people talk to each other)?

According to posters placed around my college 40% of women and 60% of men believe that rape is acceptable in some circumstances such as if a girl uses a guy for money. I contacted one of authors of that study but I received no response from her. I've tried to track down the veracity and basis of that claim but I can't and I think it's an unlikely claim. Does this show a lack of interest in feminist issues within society and on college campus? I really feel that it does. When I see stuff like that I want to know what I can do to correct it because I care enough for feminism that I don't like the idea that a movement that implicitly characterizes feminism as irrational and incapable of taking facts seriously has gained ascendency at the expense of other discourses that might change the world for the better.

Is atheism a scientific worldview? Many people who try to promote atheism seem to think so.