I have been reading about phenomenology, and am having trouble understanding how it is different from German idealism. In both, there is a turn to the subject, and there is a sort of despair about understanding the "thing-in-itself". In both, the emphasis is on phenomena as they present themselves to us, and how we as subjects perceive, understand, interpret, and give meaning to those phenomena. So what is the difference?

Hello, I would like to ask a kind of multiple angled question I have noticed a "lack of" while studying logic. Is "the process of elimination" a sound "Rule of Inference"? (Perhaps, we've all used this "process of elimination" in taking a multiple choice test.) I have read two books on Logic: one by Irving M.Copi & Carl Cohen as well as The Logic Book by Merrie Bergmann, James Moor, Jack Nelson. I have not seen a single logic text nor a logic website where "the process of elimination" appears as a inference rule. Why is this not included as a rule? Is it not considered Deductive? Does it go by another name? What is the deal? Thank you for considering this question in advance.

I've been in education of some kind for over fifteen years now, and over these years I've had many history classes, concerning a variety of topics. Something strange happens in all of them, though - without exception, the classes never seem to spend more than a single session on anything that happened after the 1950s. In high school, we had a single class to talk about the Cold War; two other years of history didn't even go that far, except in the broadest of strokes with mentions of decolonialism. In a college course on American history, our last session was the origins and beginnings of the civil rights movement, with nothing beyond that. The social, technological, political and ideological shifts in the past half-century seem to be deemed unworthy of teaching. Why is this? Aren't the social and technological developments of the last sixty or seventy years at least as critical to the understanding of modern society as the sum of all that came before? What is the importance of teaching the history...

A former college roommate of mine, with whom I lived for a semester over two years ago, was recently arrested for the murder of a young woman (whom he apparently stalked for quite some time), and I have been called to the police to testify as a witness, presumably to his character. Being in this situation, and being a bit philosophically inclined, I have been facing down a lot of questions in my mind, and I would like to hear your thoughts on them. First, and most abstractly: at the time, was I living with a future murderer, or with someone who had the seed of a murderer in him? Or was he just a regular person? Also, when I look back, I seem to remember him as a bothersome person without much respect for personal boundaries. I certainly didn't like him, and after a month or two I did my best to avoid getting caught in a conversation with him. But can I be sure this is what I really thought of him, and not a feeling I am projecting back onto those memories now that I know what he has done? Is it...

This is a time when overpopulation is a growing problem. It seems that there is no slowing down of procreation even though people are aware of the problem. At the rate it is going I see that it will result in Authorities having to take drastic action to sustain the human race. Any decision they make will be unfair in some way. I wonder whether it would be right to stop trying to cure terminal illnesses such as Cancer and AIDS (as they seem an unbias/fair population control system). On the one hand it would be better for the future of mankind and yet it seems unjust to let people die when we can help them. Where does this issue stand with ethics? as it seems both moral and immoral.

Other teachers in my department see Situation Ethics and Utilitarianism as a form of relativism. This seems to me to be a confusion between there being different courses of right action for different circumstances (situation ethics and utilitarianism) and there being different right actions for one circumstance (relativism). Even if you're a utilitarian, there is still an absolute as to what one should do in that particular situation (it's just that it isn't always clear given the difficulty in predicting outcomes), and so it is not a relativist ethic. Who's right?

Is it legitimate to talk about "society" as an agent, when "society" is neither a cohesive unit nor a uniform set?

Why aren't more philosophers involved in discussions and policy on global warming? It is a desperate issue to be addressed and regardless of the philosophical stance in regard to it (i.e. moral skepticism), moral reasons and moral knowledge motivate action in a profound way! I do not think that much progress can be made towards addressing global warming unless the moral seriousness of the matter becomes clear to people and our unjustified indifference is slashed. The culture and spirit of the time should inspire philosophy, just as the excessive violence inspired Descartes in his skeptical exploits. If philosophers, whose reason is supposed to be strong to say the least don't get very involved, who should? I'm sure that this is a bit outlandish, but under what current conditions does a philosopher not have an obligation to get involved? Also, this would be a nice way to reconnect philosophy to the world, especially since a lot of its progress is connected to the insights of philosophy and reason.

Can a nation have an official religion and be a democracy?

When I see a pink ice cube, then I see a coloured three-dimensional material object; and it seems to me that its colour is equally spatially extended. But isn't it a category mistake to speak of three-dimensional colours rather than only of three-dimensional coloured objects? Aren't all properties simple and adimensional entities? The ice cube's pinkness isn't like a gas that can fill up a volume of space, is it? Is its seeming three-dimensionality a phenomenal illusion?