Are symmetry principles laws of nature, or meta-laws of nature? The intuition is that laws of nature are contingent. That is, it could be different in different logically possible worlds. Does this hold true for symmetry principles? Could there be some symmetric principles that had to hold in all possible worlds?

Is it possible to realize something which is not true? Or do all realizations point to a truth? For instance, if I realize that "life is short" does it really imply that life is really short? Or is that realization just a form of value-judgment and does not have anything to do with truth? Thanks for this very helpful site. Keep up the good work and the spread of wisdom.

If we made contact with an alien species which was clearly intelligent/sentient, but at a very different level to us, for example, if in the future humans found a planet inhabited by a species which was approximately as intelligent as our distant ancestors (and ancestors which were less intelligent than us for genetic, not simply environmental reasons), should we consider one alien to be as important as one person? Whatever conclusion I come to seems to throw up problems: if we say yes, then should we consider the life of a chimpanzee to be as important as that of a human? If we say no, then presumably we would have to concede that if we met aliens more intelligent than us then we would be less important than them. Or perhaps there's a base level of intelligence above which all sentient beings are equal, but how would we determine that base level? On the other hand, if we move away from intelligence and look for something else like signs of a capacity for love or mourning to evaluate a species moral...

Are there any books you could recommend about the concept of reality? The philosophical origins of reality that is. Thank you!!

Since I am doing a study about colors and how they relate to the natural world in ways that we perceive them, there is an obstacle for this research. What is the opposite color of Brown, a neutral color representing the balance of primary/secondary/tertiary (etc.) colors?

What do the terms 'Pyrhonism' and 'Academic scepticism' mean? I know they're both types of scepticism but how do they differ? Or is one a form of the other? Thanks.

How to tell bad philosophers from good ones? How to determine the "value" of a philosopher and his work? How can we tell that e.g. Plato, Descartes, Kant or Marx were great philosophers while many around them weren't so great? I'll start with analogy from different field. When we look back at history of science, we (at least in a simplified view) can say that the "good" scientists were those whose predictions about the nature of the world matched the objective reality. In science, what is true, is valuable, and vice versa. Some other criteria could be though of as well. One could say that Newton's and Einstein's theories were regarded valuable because they matched with objective reality AND explained things that weren't explained before AND could be used to build other theories and reasoning on top of them. Now, what about philosophy? One could say that a good philosopher is a philosopher whose argumentation is good, i.e. convincing. But shouldn't in this case many lawyers be regarded as great...

Is there a problem for atheists to explain, for example, the laws of logic and objective morality. How could we really account for either if the material realm is all that exists?

I am interested in and confused by an emerging branch of philosophy called 'experimental philosophy', and was wondering if any good examples could be provided that might help settle this confusion and direct these interests? Could Kinsey be regarded as an experimental philosopher as well as a psychologist, since, in many ways, he helped to revolutionize the way sexuality is defined in terms of a spectrum instead of the reduced dichotomy of gay/straight?

Is it possible to choose the one we fall in love with? It seems to me that the experience of falling in love is a purely undecided matter. For instance, there have been many cases and personally to me wherein one would just wake up with a feeling that he is in love with someone even though that possibility may not have occurred to him before. He did not deliberately choose the person, so to speak. His emotions seems to have told him that he is indeed in love. Can this really be possible? Or would we call it really love? And thanks to this site. You all are very generous in sharing your knowledge and expertise.