The reason behind human appreciation of beauty is sometimes framed in evolutionary terms; we find a certain body type beautiful because it reflects good health, or we find a blossoming fruit tree beautiful because it can provide us with food. It is impossible to explain modern appreciation for art in simple evolutionary terms because it has been so heavily culturally constructed, any explanation for the evolutionary mechanism behind the appreciation of a Roy Lichtenstein work would be a stretch. But the roots of our contemporary aesthetic sensibilities are in this appreciation for natural beauty, which in turn was grounded in non-aesthetic value. But it seems to me like there are so many natural things that we find beautiful that would serve no purpose, or would actually be dangerous. The Sahara desert, poisonous plants or insects, or storms are certainly considered beautiful, but an early human would be ill-advised to seek them out for this reason. Are there other theories as to the origin of our...

What does it mean to exist?

Do you think that it is morally wrong to store the DNA of innocent people on a central database? Living in Scotland, the law says that people who have been charged of a 'violent or sexual offence' can have their DNA stored in a database for 3 years (with the possibility of extending that to 5). This isn't the DNA of people who have been convicted, but the DNA of people who have been charged and subsequently released (essentially innocent in respect to the law). In discussions with friends, I often come across the argument as follows: 'if you haven't done anything wrong, then you don't have anything to worry about'; at which point I often reply: 'if I haven't done anything wrong, then you have no need to hold my DNA'. Do you feel that a government has a duty to hold the DNA of 'potential' criminals like this in order to benefit society at large?

Where moral codes come from? Are they something to aquire or are they inherently in our genes?

Someone asked [http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/1411], "How do we know our right hand from our left hand when there is literally nothing that can be said about one which cannot be said about the other"? Mark Lange posed this question in turn, "Suppose there were a universe that was utterly empty throughout its history except for a hand (unattached to any body) floating in it. (Pretty gruesome, but let's not think too hard about that!) Would that hand be a right hand or a left hand? Now we cannot appeal to the hand's relations to other things to give it its handedness, since there are no other things." The thumb is on different sides of each hand. Put the palm down and you can tell which hand it is by looking to see if the thumb is on the inside or outside. What am I missing? Gloves come in left and right, you know? You could even tell this in a void.

Where would be good school to study mereology at the graduate level? I'm not looking for any school with specifics in mind, given that I already understand the options available by wanting to find a good program in just general mereology. Thank you for your time.

When I get sad and depressed I am often told to "wise up" and stop moaning because people in Africa suffer far more than I do. Is this a logically valid point? Does the existence of vast quanities of human suffering in Africa necessarily negate my suffering?

It seems easy to define "Monday": some day is a Monday if and only if it comes immediately after a Sunday. The problem is that if we do the same for every day of the week, our definitions will become circular at the seventh try. The only way I can see out of this is to say, for instance, that May 18, 2009, is a Monday, or that May 18, 1750, was a Monday (according to the Gregorian calendar), or that today is Monday. But isn't it strange that we have to give an example in our definition? And are there other words that we can only define with an example?

Hi! I've read some philosophy stuff and I came to notice some kind of a "family resemblance" among some pairs of philosophical terms. You work with dichotomies such as type/token, concept/referents, set/members, whole/parts, object/appearances, property/instantiation, description/satisfaction... Well, you'll know many more of those than I do. My question is: do you have a general name for all those dichotomies? Thank you!

When I read contemporary theories of sexual ethics, they all seem to boil down to "if it's consensual, it's okay." I'm not religious, but this sounds awfully reductionist to me. Isn't there more to sex than just pleasure and emotional bonding? I could go hiking with a woman and that would be pleasurable and bonding. Are there any significant differences between sex and hiking? Or am I appealing to a baseless intuition?