In sports, what exactly do gender divisions accomplish? Why shouldn't women simply compete with men?

I have a question concerning the relation between "semantics" and "pragmatics". I know that there is disagreement among philosophers about what that relation is, but I hope my question does not concern debated issues. As far as I know, "semantics" concerns something like the meaning of words taken by themselves, while "pragmatics" concerns how we use words for our purposes and how we react to other people's uses of words. Now, apart from societies where there are linguists and dictionaries, I think that in social and psychological reality language is nothing more than our uses of words and our reactions to the uses of words by other people. My question is: what is there left for semantics?

Can the mind "feel" things even though nothing has happened? If so how does this work? For example, someone swung a textbook at my head playfully, and even though he did not hit me, I still felt something where he would have hit.

How do thoughts interact with the physical universe? Our movements and actions seem to be simple responses to the signals from our brain, but what triggers those neurons? I mean, we –chose - to act. We think “do I want to do this, yes.” Then do it. How is that possible? If it’s possible for immaterial things like thoughts with no apparent location in the physical universe to interact with our neurons then why isn’t it possible for imaginary concepts to interact with other physical catalysts?

I attempted to define 'Truth' today and so far the best I can come up with is: In order to really understand and analyse exactly what truth is; we first need to explore the idea of truth in its purest form. The Compact Oxford English dictionary suggests that Truth is 'that which is fact or can be accepted as true.' In this sense, I would first suggest that, philosophically, truth falls more aptly into the area of faith and belief as opposed to anything definitive. This is due to the fact that nothing can be proven to be precisely accurate without error for an infinite amount of time. In fact, even if something were theoretically created at a point in time that was, at that point in time, precisely accurate it cannot be proven to be accurate for an infinite amount of time as, by definition, you would need to test the theory or creation infinitely. We can thus resolve that, despite common definition, truth is a label given to an abstract, repetitive belief specifically in relation to the human condition...

I have a question about separation of religion and politics,especially about French "laïcité". My understanding is that laïcité is removing religion from public places. But what is religion? For example, female Moslems living in France are not allowed to wear scarves in public schools because it is tought to be a symbol of Islam, a religion. However, also some morals (like loving your neighbors or helping out each other) are part of religion as it is written in Bible and Qur'an. As long as they are acting according to God's lesson, is it impossible to secularize any public places?

I remember an argument against determinism saying that we are not just able to make free choices but it is actually necessary to. For example if you have the option of cake or salad for dinner and just sit there expecting all the events leading up to this situation to make this decision for you then nothing will happen. One has to actively choose the course of action to take to move from past events to the future. I was wondering if there was any pacticular philosopher who put this forward?

Setting aside worries about quantum mechanics, would it be possible for there to be a plank of wood which is an irrational number (say, pi) of feet in length?

This is a moral question that came to my mind after some reading of law books, but please take it only as a moral question. Suppose that Mary lent me 100 euros. When the time came that I should pay her back, I didn't do it, although I had the money (I preferred to spend it somewhere else). A friend of ours, Pete, knowing what had happened, gave Mary 100 euros saying that he was paying my debt. She accepted the money from him, and Pete told me what he did. What is my moral duty now? Should I give 100 euros to Mary? Do I still owe her 100 euros? Or do I owe Pete 100 euros, although he acted without my consent?

Why is it more moral to eat a pig than it is to eat a retarded human with the intelligence of a pig? What can account for our revulsion at one and not the other aside from the fact that one would-be morsel looks like us and the other doesn't? Let us assume that the retarded human in question has no friends / family who would be traumatized by his being eaten.