What is forgiveness? If I forgive someone for some misdeed, does that mean they are no longer obligated to correct that deed? Or is forgiveness simply an attitude change, when one chooses not to remain angry? Also when I say "I forgive you", is that a performative speech act? Or is it possible to forgive someone without saying it (or contrarily, to say you forgive someone when not really forgiving them).

Is there any more scientific basis for the justification of a belief in Feng Shui, any more than the major religions have their belief in God? My Chinese girlfriend is a firm believer and practitioner. I'm a lapsed Christian and see no more "proof" in Feng Shui than I do in the God that Jews, Christians and Muslims believe in. Thanks.

I just saw an advertisement on a website, the advertisement features a poor African child who is on the verge of starvation. Is it wrong for me to think that a child of his standards should die, because if everyone would have the chance to live to their 70-80s that our world would over populate? I sound like an very immoral person, but if the end result is world overpopulation, then I would want to sacrifice the unlucky ones, for the sake of all others.

We recently learned about racial profiling in my social studies class. While I disagree that it is unethical (and plain old incorrect) to assume that all people of a certain race are criminals, there did seem to be some logic behind the idea that I didn't want to bring up in class. I am not a racist and am in fact involved in closing the achievement gap in my school district, so although this question is definitely not PC, I am hoping I can ask it here without being judged: If statistics show that for whatever unfair reason (maybe because of discrimination), a greater percentage of people of race A become alcoholics or grow up in poverty or something, and statistics also show that alcoholics or people who grow up in poverty are more likely to commit crimes, then isn't it only logical to conclude that a randomly-chosen person of race A is more likely to be a criminal than a randomly-chosen person of race B? I acknowledge that there is definitely some circular logic going on here, and saying "he's of race...

In my work there are clear inequalities between colleagues for choosing the holidays period and for choosing morning or evening shift. The more senior a worker is the more privileges he has. Let’s suppose that one of the senior workers decides voluntarily to give some of his privileges to another worker even though other senior workers probably will not do the same. Should the junior worker feel and express gratitude for this action? Or, as the decision could be considered as a matter of justice and more equality, it is what everybody should do, and so gratitude is not necessary, and the senior worker should not be expecting gratitude.

In a discussion about philosophy as a profession I referred to one of the questions on this site to claim that the division of male and female philosophers is more equal than ever and it's not at all only male philosophers. But when we started thinking about it we could only come up with female philosophers who are doing practical philosophy (e.g. Nussbaum, Noddings, Gutmann, Warnock). So the question arose - are there at least somewhat significant female philosophers in for example theoretical philosophy or history of philosophy that you could name? Are there female philosophers in all the fields of philosophy?

From reading these pages I can tell all the contributing philosophers are decent and moral folk - anti-racist, feminist, compassionate, well-meaning, etc. but my question is, why should you be, especially if you hold no truck with an afterlife? Why not act immorally if you can get away with it and avoid jail and it is to your personal benefit? Does not behaving morally presuppose moral absolutes which I thought modern philosophy had done away with? I read an argument where ethical differences were described as being in the same boat only some get seasick and some don't (Alisdair MacIntyre) but again this is presupposing that philosophers all agree everyone should be "good". Why not be bad? Or is it all about tenure? (joke!)

I am a married man of 11 years with two children under 9 years. My wife and I are on the verge of a divorce and are waiting until after the holidays and figuring out the logistics of the house, finaces and child care. Nine months ago I met a younger married woman and since then we have been having an affair. We talk, text, email almost every single day. We see each other once or twice a month sometimes 2-4 days at a time. The emotional, mental and physical realtionship we have is amazing. We are like bestfriends and lean on each other for daily life issues. While my marriage is over her marriage is just starting the process of needing to change things drastically or it is over forever. She has been married for 4 years and has no children so while there is not as much to worry about it is still a very hard decision and she is taking things day by day. There is no doubt that we love each other but we obviously know there are many obstacles. 1) we are married 2) I have two children and she has none (and I...

I recently read the following argument on a blog, and I was wondering what the panelists might say about it. It is a well known philosophical principle that one cannot infer normative facts from empirical ones (this is the is-ought problem). But if, as it is often supposed, "ought implies can," then cannot implies ought not ("ought not" in the sense of "not obligatory"). In that case, we can infer normative facts from facts about empirical facts about what people cannot do.

Can a person who was born blind know what "red" looks like? Is there any way you can explain it to him/her so that he/she can perceive it the way we do?