I have always thought that with the primary colors and black and white, you can create any color that we see. This may sound dumb, but then how do you make neon colors? What else can you add other than the previously mentioned colors (or lack of)?

The visible spectrum of light starts at red and moves to violet. Wavelengths of E.M. radiation slightly longer than red are infra-red and shorter than violet are ultra-violet, neither of which is visible to humans. My question is then: why do we see the spectrum of visible color as a cycle moving seamlessly from red to violet and through violet into red again (think of a color wheel)? Why do we not see the visible spectrum the way it would seem to make the most sense, i.e., fading in from invisible infra-red and fading out to invisible ultra-violet? This has been bugging me for some time now, hopefully one of the panelists here can give me a satisfactory answer or point me in the right direction. Thanks, -Liam C.

Should the government take a role in promoting certain moral attitudes? When the United States made Matin Luther King Day a holiday, it (intentionally) endorses the moral attitudes Martin Luther King dedicated himself to. These may be admirable attitudes, but it seems to me that citizens should project their attitudes onto the government, not the other way around. Has anyone written on this topic?

All the empirical objects that I perceive around me are structures of sensations: sensations of color, tactile sensations such as hot and cold, hard and soft, and rough and smooth. But sensations are supposedly manufactured in the brain, out of neural signals delivered from the sense organs. This leads to two questions: how do they get out there, into the real world; and if sensations are unreal --- they exist only as long as they are perceived --- and the real world is composed of sensations, is the real world really real?

If 1) we are morally responsible for the foreseeable results of my actions and inactions and if 2) all human beings will eventually die can I derive that 3) biological parents are morally responsible for the death of their children? I would expect most people to agree with (1) and (2), and to be shocked by (3). In addition, life can be worth living (the beauty and the richness of its experience hopefully offset the pain and suffering that come with it), but this seems to be a personal opinion that I have no right to impose on others. So, what right do biological parents have to impose their views (on such important matters) on future human beings that don't yet exist? Thanks.

How do philosophers maintain their mental health? Athletes might expect to acquire more physical injuries than non-athletes because they play more sport and because they attempt to push back boundaries (of what the human body can achieve). By analogy, philosophers perhaps might expect to experience more threats to their psychological integrity given they often confront things that non-philosophers might not like to confront, and because some of them also endeavour to push back boundaries (of what the human mind can conceive). In so far as the analogy is not riddled with false assumptions and dodgy reasoning, how do philosophers keep themselves sane? Do you warm-up and warm-down, for example?

When two people disagree, is there always one right person and one wrong person?

I don't think that using profanity tends to be wrong. (Maybe if, "Damn it!!!" were the vocal trigger for some terrible weapon that could destroy the Earth...) It can’t be the sound of the profane expression that makes it wrong—else "c**k" would be a sin to say even if used to refer to a certain aviary kind. And it can’t be the meaning: to say "sex" is not in itself unethical. What about a combination of a given sound and a given meaning, an emergent (supervenient) property of this combination? It could be argued that to use a certain word as slang for something aggressive or sexual is wrong. But how? If I said "door" to mean the same as "damn" (as in, “Damn it!”), would this be transgression? Here we run into a problem of differentiating between the supposed permissibility of saying, say, “What the heck…” instead of, “What the hell…” or, “What the f**k…” Why is the first generally regarded as acceptable yet the next two are taken to be increasingly unethical (in some circumstances)? It doesn't make sense...

I believe modern Western philosophy is more a tool for reasoning than a body of doctrine, i.e., you apply it to whatever subjects crop up. Here comes my irreverent question. What do professional philosophers like yourselves do at barbecues when someone states an opinion? Do you subject it to rigorous philosophical analysis (this might not win you friends) or just chow down and let it go? And if the discussion was about something like the advisability of invading Iraq or otherwise, what could a philosopher offer that anyone else could not? This question is not a put-down - you must encounter a lot of idiocy in everyday life such as creationism - so what do you do in such situations? It must get frustrating at times! I am sure you all have robust senses of humor, however, and can handle this stuff and my genuine inquiry.

What is defective about reasoning in the following way. Say I flip an ordinary coin and it lands heads 20 times in a row. Then I say: "Well, this combination of 20 flips is as likely as any other combination of 20 flips, so it's not so strange."