Can philosophy of mathematics influence mathematics, or it is just an abstraction of what actually works?

In many Western countries divorce laws have requirements that force the party with the greater income to continue in paid work and pay alimony to allow the other party to maintain the style of living to which they "have become accustomed during the marriage," or with similar wording. However, I am having a hard time reconciling this with some of the replies to question #1796, which referred to the obligation to have sex during marriage. Most people would certainly agree that one is not obliged to have sex with a partner, or an ex-partner after a relationship has broken up. The arguments there focused on people having an "inalienable right to one's body", but surely this same argument could be used against forcing people to do work they don't want to do? More specifically, how is forcing person A to work against their will to provide financial support for person B *ethically different* from obliging person A to have sex against their will to provide sexual satisfaction for person B?

Two people might be in an argument with one another and disagree on the outcome. We might say that one person thinks the argument is sound, while another does not. That is to say, the argument depends upon some (possibly unknowable or undecidable) assumptions, and the two people disagree in their belief of whether the assumptions actually are true. Is it fair to say that any disagreement about the validity of an argument should always be reconcilable? Even if the disagreement is about the reasoning process itself, this disagreement should be reducible to axioms which both participants hold or don't hold arbitrarily. I am confused about why there is so much disagreement in philosophical circles. If arguments drew from fundamental assumptions (such as whether a being has natural rights), then it seems arguments should conclude quite reasonably with "Aha, well I see that you have an arbitrary belief in this, while I have an arbitrary belief in that". Unless the assumption of some argument is itself...

If humans didn't exist, would animals still have rights?

Depending on which normative system you adopt the statements like “He is a moral person” or “In that situation that was the moral thing to do” will have different content, since what is moral is different in different normative systems. That being said then when looking at ordinary language usage by non-philosophers in everyday life situations I would claim (at least based on my experience) that people tend to use the term “moral person” or “a moral deed” in some sense with a universal meaning, just as if the term would refer to the same kind of people or deeds. Could you please care to speculate on why this is so? Is it only that people are careless or uninformed or might it be that there really are some “universally moral” things and people want to refer to them or is it just the particular culture they happen to live in? Or something else?

Derren Brown recently had a show in which he flipped ten heads in a row. He just flipped coins all day and waited for it to happen eventually. If I flip a fair coin, I should believe there's a 50% chance it will come up heads. If I flip it three times, I should believe there's a 12.5% chance it will come up heads three times. If I have eight goes at flipping it three times, it seems I should believe there's a 100% chance of flipping three heads. If that's right, what's wrong with being increasingly confident at the beginning of each set of flips that this will be the one in which I flip three heads? It's obviously a bad argument: every time I fip the coin, there's a 50% chance it will turn up heads. But how could it be rational for me to bet that during the course of a day of coin flipping I'll flip three heads eventually but not be rational for me to be increasingly confident that the next set of three flips will be of three heads as the day progresses? Matthew

Has anyone ever asked a question that could not be answered philosophically? I'm not asking whether anyone's asked a question that cannot be answered by a philosopher -- presumably, a philosopher cannot answer whether the universe is intelligent or whether human beings deserve to live. But is there any question that cannot be philosophized about?

What is all this mystery about God? The secrecy? If the guy exists, why doesn't he show himself - VISUALLY - to us? Anne, age 13

Does it make sense to talk of "probability" with regard to existential claims? Consider the following propositions: (1) Rolling snake eyes is improbable. (2) The existence of Big Foot is improbable. Though I can't quite finger the distinction, it seems to me that the notion of probability is being used very differently in (1) and (2).

To what extent should an organisation or company aligned with a religious order be subject to general employment law? For example, in a general workplace, if someone became pregnant outside of marriage, there would be no issue in terms of their employment/maternity rights, etc. However, if someone works for a church organisation and the church believes that sex before marriage is wrong, condoning this scenario would be contrary to the belief system in place. I believe that any religion-based discrimination is wrong but I was wondering how one might philosophically justify this sort of dilemma.