As a young philosophy fanatic attempting to get to grips with the incumbent philosophical zeitgeist's obsession with logic as the source and answer to all its 'problems', I am having trouble finding any substantial reason for the unwavering authority and importance with which this analytic and logical character is treated within the whole of philosophical academia. Where is the incontestible evidence for such an incontestible reverence of such fundamental logical principles as the law of non-contradiction, other than within human intuition and common sense?

If I believe I can see something which isn't there, most of us would agree that I am mistaken. But what about other senses? Can I mistakenly believe that I feel pain or cold?

In what sense can someone come to 'own' a piece of land?

Consider the following game that costs $2 to play: You roll a fair, six-sided die. You are awarded a $6 prize if, and only if, you roll a six; otherwise, you get nothing. Should you play the game? Well, considering the odds, the average payout - or "expected utility" - is (1/6)x($6)=$1, which is *less* than the $2 cost of playing. Therefore, since over many trials you would lose out, you should not play this game. That line of reasoning sounds OK. But let's say you are given a chance to play only once. What sort of bearing does this "average payout" argument have on this special "one shot" case? If you are in this for a single trial, it is not obviously irrelevant what the trend is "over many trials?"

Is time simply movement? The physicist Brown said that all atoms are always moving. And all what happens simply happens because atoms move, doesn't it? So, if you could stop all atoms from moving, would there still be time?

How do we know if we are reasoning correctly? Consider, for example, this witty “proof” that a ham sandwich is better than eternal bliss: Nothing is better than eternal bliss. But, surely, a ham sandwich is better than nothing (despite Leviticus 11:7). Therefore, a ham sandwich is better than eternal bliss! Admittedly, the error in *this* argument may be easy to see. But, of course, in more subtle lines of reasoning it is much harder to check for bugs. How, then, can we be confident, in general, that our arguments are fallacy-free?

Richard Dawkins has written: That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. Is this valid, logically? If not, what are the consequences? He is talking about religious belief, i.e., belief in some God or other. Dawkins' statement makes sense to me but can any logical argument invalidate it? Would he then have to retract his statement, or is there a gray area between semantics and logic?

When is somebody a "competent speaker" with a certain word? For instance, what do I have to know or do to be "competent" with the word "water"? I suppose I don't have to know that it is H2O.

Upon whom is the burden of proof when interpreting a given phrase: those who would interpret it literally, or those who would interpret it non-literally (e.g., metaphorically, etc.)? I have heard people say that our default interpretation should always be literal, and that we should only deviate from this understanding if we poitively have reason to believe that it was not intended literally. Does this presuppose that things are more often meant literally than non-literally? Or is it based on the thought that non-literal uses of phrases (e.g. metaphoric ones) are always developments of their literal uses, and that the literal sense is therefore somehow ‘primary’ in an interpretational as well as a chronological sense? Presumably the answer as to which should be the default position will also depend on the context of the phrase – for example, is it found in a poem, or in a pamphlet of technical instructions (in the former non-literal uses may be more prevalent than literal ones; and you’d be surprised how...

Can you help me evaluate Judah HaLevi’s “Kuzari” argument for the authenticity of the Jewish Tradition? If you’ve not heard of it, I am happy to offer an imperfect synopsis, but you’re better off consulting some more reliable sources (see below). The Kuzari, in a nutshell: If public miracles (e.g., manna of Exodus 16) had occurred, they would have left behind a huge amount of accessible evidence. Therefore, had the miracles not occurred, an entire generation of Jews (millions of people) would never have been duped into believing that they did. Therefore, since virtually the entire Jewish people (along with the Christians and Moslems, presumably) *do* believe those miracles occurred, the only explanation is that they must have occurred.