Richard Rorty is dead and I think philosophy is poorer for it. But I have found during my undergraduate philosophy studies that most Anglo-American academics are largely hostile towards most of what he has written. Perhaps some one or more members panel can confirm this widespread hostility and articulate the more common reasons behind it.

Alex George wrote [http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/question/1663] that we can't ask "why should we be convinced by logic" or some similar question without thereby already submitting to logical priority; i.e., because the question itself has logic embedded in it. I'm not sure I understand this claim fully. Logic studies entailment relationships; if p, then q, therefore if not q, not p. On the other hand, logic doesn't tell us how to love another person. Insight from experience might tell us that. So there are other ways of knowing things, and different sorts of things, than logic. So if someone asks why choose to listen to logic at all, when I can learn plenty of important things from other roads to knowledge, why isn't this a fair question that doesn't already involve logic?

I have read in more than one place that "rationality is normative". I'm not too sure about what this means. I guess "normative" is whatever is related to what one ought to do or think. Does the first sentence just mean that one is rational when one thinks as one ought to? Should I also say that cooking is normative, since one ought to cook some ways and not the other? Where can I read more about this? The Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy has no article on "rationality", nor on "normativity".

Peter Fosl said in a post that philosophers are "astonishingly" bad writers. What exactly does he mean by this, and what makes writing bad or good? I assume he does not mean to say that it is bad because it doesn't appeal to a wide audience since, as he says earlier in the post, our culture is heavily invested in what may be considered shallow pursuits. Certainly it's not philosophy to blame if the masses aren't interested, is it? But I don't mean to direct this question just at Peter Fosl. First of all, every other panelist let this comment go without so much as a protest. Do you all consider yourselves bad writers, then, and astonishingly bad ones, at that? Or, perhaps, does philosophy, by its very nature, lend itself to uninteresting, technical, boring writing?

It seems to me that all morality is based on the belief that death is a bad thing. If we believed that death was desirable - for whatever reason - most everything would break down. But isn't it true that views on death are culturally determined - at least to some extent? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

In what sense is being put to death a punishment? How we can talk about things like "suffering" or "loss" if a person is dead (i.e., not conscious)?

It seems that most astronomers and theoretical physicists believe that time only began at the formation of the universe with the "big bang". Assuming that this is correct, is it possible for time to end (to no longer exist)? If so, what conditions would be necessary for this to occur? JW (Australia)

How should parents bring up their children in the cases of: 1) Parents with some religious faith or other 2) Parents who are atheist or agnostic 3) Parents who are familiar with critical thinking and who may or may not be religious 4) Parents thrown, maybe unintentionally, into parenthood without any advice on how to bring up a child. Parenthood is the greatest responsibility imaginable. What do philosophers do in such cases? Keep abreast of the latest child-rearing theories or follow their own agenda which would worry me in the case of 1), particularly?

Is it possible, and is it likely, that philosophy is a field that is about catching up, rather than discovering? I mean that philosophy's job is to put into words that are convincing knowledge that people already know, from insight. For example, someone might have come to terms with their eventual death in a profound way and be at peace about it. That person might not be a philosopher, but s/he "knows" the answer to questions about death; s/he simply can't put it into words. That's what philosophy does, it seems to me. In this sense, philosophy isn't discovering things people don't already know. Does this make sense?

I was very fortunate to be given the opportunity to hear Professor Lipton lecture on the Philosophy of Science at my 6th form recently. He used an allegory to describe scientific progress as a process of elimination, where the chance of finding the truth is increased with every refuted theory and every new paradigm shift. The allegory was that, should you lose your keys in your house, and you know with certainty that they are in one of the rooms, then each room you search and find nothing in can be discounted, leaving you with less rooms to search and a greater likelihood of finding the key. My question is simply: what if there is no key?