Do you think that the answers you offer here, not so much to questions that resolve themselves into issues of terminology or disciplinary orhtodoxy, but to questions that address the allegedly larger issues of life, death, truth, ethical behavior, etc., have any more value, practical or otherwise, than answers provided by, say, priests, prostitutes, or politicians? If so, why? If not, what is your motivation for participating in this forum?

OK. What I have to ask is a little strange, but I have been looking for studies based on language being converted to mathematics, or another way of putting it is a model of language which is strictly math based. The reason I am asking is because I have found a lot on the subject of logic and math or logic and language but nothing on math modeling language specifically, thank you for you time. Jeremy K.

The argument that the universe is so organized that it needed a creator to make it confuses me because isn't god so organized/sensible/well designed that something would have been needed to build him? Or did he just come around out of random chance, and if he has always just been around why is this ok for god but not the universe, meaning why is it ok for god to have just been around but not the universe?

Considering our world in a deterministic way, saying everything is declared by our determinate physical laws, we are tending to presume that there is no space for free will since even the electrochemical reactions within our brains underlie those laws. Now one could say: "That's not true. What about the chaos theory and/or quantum mechanics?" In fact the behaviour of quantums can not be predicted which leads to the assumption that they behave completely incidentally. Otherwise they would be predictable. Here is my question: Am I right in saying that even the quantum mechanics/chaos theory do not affect the issue that we have no influence on our actions and thoughts? I mean, there are two possibilities: Either our actions and thoughts underlie the physical laws and are definite OR they underlie the "laws" of coincidence. Both possibilities do not leave any room for free will.

I have a moral question concerning the following scenario: At a party you talk to another guest who you haven't met before. He is drinking several glasses of beer and intends to drive himself home later. Are you morally obliged to tell him he should not drink and drive even though that would be impolite and he presumably knows he shouldn't anyway? Thanks.

Is it possible for one to be wrong about one's own happiness? In other words, could one think (and feel that) they're happy without actually being so?

Today I had a big fight with my sister. We were both sulking, upset and angry. I told my father that I was really hurt and he said that it is not worth being hurt when there are people right now in Israel, Lebanon, Sudan, the Congo and elsewhere who have lost their homes, family members and futures in the blink of an eye. And that if you told those people that there were two girls in New Jersey who got to go to school every day, who had a comfortable house, an intact family and never had to worry about food or money or safety, they would think it was ridiculous how sad and hurt and angry we were being. I understand my dad's point. He is saying firstly that we should be grateful for what we have and not bitter about the small things that are not going well. And secondly that we should think of our problems in perspective in terms of what the rest of humanity may suffer. But can the above idea ever really act as consolation, or should it? It seems that you can't put emotions in perspective - does the...

I have recently heared the following expression: "If someone tells you at dinner that he is a radical relativist, then you must count your cutlery after he has left." What is the basis for mistrust of people holding relativistic views?

What should be the purpose of an education system as a whole? By this I mean particularly the direction given to it by its national curriculum. Is it to produce the next generation of plumbers and bank tellers, in effect to ensure that society continues to be productive? Or is it to develop society as a whole, to raise the average level of intelligence and enlightenment within it and, at the heights, push back the boundaries of human understanding? Because it seems to me that whilst these two aims are not mutually exclusive, only the former is being carried out within the UK. Joe H.

In the UK (and perhaps in other countries) children with “special educational needs” receive a much greater proportion of an education authority’s resources compared to the average child. For example, the pupil-teacher ratio in special schools is 6.5 : 1 compared to 18.6 : 1 in mainstream state schools. Is it right for the government to allocate more of its resources to those children least likely to contribute to the society which is paying for this education? Does every child have an equal right to an education in terms of quality, or should this equality be measured by the resources allocated to them? If resources are to be distributed unevenly to children based upon their circumstances, would it not be more sensible to spend the extra on gifted children, those more likely to contribute to society both economically and in terms of passing on education to the next generation? Joe H.