I have been reading about abortion recently and came across a ‘thought experiment’ used by Judis Jarvis Thomson about an expanding baby. The scenario is that you're in your house when your baby starts expanding rapidly. You realise that you have no chance of getting out and the only way to survive is to pop and kill the baby. The idea is that this is an analogy for mothers who will die if an abortion is not performed i.e. is it ok to kill in this form of self-defence? These thought experiments are designed to provoke a moral attitude which can then be applied to discover your true feelings on a particular issue. My instant reaction was that yes, it was ok to pop the baby in order to survive and therefore I believe abortion is ok if it saves the life of the mother. However, imagine that the baby is now an analogy not for abortion but for a virus like AIDS, by the same thought experiment it could be argued that saying yes would justify killing everyone who had AIDS in order to save everyone else in...

Many people tell about strange experiences in connection with death. Why do SO many FEAR that there will be nothing after death and in consequence even invent some "soothing" stories?! How can one handle the fear of there being actually something (whatever) after death? What if your strongest feeling is fear of your life never really ending??! Is there an intellectual answer for that? (Sorry for my English: I'm Swiss.)

How can speciesism, be immoral for people, but moral for the animals that clearly prefer their own species? If animals are morally culpable for speciesism, can animals be held morally responsible for other things like murder?

I never understood the bumper sticker "Against Abortion? Don't Have One." I mean, people who are against abortion believe that it is equivalent to, or close to, the murder of babies. But surely those who put this bumper sticker on their cars wouldn't favor a bumper sticker that suggested that if you're against infanticide, then the proper response is simply to refrain from killing babies. If it's murder, then shouldn't it be outlawed?

Was I morally correct in asking my (now) ex-wife to delay the divorce which she had initiated, in order to retain her much needed health insurance under my employer, until she had obtained such on her own? Or was she correct in her assertion that it would have been morally incorrect for her remain married to me, regardless of her health needs, due to the example shown to our children when she was meeting and dating others?

Why has Ayn Rand become so inconsequential to modern philosophy? The point is underscored by the lack of any references to Rand on your site, save one instance where someone asked if there were any refutations of Rand's Objectivism available – to which a link was dutifully supplied. The point is further underscored by some questions in regards to women in philosophy (or the lack thereof) which, to my amazement, Rand was not referred to (even begrudgingly) as a positive example. My pet theories about this situation have something to do with her aligning herself strongly with Capitalism, while philosophers historically have been left leaners or overtly aristocratic (of sorts) but never very money orientated, which is probably seen as a very Earthly consideration to dwell on. Some say that Rands format of conveying philosophical ideas in the form of novels has not helped her cause much. If this consideration is to be given weight then why should Socratic dialog, for example, be so revered? The methodology...

I LOVE this site. Wish I'd stumbled across it sooner! Ok, I have a question that I've wanted to ask for some time (ahem) but have been afraid to ask, assuming it would be duplicative. But I've gone through all the questions (26 at this point) and I don't think it's really been asked -- at least the way I'd like to ask it -- though one answer (cited below) touches on it directly then backs away. My question is "Isn't everything always happening or not happening at a given time and for a given duration from a God's (or someone greater than God) Eye perspective? Even if Time "stopped", wouldn't it be stopped for a certain amount of time? Even if time reversed (i.e., the Superman example and Stephen Hawkings old theory that time would reverse and broken objects would re-form etc. if the universe contracted (I know we now believe it's expanding and won't contract) wouldn't that take a certain amount of time? Even if someone went back in time, wouldn't they be gone for a certain amount of time that's...

I don't understand the approach in answering some of the questions. When asking if something is "important" or what "duty" is or what "right" is, why answer with examples of stuff that's one of those terms or give an insight on the subject rather than attacking the word itself and finding what it means. We're already in a hole due to the problem of causation and must find associations and directions of fit. So why not really get deep within the skin to find out what a word like "important" or "right" or "duty" means (at least to the best of our abilities). Isn't the source of much dispute in other fields that people aren't on the same page as to what a particular word or term means? Philosophy is much better than that. Or am I missing something?

Hi there. I have a question about Searle's Chinese room argument. In it he seems to argue that purely syntactic programs are not sufficient for semantic content. From a biological perspective, I was wondering what if the program (genetic material) used the symbols themselves (proteins) to build a machine (a brain) that was capable of understanding meaning? What effect, if any, would this have on Searle's argument? I don't have any training in philosophy, so if you could pitch your answer with that in mind that would be great. Thanks, Tim

The demise of the Soviet Union, and the dominance of the U.S.A, in military terms, does not seem to have produced a stable world, or a "peace dividend". If the "West" were to succeed in installing representative democracy, and a liberal capitalist economic regime, throughout the world, could we expect a better life for the world's citizens. If not, why do the world's leading powers invest such massive resources in this project?