In a response to a question about conceptual analysis and lexicography, Peter Lipton said, "...you can have a justified true belief without knowing, because it may still be just a matter of luck that your belief is true". It is my understanding based on some reading of epistemology that you can't have true knowledge if there's the possibility that your belief is wrong (i.e., you got lucky). Is this a widely held belief in epistemology or am I wrong? Because the definition seems to make sense to me. For example someone rolls dice and says "It's going to be snake eyes", but even if the roll does turn up snakes eyes, they certainly didn't KNOW it (unless the dice were rigged).

Throughout history, it seems people have refuted the principle of "rights acquired by birth", often because it is contradictory to democracy. Concerning illegal people (people without papers), I feel there are strong similarities, as basically they are criminalised for staying in otherwise public area's, while people who were born there gain that right automatically. Why is it, that it seems completely acceptable to criminalise people just for "being" somewhere, while this seems ridiculous from an ethical point of view? Why isn't "Kein Mensch ist illegal" a basic human rights principle?

Does love exist, or is it really love, without some amount of selfishness? Put it another way, if you want the best for someone and care about someone, but get no pleasure from simply knowing them, is it 'love', yet something like pity or hypocrisy? Considering that that is how it is, does it anyway apply to all sorts of loving; is mother's love, for example, an exception? Or should we say that though a mother always thinks of her children first, it is also selfish, because by being a mother she is able to express that side of herself?

Are there any good, contemporary arguments against materialism?

What arguments are there to support a statement 'the goal of life is to be able to express yourself as entirely and truthfully as possible'?

Is it possible for science to come to a conclusion regarding the origin of the universe?

Often, people who claim to be psychic also claim that they have an ability to perceive or to have verification of the existence of things that other people do not have (but could possibly obtain). How is this different from the mathematician who discovers, or claims to have discovered, a proof? Certainly, many mathematical proofs are not for the layman to approve of or dispute, because of a certain lack of ability. Both claim to see or to have proof (although different types of proof) of something, but in both cases one can imagine at least one person that cannot verify that the proof really is (a) proof.

I recently read an article where a lawyer referred to something called "Role Morality" in defending his behaviour (which was not especially moral). What is "Role Morality" and what school or body of philosophy does it belong to? How is it supposed to work? It seemed somewhat bogus when presented as an excuse for behaviour that would otherwise be called immoral. Maybe there's a different moral system for lawyers? Thanks.

I don’t know if I’m right about this, but I often have the impression that philosophers have traditionally regarded the means of knowledge as some kind of obstacle to getting at ‘reality in itself’, as if the aim of scientific inquiry should be to somehow strip away the interferences of our own minds, bodies, perceptual capacities, language, etc., in order to unveil the world ‘in itself’, free of all ‘anthropomorphic colouring’. Whenever in my life I have occasionally found time to give myself over to speculative musings (and I’m not sure if it’s been too often, or not nearly enough!), I have often been tempted by a different idea, only then to drop it again as scientifically suspect, if not straightforwardly mythical or mystical. However, I’ve often wanted to put it to a professional philosopher to see what he or she would make of it. I’m sure it’s not at all original, and perhaps you can tell me which historical philosophers have held a similar view, but I’m mainly interested in whether or not anyone...

A friend and I were discussing our philosophy class a while ago, and somehow we got onto the subject of the properties of things and the definition of a place. We began to argue about whether you can be in an object or in a place. I said that you can only be in an object and to be in a place is impossible. But you can be at a place. Example: you are in the building, but you are at the DMV. She said the opposite. That it is possible to be in a place. Who is correct?