I was looking out the window of a bus yesterday and noticed the hoar frost on the snow bank. It's beautiful - it looks like the pelt of some huge beast or maybe alive, like coral. I started thinking of other beautiful things in nature like snow flakes and the patterns that frost forms on car windscreens, and not just freezing water examples but the shapes of trees, the songs of birds (okay, maybe not everything - e.g. the caw of a crow isn't necessarily beautiful but it doesn't hurt the ears either). Why do we find things in nature beatiful? Thanks, David

What is a "disposition"? Philosophers seem to use the word a lot, but I do not understand why. For example, to say that "Thunderclouds have a disposition to produce lightning" seems to say little more than "Thunderclouds produce lightning". What is the "little more", if anything?

Is it true that in science 'theoretical' means 'non-empirical'? If so, are theoretical entities radically imperceptible? That is, although we can perceive the effects of theoretical entities, we can never perceive the entities themselves. For example, theoretical temperature is average kinetic energy of molecules, which we cannot perceive, but we can perceive its effects as thermometer readings and sensations of hot and cold; or mass is imperceptible but we can perceive its effects as forces of weight and inertia.

Most people would probably think that when we say something is 'real' we mean this in a physical sense (e.g., this table is real) and we contrast it to imaginary things (e.g., unicorns, Elvis being alive). Is it, however, also possible to claim that all things are real in different ways, and that something that might ordinarily be considered 'not real' only 'exists in a different way'?

Given the difficulty (or perhaps impossibility) of reaching a solid and uncontested 'definition' of art, can it be talked about? More generally, must we know what a thing 'is' in order to talk about it, and if so how do we go about finding out what it is?

How is it possible for me to be conscious of myself? How can a molecule in my brain or foot or whatever feel that it exists? I assume anyone would agree that an atom is not self-conscious, that neither is a rock or a cell or an insect... a baby human? Yet it seems, somewhere along the line of increasing brain capacity one becomes self-conscious. How is it that when a system such as myself becomes complex enough it becomes self-conscious? If we assume that a unit, one thing, can only be conscious of other things, is it that somehow we are many things conscious of each other, who mistakenly think of themselves as one thing. Is self-consciousness just an emergent property? Is it an illusion? These are extremely important questions for me as I think so much hinges on self-consciousness: the concept of soul/spirit and mind-body duality, free will, death.........

Can we conceive of something being a psychological pollutant, in the same way we conceive of physiological pollutants? Consider for example a clothing advert that features extremely skinny women in expensive clothing (as they often do). It seems clear that this is harmful to the consumer in a number of ways. Most clearly, it is damaging to women, who are pressured to meet unrealistic and unhealthy standards for appearance. Being that one cannot isolate oneself from these advertisements (you can shut off your TV but you can't avoid the big billboards on city streets), does it not make sense to outlaw such billboards on the basis that they are unavoidable psychological pollutants? And if not, is it only because it's harder for us to quantify and locate psychological damage than it is to locate physiological damage?

Telescopes and microscopes do not enlarge reality, they only enlarge images of reality. Everything seen through a lens is an image of reality, not reality. But our eyes have lenses, so everything we see is only an image of reality. Can this be true?

In the first Superman movie, after Lois Lane is killed in the earthquake, Superman appears to reverse time by flying around the Earth and reversing its rotation. Thinking about it, this makes no sense. But in the movie, it has a certain plausibility. So what gives Superman's feat its plausibility? (A friend of mine suggested that the Earth didn't actually reverse its rotation due to Superman flying around it, but that the reversing rotation was just meant to suggest that Superman, by flying so fast, was able to go back in time himself. But this, too, makes no sense.)

Can cardiac rescusitation of an individual with an inoperable brain tumor be justified? Who benefits? Glen.