It would be unbearable to live a life believing that things like beauty, love, knowledge and life don't matter, and any philosophy that claimed it would be completely alien to me. At the same time, looking at altruism in animals and evolution of social behaviour makes it pretty obvious that our instincts and culture for good evolved for practical survival reasons. Surely it is a bit of a stretch to suppose that by fluke we evolved the beliefs and values that precisely match what is really good and really matters? I'm sure this is a pretty standard question that lots of philosophers have asked, so what kind of answers are there, and how can we decide what is really good or ethical?

Why is it considered morally wrong for a man or a woman to have a romantic or sexual relationship with someone significantly younger than themselves?

What is ethical and right - Going for someone you love or for someone who loves you a lot? (Assuming that none are one sided relationships.) - Paenna

In the UK there are the 'Page 3' models (in case you are unfamiliar with them, they are topless models that appear everyday in The Sun , usually with snippets of text about how young they are, and suggestive speech bubbles). Because The Sun is such a widely read publication and because that particular page is so popular, Page 3 is readily accessible on the bus, in the tube, on the kitchen table, in the newsagents, etc., etc. A while ago the politician Clare Short tried to get Page 3 outlawed because she said that it promoted sexism. She quickly got shouted down by other politicans and by the public who mocked her for being unattractive and whining. It seems to me that Clare Short had a point. If people, especially young kids, see this type of woman everywhere they go they might believe that woman are there to be eternally young and up for it, so to speak, and that it is okay to see them purely as sexual objects. Equality between men and women could be suffering from this, surely? Or is that...

I don't know if this is correct, but assume for a moment that it's fair to say that in the last two hundred or so years, people in the Western world believe less in God than they used to, and that in fact amongst the 'intelligentsia' a belief in God is seen as a sign of ignorance. It seems to me that if this is true there is something negative about it. There must be mystical aspects of life that science or rationality can't account for, and if the general belief in God deteriorates, what can mankind use to think about it? This might be confusing so I'll put it another way... a belief in God puts humans in a greater context than just themselves. It gives them some kind of connecting factor, and also a way to explain the abstract and intangible. If that goes, what happens to us? Can science and the mysteries of DNA and evolution accurately replace it? Don't we lose some beautiful, mysterious aspect of life? Or do we replace it with popular fiction, film, urban legends, etc? I'm sorry if this question is...

I've noticed that when people show a lot of affection towards their pets, for example claiming that the pet is their best friend or grieving for a very long period of time after the pet dies or paying for expensive veterinary care even for relatively minor injuries/illnesses, other people are quite scornful and say things like, 'It's only a dog' or think that the person is crazy. This seems unfair to me. If someone did that for another human it would be seen as honourable. Why is animal companionship seen as less valuable as human companionship, or the affection that a person can feel for a pet less important than what they can feel for a human friend? It's the same thing as that most people would often rather kill a goat than kill another person. Why do we value the lives of animals so much less than humans? Is it just natural to care more about what is like us (like an extended version of racism?) Or is it because we attribute most importance to a human degree of intelligence or emotion? Should it be...

a lot of the time i lie about things to people so much so that i believe them and forget they were lies. for example i make up things about my past - really little things - like that when i was 5 years old i dressed like an alien every day and collected maps of the moon - but then i forget that this was a lie and i'm sure that it happened. because i think it is true i start to behave like it's true, i start reading about space a lot, for example, as if it's always been an interest of mine. my QUESTION is: if you behave like something is true, is it as good as being true? since it would have happened in the past and the past can't change, and it's now having effects on the future, and i believe it's true, why should it really be a lie anymore except technically?

Do computers defy the law of conservation of mass? Because, if a computer can copy a program there is twice the amount of space taken up. But how can you just duplicate an amount of space (MB, KB, GB,etc.) if you add nothing to it?

If it was proved tomorrow that plants can feel pain, what would happen to the arguments of vegetarians who are vegetarians because they don't believe in causing animals pain?

Why do we imagine that one may/should compensate for a lack of skill with hard work? Do we really have any reason to believe that one's capacity for (or at least one's inclination to) "hard work" is any more under our control than one's "skill" level? - ca$h money hobo