I really love my wife and of course I never want to hurt her, but is it moral to cheat on her if I'm 100% sure that she won't know (and therefore she won't be hurt)?

Logically, the view entailed by solipsism (i.e., that I cannot prove that there exists anything beyond my own consciousness) seems impossible to refute. How do philosophers persuade themselves not to stop at this position and abandon all further enquiry as futile?

If I hypothetically make something that is widely accepted as beautiful, then I reproduce it and put it everywhere so that everyone in the United States will see it at least once a day, but probably more than that, will it be considered less beautiful? If so, why do objects become less beautiful if they become more accessible? How much do wonder, curiosity, and imagination contribute as factors in defining something's aesthetical value? A friend of mine studying architecture said this: "In the context of architecture, the original modernist designs were considered stunning in their simplicity... but once they were reproduced over and over, and classical/victorian/old buildings were knocked down and destroyed, the situation reversed: those old buildings were considered beautiful again and the now over-abundant modernist buildings were now just noise in the background." How much of aesthetics is determined by the attribution of favorable nonaesthetic traits? If I look at a logo for a company whose...

Can randomness be defined? Since I believe that the word means the absence of order, the proving of randomness involves proving a negative. What, then is the meaning of the terms random number and random sequence? Does the designation of any events e.g. radioactive decay, as random mean anything other than "uninfluenceable by any known agency" and/or "not showing any regularity discernible by humans"?

If we do not experience* time when we are asleep then does that prove that time is subjective? *Meaning that when we are asleep we do not acknowledge the time that passes in the same way in which those who are awake do. Steve, 17

Does not Descartes beg the question when he argues "I think therefore I exist?" My problem with Descartes' argument arises from his attempt to treat "existence" as a predicate that can be applied to subjects. When he says "I think", the word "I" will have a referent if and only if I exist. So, if the proposition "I think" is meaningful -that is, if it succeeds in attributing the property of thinking to a subject "I"-, it is trivial that I exist. However, in order for the proposition "I think" to be meaningful, I must exist in the first place. So, Descartes seems to beg the question of "my" existence. One might just as well assert, "I dance the funky chicken therefore I exist" or my favorite "I outgrabe therefore I exist" (a reference to Lewis Carroll). Thanks...

I have what most people would call a generally 'good' life (I think). I am doing well at university, I have good future prospects, I am young and relatively healthy, I have good friends, I have a close and supportive family, I spend time helping others through volunteer work, I am in a hassle-free and good relationship, and I have no financial problems. Recently however I have begun to feel that my life is more or less a waste of time. Although I have felt this in the past, I got rid of the feeling by doing more (studying more, socialising more, etc) and it went away for a bit. Still, I can't help feeling that unless I do something 'great', there is no point in my being alive. On the other hand maybe I should just enjoy every day as it comes, and ignore the fact that my life is ticking away in a pleasant but largely unremarkable fashion. Are people's lives only justified if they do something that they and everyone else thinks is extraordinary? Or is it okay just to be mediocre and content? Is it...

Contemporary philosophers often talk of "thick" or "thin" terms. I get the general idea of what "thick" and "thin" mean in a philosophical context, but is there a precise or technical definition of their use?

Does there exist an approach to ethics which doesn't depend upon or emphasize obligation and/or duty?

Are the psycho-sexual aspects of ourselves fixated from a relatively early age, so that "turn ons" are conditioned if not unalterably then in some way that fixes in ourselves certain ideas about what it is for something to be sexual in nature? Should considerations about this act as impetus to revise any aspects of the media and popular culture, including of course, pornography, which is one of the largest domains of media-culture despite being confined to less blatant forms of presentation (than, say, advertisments for "Big Macs")? Finally, I have the idea that cyber-porn (and to a lesser extent all cyber-sex) is covertly homo-erotic when men use it to get off on "straight" screen sex. This isn't entirely true, sex is sex and breasts are breasts, but the fact that a machine which could be (not unfairly) called a "boys toy" is being used as the platform for a mathematically constructed system of media exchange (viz. the world wide web) that was developed primarily by men. Crucially, the sex scenes...