Let's say I like, but don't need, a piece of software. If, after shopping around, I find the lowest price is way, way beyond what I'm willing to pay for it and so I decide not to buy it. Then, I find an opportunity to download it from the internet for free. If I download it and use the software I realise I'll be breaking the law. But, from a moral perspective, how should I be judged? I haven't really deprived the software developer as I wouldn't consider buying at the current price. Nor has the developer lost any material possessions. Nor have I given money to any criminals. Plus, if I commit to buy the software should it ever become what I consider to be "affordable" they won't lose any future income either. Again, how would you judge this behavior from a moral perspective?

If you told a joke in the forest, and no one was there to hear it, would it be funny?

FIRST OF ALL THIS QUESTION DEALS WITH SOCRATES--HIS LIFE SPAN WAS 463-399 B.C.E.--WHAT DOES THE E.STAND FOR? COULD YOU DIRECT ME TO A SITE THAT COULD SHOW ALL OF THE TEXT THAT THE FOLLOWING WAS FOUND FROM? "YOUNG PEOPLE 'LOVE LUXURY, HATE AUTHORITY.. ARE BORED AND ILL MANNERED AND LACK RESPECT FOR ADULTS' THANKS SO MUCH

Should the state be seen as responsible for crimes committed by prisoners against prisoners in jails? It seems to me that knowingly incarcerating a person in a place where inmates are at risk to be beaten, raped or killed is like throwing him in the lion's den.

There are many arguments for the existence of god (e.g., the ontological argument) which, though interesting, probably don't actually account for the religious belief of even their primary exponents. I suspect that a person may be aware of many reasons for belief in a proposition "P" but that only some of these are actually causally linked to his belief that "P"; others he may offer as a way of persuading non-believers, or convincing them of his reasonableness, but these don't actually explain his own conviction. How do we differentiate between arguments or evidence which create belief, and those which merely support it? Is there some link that we perceive between certain reasons and belief but not others?

How logically rigorous is the claim that neurochemical changes in the brain 'cause' mood or emotional disorders? Does a running nose cause a cold? In any case, before prescribing powerful chemicals to emotionally distressed patients shouldn't doctors use some sort of machine to test the chemical levels of their brains?

How does one know if they ARE a philosopher?

Trois questions... Are there any influential essays on aesthetics which deal with modern rather than fine art? I have just read Kant's "Critique of aesthetic judgment" and Hume's "Of the standard of taste", which made me want to read more recent treatments of the debate. In your opinion, is aesthetics necessarily linked to visual art, or could the term equally be applied to music and literature? Finally, how far is aesthetic appreciation informed by intuition, and how much by logic (in the case of visual art - the golden mean, composition, etc)? Is there any consensus on this? Thank you.

Could one argue that parental discipline constitutes mental/emotional abuse in certain cases? At what point does punishment (ignoring physical punishment for this question) become abuse?

I want to compare the human mind to a computer program, for the sake of this question. In a computer program, if a circumstance occurs that the machine can not process due to a fault in the code, or a lack of processing power, or any number of reasons, the program will error out. It can have many symptoms: frozen program interface, the dreaded blue screen of death, or a simple restart. But either way the program ceases to function. (Of course their are nifty programmers out their that protect against simple errors by allowing a tolerated amount of them go unnoticed if they don't impede the overall abilities of the program.) What I want to know is how or mind deals with these errors. What stops us from running infinite loops that stalls out our minds and rends us slobbering piles of useless flesh. When we are confronted with something that our brain can not understand or grasp or comprehend, how do we cope? Or is there a limit to where we cease to function?