My question is what is the importance of gaining knowledge, without any materialistic interest, and just for the sake of gaining knowledge. If a very knowledgeable person has no wealth, fame, power and any other materialistic plus point, still can he say that he's successful just and just because he has knowledge? For example if a person, Mr. A, led all his life in the pursuit of knowledge, just because of his curiosity, and earn no money, fame, power; he didn't convey his learnings to anyone by writing or any other means. He got no self satisfaction by knowing that he has become a great scholar (because to him there are tooooo many things he don't know even then). And in this pursuit he died. Can we say that Mr. A led a successful life?

Society holds the viewpoint that it is wrong to attempt to create better humans (through Eugenics). That is, we shouldn't play god. Medicine goes against natural selection, and therefore it is playing god. It theoretically also makes evolution stall, and makes our species as a collective whole, weaker. So, is medicine right?

Am I correct to think that learning one's native language greatly is the best method to becoming an intelligent, much thinking person? For it seems to me that words relate one to reality (to the extent that one can become related to reality). As I learn new words each day (I buy books similar to Merriam-Websters Vocabulary Builder and read them daily, among other books), I feel as though they are figuratively unlocking doors to new thoughts that were not accessible by my mind without the words. Is this a fact: one is literally superior in thought (not in an imaginative sense) to one without the words the former knows? Or am I an arrogant charlatan, and think I am better for just knowing some words? Or, better yet, why are words so powerful? Could you please recommend some books that elucidate the answer to my questions?

I have a question about probability (and baseball). Say that a hitter has consistently hit .300 for many years. Now, suppose that he begins a new season in a slump, and hits only .200 for the first half; should we infer that he will hit well above .300 for the second half (and so finish with the year-end .300 average we have reason to expect of him), or would this be an instance of the gambler's fallacy?

I can recognize the importance of logic in argument but it never seems to apply in the 'real' world. You never see headlines along the lines of SYMBOLIC LOGIC REFUTES SENATOR Z'S CLAIMS ABOUT DEPLOYMENT OF TROOPS IN IRAQ SHOCK, followed by 'if A then not B' stuff. No political columnist ever cites logical validity or fallacies to support their view or dismiss the views of others - it is all opinion and anecdote (even if they did, few would get their point) - so how does logic work outside of the rarefied realm of philosophy?

Are there ever good reasons to believe in hypotheses which are not falsifiable (i.e., "scientific")? Is it implicit in the idea of a falsifiable hypothesis that we should throw non-falsifiable claims by the wayside?

I've heard it said that philosophers as a demographic are overwhelmingly single (in the unmarried sense). I don't know if this is true, but if it is, could it be because love and reason conflict? For example, if your lover has a habit of losing valuable items, locking him/herself out of the house, etc., practical reason forces you to confront them with suggestions implying "you ought to be better - I'm telling you how you should be better", a suggestion which is often infuriating to someone who's supposed to be in an equal relationship with you. Love, on the other hand, urges you to look with forgiveness and even humor on your significant other's faults. Given these consequences, if you're agreed that love and reason pull us in these separate directions, shouldn't humanity focus on love and forgo reason?

Do we "see" black objects in the same sense that we see objects of other colors? Black objects being those which reflect no light, how is looking at a black object different than closing your eyes (it seems absurd to say that we see anything with our eyes closed); in either case, no light reflects from the object to our eyes. If I have a white piece of paper with a black spot on it, do I "see" the spot, or do I infer it?

I am an artist interested in ambiguity and irony. One day I had a brainwave: if I could just establish the answer to a seemingly simple question, then the way would be clear to develop a geometry of irony and several questions that really bug me would never need answering again. The question relates to Carly Simon's song 'You're So Vain' and, simply put is: How true is it that the song is about you? The implied statement in the chorus -"You probably think this song is about you"- is that 'You think this song is about you because you're vain, but in actual fact the song is not about you'. This is a strong reading of the implied statement and there is another, that 'You think this song is about you because you're vain, and you are right'. We should also consider whether or not it is consistent with the lyrics to state the the song is, indeed, about 'you'. This case would invalidate the statement "You're so vain" and leave "I bet you think this song is about you" hanging. The most interesting case for me...

The debate between science and religion has gone on for many years, and many people think that they must choose one or the other to believe. To me, it's a lot like trying to collide two trains on parallel tracks. If one chooses to believe in God, then that person can still believe in the big bang or evolution while believing that God created the universe, because religion explains what happens on a spiritual level, and science explains what happens on a physical level. The two run parallel. Using this as a way of thinking, can science contradict religion at all, and why has the debate between the two gone on for so long when this explanation reconciles them?