How can a person retain property rights after their death, given that they can no longer be said to actually possess property?

Is the following behavior moral : 1. I was robbed when I was 14 and 15 on the streets. It was only a few dollars and they only involved verbal threats and no physical violence but it was somewhat traumatic. I didn't report to the police because for whatever reason I can't still understand. Probably there was (1) a certain mistrust of the police's ability to catch such criminals and (2) not wanting to bother with the hassle of dealing with police work -- for certainly parents would be involved in a teenager's case, and my parents were busy people -- for what was so little money, and (3) the minimization of the potential effects of such a traumatic emotional experience; I was brought up to act manly and powerful, and "telling" seemed like weakness(why I don't know). 2. 15 years has passed and I want to find them and make them pay for the emotional trauma that I had to suffer for a long time afterwards. I still lack basic trust between people and so forth. Is this moral? I.e. is the attempt at...

How important is translation in the study of philosophy? It seems like, in certain areas of philosophy, precise definitions and subtle nuance can have significant impact in outcomes. I was curious how a difference in translation might affect it. One example: I have three different translations of the Tao te Ching , and for some of them, the same original comes out so differently one wonders what each translator thought they were reading at the outset! Another example: when I first read Das Kapital (in English), I was initially confused by the recurring term "means of production." Finally, it dawned on me, that term meant "technology" and serendipity! it all clicked. thank you for your consideration.

Let's imagine that a Greek Philosopher, A, proposed a theory of matter that bares a striking resemblance to what contemporary experiments suggest is the case. The arguments for her theory, however, were at best dubious even by the standards of her time. Has A done enough to earn philosophical or scientific credit for the theory? To put it another way, how do we draw the line between lucky speculation and genuine insight in the history of ideas? Does such a line make a difference?

My question relates to reclusive behavior. I wish not to be active socially because it requires so much time and I seem not to learn or be entertained by the contact with others. I am 83 years old and was a medical sales person throughout most of my life. I am a widower. Most of my time is spent on the internet learning things I have wondered about throughout life. My question is: Do very socially active people have less interest in learning things they do not know or do they already know or understand all that they ever wondered about. All information that may be provided regarding my inquiry will be appreciated.

In his TV series "Genius," Stephen Hawking presented an experiment in which people decided to push a button in order to stop a rotating dial. They were hooked up to EEG at the time. The experiment indicated that people decided to push the button, and then about 1 second later they became aware that they made this decision. Hawking, however, interpreted the evidence differently. He claimed that people's "unconscious" mind made the decision. It seemed to me that Hawking made significant logical error: he conflated "consciousness" with "self-awareness." It seems quite clear (at least from anecdotal reports from people who have been in a life-threatening situation) that our conscious minds are capable of processing information and reacting to it with extraordinary quickness. it also seems that we would be at a serious selective disadvantage if we were self-aware during these episodes. Is this distinction "merely" a matter of semantics? In Hawking's show, it seemed like he was interpreting data in a...

It is said that one should put others before oneself, but isn't this impossible? Consider two people, Mr A and Miss B. If A succeeds in putting B before himself, B can't put A before herself. Hasn't B been forced into being selfcentred by A?

I have a question regarding the notion of "objective moral truth." A friend of mine maintains that because everyone agrees that killing and eating babies is wrong, thus it is demonstrated that there are objective moral truths. I disagree. It seems to me there is no such thing as a moral truth absent a moral agent, and we (moral agents) decide what is good and what is not. So his argument seems to support the notion of some sort of consensus rather than an objective truth. What am I missing? Thanks!

I wonder how philosophers were dealing with economical issues in ancient Greece: who took care of for instance Plato's and Aristotle's everyday needs: food, clothes etc.

One major problem I have with a lot of arguments is that at least one premise relies on intuition to be justified. The problem is that intuition is terribly unreliable and therefore cannot be used to justify a premise. Arguments that rely on intuition seem common in normative ethics from my what I have seem (The utility monster is one such example). I decided to make a thought experiment to tell if the argument relies on intuition that goes like this: You are alien which is born with the intuition that utilitarianism and is self-evident You discover a planet and decide to go visit it to find people living on it. you ask a person about utilitarianism and the person think it is false and use the utility monster argument to back up that assertion. Would you think this argument is sound or even makes only sense or a actual problem with the position you think is self-evident? Utilitarianism can be changed to whatever the position be attacked is and the utility monster into the argument against said...