What's the criterion for the truth of a philosophical proposition? In philosophy as a general discipline, not in different doctrines. In science, it's the observed reality; in religion, it's the God's sayings revealed to its prophet and gathered in a book such as Bible, Quran, etc; in art, the matter is not the truth but beauty and seemingly the criterion should be the audience's experience when being exposed to the art work. But in philosophy what is it?

Does loving (eros, agape, and/or philia) someone presuppose having respect for them? Or is there some way we can make sense of the claim, "I love X, but I do not respect X" or "I love X, but I am not compelled to act in a respectful way toward X"?

Are there actions which are morally permissable when undertaken by a group but which would be immoral if performed by an individual?

Is it morally wrong to make someone happy by telling them an amusing story about a third party's bad misfortune?

What is analogy? I read Wikipedia's article on the subject and I found it a bit vague or something (for my poor brain, at least...). Is analogy the same as metaphor? Is analogical thinking non-scientific? As far as I see it, politicians are always drawing on analogies. Isn't that just rhetoric? I searched your site and I found the word "analogy" several times, but its use never seemed decisive to answer the questions.

Is extreme (very violent) consensual sadomasochism morally wrong? If so, should it be against the law to cause injury by this practice? Or would it be a 'private' matter?

According to Descartes' demon hypothesis, would it be possible for the demon to deceive us about the rules of logical inference e.g. could my belief in the law of non-contradiction be caused by the demon?

Following a class discussion of Augustine's position on slavery, a student in my Ancient Political Theory class made the claim that slavery was essentially good and necessary for the United States. When I began to think about all the ways to refute this claim, I came across another question: "Can slavery be morally justified?"

Do you think there are two distinct kinds, 'male' and 'female', in terms of gender, biological differences, or social and cultural constraints? I know this seems like a broad question but it is asked with the idea/intention of feminism behind it. If any of you have a brief (or extensive!) philosophical opinion on any issues within this query I would be very interested to know. Thank you for your time.

The question I have arises from a number of phenomena I have noticed of late. One is that a number of reasonably respected philosophers have publicly made asses of themselves by demonstrating serious ignorance of the empirical data available in the recent evolution/ID 'controvercy'; a second is that there have been a lot of suggestions that unsupported pseudo-scientific hypotheses (such as 'irreducible complexity') should be assigned to the philosophy classroom (as a kind of dumping-ground for ill-thought-out ideas); and the third is that a lot of the most promising philiosophy seems to be coming from 'thinking scientists' (in neuroscience, physics, and so on) rather than from professional thinkers. So, is there a crisis in philosophy? Science - at least in principle - is grounded in the systematic study of verifiable phenomena; a scientist whose knowledge outside of science is weak and who has little philosophy may not be satisfying as a person but as a scientist can still produce work with real meaning...