Consider the following scenario: an acquaintance I personally do not particularly enjoy talking to is learning French and asks me for a favour, namely to chat with them an hour per week in French, my mother tongue. Would it be morally good to do them the favour, even if it would just be out of duty? Or another scenario: my mum wants me to visit her for Christmas, but I wish not to, just as much as she wants me to go. Should I go out of duty? According to Kant, good actions must be motivated by a sense of duty, as opposed to inclination. But shouldn't it be just the other way round, at least if the action is about doing another person a favour? It almost seems immoral to do somebody a favour only because of duty.

Hello. I don't know if this is too vague or even if it is a philosophical question or not, but here goes. I am fourteen. In my english class today, we had a discussion about one thing or another and the question was raised, "Do you fear 'getting old'?" A great majority of classmates said that they did. I thought that it was going to happen anyway, so why fear it. Is it irrational to fear aging? Thanks.

If you are a promising young human being, say anywhere beyond the usual average, is there something like a moral obligation to make something great out of your talent? (Or asked another way: is somebody with great talent more obliged to achieve something great than any other person? See, this question is about one LIFE: taking huge pains, giving up trying to reach normality, all for the one reason of ART which is considered as a state of higher consciousness or whatever; a thing which begins to smell foolish to me and which I question more and more each day - without getting pessimistic, though.) Or is this whole should-would-could-thing just a question of decision?! Isn't life generally speaking just what you CAN and then what you WANT and at last what you DECIDE? I would be downright thrilled about getting an answer.. thx. (Wow, I don't speak english, I had to work on this question for more than an hour.. or actually I began working on it over 18 years ago... who knows, who cares!)

Hello, I wonder how laws of physics, mathematics and logic influence each other. What I mean is the following: In Quantum Mechanics (probably even in general physics), only very few non-linear problems can be explicitly solved. The most important ones are 1.the harmonic oscillator (potential r^2) and 2. the Hydrogen atom (potential 1/r). This is the reason why almost any other non-linear problem is first reduced to a r^2 or 1/r-potential problem. This seems like lucky coincidence or a divine act or whatever you might call it: 2 very basic physical problems can be expressed and solved in a very basic mathematical way. Now I keep on wondering: If our mathematics was based on some different algebra than the one it actually is, say, elliptic functions (=objects that are reasonably hard to express in "our" mathematics), would our understanding of physics be different? (For example: would we better understand physical facts that are now "too complicated" (because of their mathematical complexity), and ...

On the subject of race. Why is there a tacit assumption that all persons are white unless identified as some different race? Example: Maybe a guy is lost from his group at a big convention or something and he tells someone that he is looking for "these three guys... one of them is black, and one of them has a big nose ring?" Like black-ness is an unusual trait to be used to pick somebody out of a crowd or a police line up, like a scar or a tattoo. I hope this made at least some sense.

Does freedom exist? Let's say this is anarchy: there are no rules, and no control -- is that freedom? You have the freedom to go kill someone, but in return you'd be taking away their freedom to live. Does freedom only apply in certain cases where it doesn't affect anybody? Such as freedom to think what you want. But then again wouldn't education be taking away that freedom, by telling you what's right to think? My question is simply can freedom exist?

Dear AskPhilosophers, I'm not an avid philosopher (ask me to pull up quotes from a philosopher and I'll mumble something from Thomas Jefferson), but I've always been curious about something: What kind of jobs do philosophers do? I ask this in good heart; I'm just curious as to what you do after going to college for four years to learn about philosophy. But then what? Is there a philosophy job of sorts? Can you just have that job and nothing else?

Can a good deed be thought in any way to offset the mark of a bad one, or does the moral worth of either sort exist independently? If a person commits a crime we say is unforgivable (say, murder), do we nevertheless suppose that the deed might be atoned for by some (albeit tremendous) combination of benevolent deeds, or do we mean that that the crime's weight is absolute regardless of peripheral acts? -andy

Is a doctor or an optometrist ethically or morally obligated to report a patient with poor eyesight to the state department of motor vehicles?

Is time infinitely divisible or is it composed of individual moments? Seth