Dear Scholars: At what point can the end ever justify the means? I am particularly interested in your response in the context of criminal justice. For example, is it ever acceptable for a police officer to perjure himself/herself to ensure a conviction of a defendant he/she knows to be guilty? Pete C.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and we decide what we think. Then why can't we make everything appear to be beautiful?

As a veggie, I am continually conscious that I have made a moral choice which does not fit with society's morals on the issue (in general). I believe that in this world of choice, I can have an adequate diet without the need to kill animals. What does the panel feel about this issue?

Can the necessity/contingency paradox be dissolved? If God is thought to be a necessary being, how can He be the creator of a contingent world or have an ongoing involvement with it?

If a certain concept is seen as indefinable, such as the concept of infinity, how can it be said to exist?

Is it true that the professional academic philosopher is a relatively new phenomenon? If so, what have been the benefits and shortcomings of professionalising philosophy? I ask this because someone told me recently that the most significant contributions to philosophy have been made by people who never considered themselves to be philosophers as such, but who got philosophical about their primary area of interest - mathematics, science, politics or whatever.

In first year philosophy, I posed a thought experiment involving breakfast cereal that challenges concepts of God. I have since come across it in other forms, but this was the form in which I posed it. It is this: If God is omniscient, and omnipotent then man cannot have free will. The reason is this: If I have a choice of breakfast cereals to eat for breakfast tomorrow morning then God cannot tell me today which breakfast cereal I will eat, because then I may choose to eat the other breakfast cereal just to make a point. Either God does not know, and so is not omniscient; God cannot tell me, and so is not omnipotent; or I do not have the freedom to choose! I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Many people take the saying 'Know thyself' as something we should all aim at, however isn't a degree of self-deception a good thing? Wouldn't it make our lives harder if we knew all our little faults. Is self-knowledge good for its own sake, or only if it can benefit us in some way?

The color of something is the color of the spectrum that isn't taken in by an object. However when I look at the color "green", do I see the same tint someone sees when they see "blue"? The identification of a color is what we've been told, and we've essentially been told what colors don't go good together. So how do we know that all of our eyes see the same thing? -Samantha B.

Does water float? Since I came up with this question, it has created quite a lot of debate as it's not as simple as it at first appears. If water doesn't float, then what is the water on the surface moving on, surely it floats as one bit of water on the top can be moving in the opposite direction to the water lower down. However, maybe water is an entity in its own right - something can't float upon itself can it? Help! From Huw Roberts, Wales, UK.