Could ADHD drugs like Adderall be accurately described as strengthening a person's will?

Is convincing a person they are wrong not a form of indoctrination? After all, it involves changing the way people think such that it conforms with one's own views. Is it not censorship? Since putting opinions in the wrong clearly prevents them from being expressed.

What does it mean to say that an opponent's view, though incorrect (as far as one can tell, anyway), is nonetheless "reasonable"? Why aren't all incorrect views unreasonable?

Over the past few years, my wife has become a staunch antivaccinationist. (We have a son on the autism spectrum; she has bought into the discredited vaccine causation theory of autism.) She is unreachable on this topic; no facts or reason will move her from her position. Unfortunately, she has decided that our children are to have no further vaccinations. She will not compromise on this. I, of course, want our children to be protected from dangerous diseases and thus want them to be vaccinated. My question: What are my ethical obligations in this situation--to my wife, to my children, and to society? Going behind my wife's back and having the children vaccinated without her knowledge does not seem ethical. Agreeing to her demand that the children receive no further shots also seems unethical--this would put my kids at risk of disease, as well as other people. Telling my wife up front that I'm taking the children to get their shots, despite her objections, also seems problematic--they are her children...

I have asked many regular non-philosopher type folks about how to avoid appearing "rude, crude and stupid" when indicating sexual interest in women. Not many well formed answers are given to me but I am told that a necessary ingredient is subtlety. You should never be direct about your intentions. Is being direct and straightforward really rude? What does saying that you must not be straightforward imply about the nature of those intentions in the first place? What then distinguishes rude from non-rude forms of expressing sexual intention?

According to Nicholas D. Smith in response to a question about sexual harassment legislation, "The minute someone in that place begins to give sexual attention to someone else in that workplace, the environment is changed--and changed in a way that makes the workplace no longer an entirely comfortable place to work." However the fact of the matter is that a great many people marry their coworkers and that studies show only a small percentage of those relationship were started by people who accidentally met up outside of work. If the purpose of sexual harassment legislation is to ban all interaction of a sexual nature between coworkers (since all sexual attention makes the workplace an uncomfortable place to work) then those marriages could not have occurred if sexual harassment law was 100% effective in achieving its supposed purpose. Since marriage is a highly regarded social institution isn't it highly unlikely that the purpose of sexual harassment legislation is to ban all sexual interaction between...

Are historical facts always true, throughout time? Consider the fact that Barack Obama is the forty-fourth president of the United States of America. Was it true two hundred years ago? If someone in the nineteenth century had said "Barack Obama is the forty-fourth president of the United States of America", would it have been true?

I have a question regarding moral philosophy as it relates to political viewpoint. I can understand why philosophers in general might have some affinity for an argument that says those of us who are relatively 'well off' have a moral duty to assist those who are temporarily (or permanently) 'in need' of assistance. However, I want to look at it from the perspective of the person who needs the help. Many of us talk about improving ourselves so that we can make a difference to others. Why do we deny the opportunity to make a difference to those who need help? Isn't that demeaning and stultifying to them? Isn't there an implicit message that 'you are not competent to take care of yourself, and so you have to rely on us to do that for you?' My father says that is because career politicians are cynical and are merely using 'we have to help others' as a reason to entrench themselves in power indefinitely at good salaries with nice benefits. He points out that certain programs are based on income...

Recently I was watching the famous "Powers of Ten" video which starts with a couple at a picnic and moves out to the far edges of the universe, moving ten times further out each second. After this the camera goes back to the couple and enters the hand of the man at the picnic, moving through layers of skin, blood cells, molecules, atoms and finally a haze of interacting subatomic particles. What struck me about this part of the video is that if the camera was to move beyond the boundaries of the man's hand we wouldn't be able to tell. There is no demarcation between the subatomic particles which make up the man's hand and the subatomic particles which make up the surrounding air. So, in what sense do seperate entities exist? Is seperateness an illusion inherent to the experience of beings at a macroscopic scale, similar to our illusion that objects are "solid" when in reality an atom is comprised mostly of empty space?

I asked this question of a physicist and he told me to ask a philosopher. If one was to observe a closed, isolated region of space under vacuum conditions, i.e. there are no particles in this region and none may enter into it. Also there are no fields (i.e. gravitational, electromagnetic, etc.) acting or existing on or in this region. The only interaction with this system is as an outside observer. Can this observer notice the passing of time? If so, how? And does the act of observation make the observer part of the system, since the observer is technically interacting with it? Currently we measure time by the movement of quantum mechanical particles, such as the molecules in a ticking clock; the vibrations of atoms; and the decay of radioactive isotopes. But could we perhaps, in this hypothetical system, justify using properties of space itself, such as quantum foam or the expansion of space (expanding universe), and, if so, how would we observe these features?