People often complain that, generally, philosophical writings are too difficult to read. Taking this seriously, do you think one could say that it is in some respects immoral for a philosopher to -perhaps unthinkingly!- cast her thoughts in such a way as to make them difficult to apprehend? (Excluding very specialized philosophy, that is- where apparent abstruseness is simply a consequence of complexity. ie. surely all philosophy is not simply beyond the ordinary citizen.) I ask this because I enjoy reading philosophy but sometimes find that if the writer where more patient and deliberate with his/her presentation and structuring I wouldn't take so wretchedly long to understand the ideas. So...do you learned men and woman think that you have a duty to write concisely, laying out your thoughts as accessibly, systematically and neatly as possible? (In a gentle voice:It is after all tax payers money you're spending, and as readers we have finite time and much to do!) Kindly.

Do people have a right to be racist? I argue that people don't. They have a legal ability to be racist but not a right because a right implies that you are in some fundamental way their is justification to be racist and that's just not true when it comes to racism. Am I right? Am I almost right?

My maternal grandfather was a teenager in the Second World War, and he stole a pocket knife and a relatively valuable watch from a dead German. This kind of looting, I gather, was widespread at the time, yet the few times I was told the story, whoever was telling (either my grandfather or my mother) always seemed slightly embarrassed, and appeared to be trying to make excuses for taking stuff from a dead body. If we look beyond the Second World War, looting bodies (as in, taking items from the corpse when one did not cause the death oneself) is often considered quite despicable. But assuming one is not in such a position as to know whether the person made a will and who the items should be returned to, why should we disapprove of it so strongly?

Why is aesthetics so concerned with beauty? When I listen to music or appreciate art I respond to it in all sorts of different ways and beauty is only a small but significant part of the experience of art.

What's the difference between saying "John is fat. Mary is tall." and saying "John is fat and Mary is tall."? What does "and" mean here?

When two people share an experience of something but reach difference aesthetic judgements about the experience, are they experiencing the thing in question differently? Or are they reacting differently to exactly the same experience, and if so, what does that entail? For example, I grew up in Canada and have always liked peanut butter, but I now live in Germany, where few people seem to even know what peanut butter is, and nobody actually likes it. My girlfriend has tried it, but doesn't like it at all. I find it hard to believe that she can eat peanut butter and experience the same delicious taste I am experiencing, and yet not enjoy it. It seems more plausible to me that peanut butter tastes different to her than it does to me, for whatever reason (and obviously, neither of us experience the "correct" taste, just different ones), and that this accounts for her not liking it. Yet on the other hand, the chemicals in the food are the same for both of us, so how can the taste be so different? So...

Hello, and thanks for this amazing site. I am a 17 year old guy in a relationship. My girlfriend (although the word comes with a certain stigma of immaturity, which I don't like) and I have been together for well over a year. We have had a very successful relationship, even though we've had our bumps and bruises. However, our relationship is now in turmoil. My girlfriend is trying to end the relationship - although we both still love each other very much, enjoy each other's company, and feel the same as day one. The reason is her commitment issues. They come from a very troubled past, but I will not betray her privacy and give further details. This has been an issue which she has avoided for a long time. Never could we have a productive discussion on the issue. In truth, she needs therapy. She admits this, she knows this. She discontinued therapy (for PTSD and other things) a couple years ago. The reason why she refuses to go to therapy, why she is driven to break apart our relationship rather then go to...

Why is it so difficult to accurately discuss consciousness? People have been fumbling around with strange thought experiments and neologisms like "qualia" for a while now, yet there still doesn't seem to be any clear language to use while discussing the "hard problem of consciousness". The closest I can get is to frame the question using a computer analogy. A computer can compute, and then it can provide output to show a human user what it's computing. Our minds seem to be providing "output" that we might call consciousness or experience; why isn't it just computing in the dark? Yet even this analogy seems clumsy and inaccurate. So what makes consciousness so uniquely impossible to discuss in a clear fashion? I've never come across any other topic where language itself failed to grasp the subject of discussion.

What arguments do contemporary philosophers use in their work? I have been told that a lot of what philosophers argue, don't actually do totally rigorous and deductive arguments. But do more of a fudge in founding their arguments. Do they use mostly inductive arguments? Inference to the best explanation? And if their arguments aren't really rigorous and deductive, why do they teach philosophy students so much formal logic?

Is there any good reason to be patriotic or nationalistic? Why shouldn't we just view our nations as focused socio-legal frameworks within which we can work to try to improve the condition of humanity as a whole?