I am listening to the theme music of a movie soundtrack. While I enjoy the theme music there is nonetheless something about it that strikes me as inauthentic and hallow. The thing is that I can't point to what it is that I find inauthentic. Maybe I might say that the music tries for an unconvincingly and excessively cinematic vastness and grandeur of emotion. But much equally ambitious cinematic music does not strike me as inauthentic. Is it philosophically incoherent to speak of a piece of music as lacking certain virtues such as authenticity when you are not even certain how a piece of music might be called authentic in the first place? How could it make sense? It seems odd to me that I can make such judgments.

Dear Philosophers, Can we regard Race discrimination as an aesthetic issue? By this I mean to view the differences among different races as aesthetic preference. So, can we say that when a person doesn't like a specific human race, he/she is just making an aesthetic choice, and, consequently, if we do not allow him/her to express his/her preference we are limiting his/her freedom of speech? Thank you

Recently, someone I knew of passed away, and was far too young. He was an incredibly good person, he was empathetic and caring and all the things that are considered "good". It made me realise that there have been many people that were inherently "good" who have died at a young age. I feel almost that I have a "duty" to these people to try to be "good" myself. In a sense, I feel all of a sudden a need to be worthy of life, to be deserving of existence, because so many people who deserved to exist, no longer do. In the past, I must have hurt people, made people uncomfortable, as I guess a lot of people have done. The problem is such a worth is not easy to quantify, and to quantify it would trivialise it. I don't know how to satisfy this yearning, nor do I know how to express it with great enough precision to figure out how to satisfy it. What do you suggest I do? Thanks a lot.

Is it possible to conceive of an irrational entity or can only rational things be conceived of? Can irrational things exist? Of course it depend on how you define rational but maybe vagueness has more creative potential for philosophical thought.

What happens after death? I mean, I've thought about this for a while, and have concluded that this current life, the life we are all in, is merely for the purposes of enjoyment and pleasure (reading Aristotle's works :) ) So, when we die, does our perception of time immediately fade away? I mean this. Do we (after death) A) Immediately "respawn" (like HALO)? We die, then instantaneously take on the life of whatever creature that may be (thus time just kind of "skips scenes"? B) Wait in line, like at the DMV for a ticket? Do we simply sit in Limbo, waiting for our name to be called? C) Since there is no life after this (to some people), then life ceases to exist, explosions happen, stuff like that. Does that mean the moment we die,everything is gone? Thanks. PS, Please don't give me "well i'm not dead so i can't tell you haha" kind of stuff. Thanks. Only reason I am inquiring is I just joined a Philosophy club at our school, and I was very interested in this stuff. Thanks for the reply :3

What does it mean to be "judgmental"? Is there a way to avoid being judgmental while also acknowledging that people sometimes engage in inexcusable evil?

Is there a rational basis for deciding when I should sacrifice my life to save another person's life?

If there were a a good reason to believe that irrational thinking--or at least a certain train of irrational beliefs--leads to greater happiness and prosperity (and I think there is a bit of psych research that suggests this is true), could a rational person decide to think irrationally--to adopt irrational beliefs--and would that itself be a rational decision?

Is the expression "ex nihilo nihil fit" which means "nothing comes from nothing" still widely accepted by modern philosophers?

So I was having an argument with a friend that went a little like this: He was saying that because he was a genius, he walked like a genius. I was saying this was logically invalid, that is, he couldn't walk like himself. If there was a particular way of walking that was specific to geniuses, and he was walking this way, then fine. He could be walking, and he could be a genius, so his walking was a genius walking, but it wasn't like a genius. He couldn't be like himself; he was himself. Who was correct?