Can being constantly surrounded by ugly things and people ruin own's sense of the aesthetic? Conversely, can constantly being surrounded by beautiful things and people ruin own's sense of the aesthetic?

Is judging a person by their intelligence analogous to racism? A person can't help the genetics that determines their intellectual capacity and the belief in the superiority of intelligent people seems to arguably be a basis for social inequalities.

Can a person be a historian and a philosopher at the same time. I have a passion for history and a joint passion for Philosophy? Nathan V.

Hello philosophers, I have yet another question. This time it's on the fundamental foundations of mathematics. I would like to know what Gödel's incompleteness theorem and inconsistency theorem actually stated. Intuitively, math seems logical, in the physical world, if you have two inanimate objects say two pencils laying on the table is it not logical that if you take one away you are only left with one on the table? An ex- professor of mine once told us in mathematics that ZF math was inconsistant and if we could prove that math does not work not only would we win a Fields Prize but we would also be the Herod of children all over the world ( assuming kids don't like to learn fundamental mathematics). Thank You again, Dale G.

After studying philosophy, I am now so skeptical of everything that I no longer know what I should believe in. I have no idea whom I should vote for in election or whether I should be voting at all, what religion I ought to believe in if any at all, why I should bother getting married, or even why I should bother getting out of bed in the mornings. Have you found that philosophy leads to more skepticism and knowing nothing rather than clarification?

One of the obvious ways computers are limited is in their representation of numbers. Since computers represent numbers as bit strings of finite length, they can only represent finitely many, and to a finite degree of precision. Is it a mistake to think the humans, unlike computers, can represent infinitely many numbers with arbitrary precision? We obviously talk about things like the set of all real numbers; and we make use of symbols, like the letter pi, which purport to represent certain irrational numbers exactly. But then I'm not sure whether things like this really do show that we can represent numbers in a way that is fundamentally beyond computers.

Causation has (has it?) an essential relation to time. If some event caused some other event, then the former was previous. But we hear from scientists that time is just one dimension of space-time and indeed that there may be (or might have been) some more dimensions, other than space and time. Should there be analogues of causation related to the other dimensions? Should there be a wider category than causation encompassing all those analogues? Isn't this all a bit perplexing?

dear sir/ madam i have studied aesthetic at university, but i would like to work on aesthetics for kids at elementary school and students of high school. i would really appreciate it if you could help me with this case and introduce me some books and resources, and also i would like to know if there is a specific philosopher who had worked on this case. best regards, H.

The philosopher, Rene Descartes, has said that it is possible to doubt all things except the existence of oneself (cogito ergo sum); that it cannot be doubted, despite how hard one endeavors. However, I am often questioning if that proposition is "truly" "indubitable". I desire to know if there have ever been any well-known or ancient philosophers who had not "concurred" with Rene Descartes regarding the cogito ergo sum; or if there are modern philosophers with great reputation, prestige, or respect within the philosophical community, who believe that the cogito ergo sum is "not" indubitable? Otherwise stated, it is "possible" to "doubt" the existence of oneself.

In war, is it worse for civilians to be killed than soldiers? For example, suppose that it's possible to attain an objective by killing a certain number of civilians, or by killing a significantly greater number of soldiers. Is the latter course preferable from an ethical standpoint, even though it involves more deaths?