Excluding people drafted, isn't a soldiers life less important than a civilians. Otherwise what is the point of protecting them. A good mother would give her life to protect her child because the child's life holds more value right? Or am I misunderstanding why one sacrifices ones self.also if a person joins the military but isn't willing to go through whatever (torture, death etc..)is required doesn't that make them cowards or even something worse.

It is common to characterize emotions as unhelpful in moral discernment. When faced with a situation that requires careful moral deliberation, emotion is often set aside, while reason and evidence are taken to be very important. Isn't always this the case? Do emotions really have no value in moral discernment, or they have to some extent but some philosophers have just neglected their part?

If the nature of a man is to be egocentric, is this person capable of doing true good or is he always going to be egocentric and therefore evil even if his deeds are good and he means them to be good? Is it possible to escape this nature, deny it, and act for good because of the good itself or just impossible because such person would always try to be good just because his ego demands it?

How is it clear that religious thought and philosophy were totally intertwined during the Middle Ages?

I think of philosophers as people who describe and debate in order to reach defensible positions concerning ethics, truth, etc. But what is uniquely philosophical about such practices? Philosophers identify fallacies, but so do logicians. Philosophers are trained in intellectual movements, but so are historians. As Rorty put it, where is the fach in philosophy? Is philosophy more about excellence in argumentation than content?

My dictionary's definition of "definition" is an "exact description of a thing". The definition doesn't contain an exact description of a thing, it only mentions it, so it doesn't qualify as a definition. Paradox?

In a recent response to a question, Michael Lacewing writes: "Blackburn’s quasi-realism argues that ethical language is rather more complex than either emotivist theory claims [Ayer's and Stevenson's]. First, ethical language does express propositions, such as ‘what she did was courageous’ or ‘his remark was unkind’ as well as ‘murder is wrong’. The predicates ‘was courageous’, ‘was unkind’, ‘is wrong’, attribute a property to something (what she did, his remark, murder). However, second, these predicates aren’t genuine descriptions of what she did, etc. but ‘projections’ of our evaluations. In using ethical language, we don’t speak of and think in terms our personal evaluations, but in terms of the properties of things in the world. We treat our evaluative commitments (to courage, to kindness etc.) as though they were judgments about how the world is. This is enormously useful, because it is much easier to coordinate our attitudes with other people if we think in terms of an intersubjective world of...

It seems that one characteristic of the present Western culture is redefining anything. The unborn has now been defined as a human being who is not a person. Marriage is no longer just between a man and a woman. Homosexuality is no longer a mental disorder. With all these redefinition, it is confusing whose testimony is to be believed. My question is: is there any correct criteria for defining anything, or is it simply the case that the definition of something depends on what people thought about it?

We know for now, at least, it's impossible to go back in time scientifically. But what if you really needed to, say if you had done something really bad and had ever desperation to go back in time and correct what you did, so you don't suffer the consequences you are suffering in the present. Provided you would not cause a disaster by going back in time, and that you would only change the bad things you did, it is an interesting concept. With this context, if you could be given a drug, that would leave you asleep for the rest of your life (coma), would you do it? Read on, there's more. In this sleep, you will have a dream, which is set from just before your mistake. So essentially, it causes you to simulate the past and the rest of your life in your head. It seems real, but it isn't. My question is, would this be the same as going back in time and changing things in reality? Does reality matter more, or our interpretation of it?

I've had many discussions with religious people and they seem to be very fond of some kind of ''optimistic'' reinterpretation. For example, they will use the morals, knowledge and science of today to argue the veracity of their scriptures, when it seems likely that the morals, knowledge and science of today were, I presume, alien to the people who lived back then. They will try to make ''modern'' common sense compatible with their scriptures, when these scriptures seem static and fixed in time. A never ending series of reinterpretations. I think it resembles Popper's so-called ''immunizing stratagems''. Is this a real phenomenon? Does it have a (philosophical) name?