Is it appropriate to email a philosopher in Academia about a journal article they may have published, whether it be with a possible criticism or query? This is assuming that the emailer is just a casual reader of said journal, not an academic, with no involvement in a university. Also assuming the email is polite, to the point, not of an exorbitant length, and the emailer is quite sure of his query or criticism.

Many pro-choice advocates maintain that, though abortions should be permissible, they are regrettable nonetheless. For instance, Bill Clinton famously said that he wanted to keep abortions "safe, legal and rare." I don't understand this view. To my mind, whether abortion is immoral turns on the question of whether a fetus is a person with a right to life. But this seems a clear dichotomy--either fetuses have such a right, or they don't. If they do, then abortion is immoral. If they don't, then not only should abortion be permitted, but there is nothing objectionable about them at all. Indeed, it is every bit as innocuous as using condoms. Sometimes I think that what is happening is that people who advocate this position are still captive to some kind of residual pro-life sentiment. They believe that abortions should be permissible, but they can't shake the feeling that they are still, somehow, a bad thing. (And not just because of circumstantial considerations, such as that women who need abortions are...

Is it possible for a mathematical equation to both be fundamentally unsolvable and also have a correct answer?

Is one who spreads a contagious disease unconciously held responsible for the victimes? Or under what circumtances should he be held responsible?

According to Hillary Clinton, "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat." On what conceivable grounds could such a statement be made given that dying tends to be kind "victimizing"? Has feminist discourse gone so far that it egocentrically sees even male loss in terms of female victimization? Should feminist thinking be criticized for it tendency toward sexism toward men? Or if feminism is by definition something that isn't sexist because feminism is about opposing sexism how do we address the fact that so much that is called "feminism" doesn't live up to that definition?

Would it be fair to say that philosophy is a manipulation of words, and that scientists deal with the relationship between language and extra-language observations? Thus "truth" would primarily be a language concept according to which consistency between words would exist. In the non-language (empirical) world truth would be infrequent because be empirical observations can rarely be one hundred percent verified.

In philosophy terminology, what is the difference between the self and the soul? When philosophers argue against the existence of the self, are they really doing something much different than when they argue against the existence of the soul? Can you recommend any books that make this clear?

What's the difference between post-modernism and critiques of modernity?

Russell says, “The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual belief of his age or his nation, and from conviction which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason.” What prejudices, habitual beliefs, and unreasoned convictions do you think Russell is referring to here? Do you see these things in people around you?

Frequently, I see the statment: "logical truths are trivial". But, what is meant by the word *trivial*?