Is there any serious discussion in philosophy that applies ethics to hypothetical (currently non-existent) situations? Let's say I'm pondering the rights of a person who is put in a suspended state through a time machine, for example.

I work for a housing charity who deal with homeless clients. The local housing authority refues to consider heroin users or alcoholics as vulnerable enough for emergency accommodation because their drug use is a "lifestyle choice." Even if they have severe medical problems [deep vein thrombosis, liver disease, etc.] which in another case may be deemed serious enough to make them "vulnerable." My colleagues and I are confused. Can addictive behaviour seriously be described as an act of free will? I don't know if your rules forbid such qestions as being medical/psychological rather than philosophical, but I have worked in addictions services for nearly 15 years, and I have never seen a definitive answer to this question, therefore I suspect it may be one for the philosophers rather than the men in white coats! Please help us if you can.

Appearances can be deceiving. I feel that humans are hindered by what they perceive, visually. Perhaps almost all forms of major prejudice come from visual representation of ideas that we believe we do not like. I feel that sight is an anchor to the physical realm and without it, perhaps humans could transcend into higher states of being, perhaps becoming super-human, evolutionarily speaking. So my question is: Philosophically, do you feel that humans are hindered from becoming a complete being due to some of our inherent senses, etc. and do you feel it is possible to overcome these physical limitations to attain a higher state of being?

If my friend is on a street corner with a life-like model of a dog and I drive past in my car so fast that I can't tell the difference between the fake dog and a real dog is there any point in me saying I saw a real or fake dog since, to me, the two are indistinguishable? The classes real dog and fake dog seem to combine to form the class dog-like object. If this same analysis were applied to Searle's Chinese room then it seems pointless to say the room does or doesn't understand. If a person who is unaware of the room's setup (sort of like me in my car) goes up to the room and asks it questions then it provides answers that are consistent with the room understanding Chinese so from that persons point of view the room is just as understanding as any chinese person on the street. If we miniaturised the room and put it in someone's head and put a real Chinese speaker behind the Chinese room slot then the questioner will not be able to tell that any change has occurred.

Hello, My question is about definitions and I would like to know what it means to define something. From I what can tell, definitions seem to describe relations between processes, objects and other type of relationships. If I were to ask, "Define yourself", What am I really asking here? Can an answer be provided without referring to something else? Because I would at least not associate "define yourself" with physical attributes, the person´s job, career, family situation, personality attributes or any other sort of descriptions...or am I just way off? Hopefully you can sort out some of my confusion. Thanks in advance. M.

Is art all about context? Is it possible to have a viewpoint on a piece of art that does not involve the influences of culture, belief, upbringing and so on? Why is it that different genres of art require contextual referencing more than others - e.g. personally, I find that I either 'like' or 'dislike' novels without needing to think about why but when it comes to a contemporary art installation my opinion is based almost entirely based on what I know about the artist, their background, the precedents for the work, the political context in which it was made, etc.

I opened up your website and encountered a philosophical discussion of a bent spoon in a glass of water. Which prompts my question: Why hasn’t there been a scientific revolution in philosophy as there has been in physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, historiography, astronomy, music, political science, the social sciences, medicine, er... well just about everything else? Here's my point. When a college student studies ANY of those other subjects, there is scant attention paid to what people thought before the Enlightenment or at best before the Renaissance (except as a historical curiosity). And that's a good thing, BECAUSE =phlogiston has no place in modern physics; =Air, Fire, Water and Earth in Chemistry =the Great Chain of Being in Biology =Bodily Humors in physiology =the Great Man Theory in historiography =Astrology in astronomy =Celestial number sequences in Music theory =belief in the Divine Right of Kings in Poly Sci =belief in possession by demons, the caste system, or the Noble...

Could you tell me, what are the main problems in modern ethics of sex?

What is the principle underpinning logic's rules aimed at avoiding contradiction? We know that contradiction is "bad", e.g. if a line of argument can be reduced to the statement A & ~A, (or if such an assertion can be extracted from an argument) the argument may be invalid. Where does this principle that contradiction leads to invalidity come from? Is it a "just because" axiom? Is it from overwhelming empirical observation? (I've certainly never seen something that both is and isn't at the same time.) More broadly (if this isn't too much) what is the relationship between basic concepts in epistemology (non-contradiction and cause/effect) and axioms of logic? What metaphysical connections or bindings exist between axioms of logic, epistemology, and objective reality? Thanks

Is it possible to 'see' existence (the world) without any bias? Can a lack of bias be considered a bias or just another perpective? Is there a 'true' way to see the world?