I would just like t to ask you a few questions. Locke speaks of Reason being the Law of Nature if I am correct but then sees that we need certain minimal authority within society to provide correctly measured punishment for those who go against another's natural rights. If Reason is the said Law of Nature then why can not most of us, according to Locke, decide these measurements of justice individually? I understand that he says 'those who will consult it' but if he sees that we naturally as a majority can live within equality and freedom due to Reason, why is this area of justice, in theory, any different? Furthermore I have a problem with his assumption that the moralities he defines would and should be the morality of everyone because many can and do Reason differently. I may not understand Locke completely though.

Do you feel that philosophy suffers from a lack of respect from the public and do you think any of that is deserved?

What insight can babies in scientific experiments provide philosophy? If we really are born with blank slates, how does that explain why many babies will choose to look and gesture at the side by side photo of the model instead of the photo of the grandma? I really think philosophy will answer this alone instead of neuroscience.

Can we really define Philosophy?

Does it actually make any sense when someone claims that they wish they were born in a different era or location or to a different family? Sometimes, someone will say that they wish they'd been born in, say, 1950. Without thinking too hard about it, it seems to make sense. But if I do think about what they said, it really doesn't. Let's say we have two timelines. We have the first one in which the person says they wish they were born in 1950. And then we have the second one in which, for whatever reason, there was one more person born in 1950 that wasn't born that year in the first timeline. The problem I see is that there's really no way of linking these two people. Who's to say if they're "the same"? They'd have different experiences, different looks, and probably different personalities. I could see this maybe being resolved by throwing in the concept of a soul, but that doesn't really seem like a logically-sound option (if you and I (as souls) switched bodies for the day, would either of us be...

As far as I can tell western and Buddhist philosophers would probably agree that if at noon Jones is in London and Brown is in Paris, then Jones and Brown are not identical people, because they are discernible (in this case by location). However it seems like they would disagree in the case of Jones in London at noon and in Paris at 6 PM. A western philosopher might say that while Jones in London can be discerned from Jones in Paris, this discernment is cancelled out by the fact that the two situations don't happen at the same time, as in the example with Jones and Brown, and so Jones in London at noon is still identical to Jones in Paris at 6. Whereas a Buddhist philosopher might say that Jones in London at noon and Jones in Paris at 6 can't be identical people, not only because they are discernible by location, but also because they are discernible by time. Mustn't there be something wrong with one of these views, or both perhaps? If they're both correct then Jones in London at noon is both identical...

Does one need to consent to a social contract? It seems that they are something people are often born into and while it is sometimes possible to move somewhere else that is not always the case, for example someone who is born somewhere where travel is restricted because of the social contract itself or other circumstances (such as North Korea). How does this affect the nature of the social contract?

Are citizens in the US obligated to obey the law just because it is the law? If one reserves the right of civil disobedience, doesn't that imply that the state's authority is ultimate not legitimate? Thanks for continuing this site.

Can we really be dead? There is no existence where we can be as unborn, and there is no existence where we can be, as dead. We are not born from something and we won't die into something, and therefore we have no awareness before we were born, and we will have no awareness after we die. So to be unborn or to be dead does not exist, it is not created. How can I be dead if there is no existence where I can experience to be dead? It seems that everything is an endless reality, an eternal state of totality where you have ever known and will ever know is this!

In which book, which chapters does Hegel talk about 'everything happens for a reason'? Are there other authors that talk about this topic? What are the titles?