I am a scientist with very strong desire for personal growth.I acknowledge the undeniable practical values of science in making better world. However, I am wondering how being a scientist would contribute to my own growth and self-actualization.(regardless of financial or social gain of being a scientist). Also is it worthy to put my life on practicing science which mostly involve in a very narrow research area. I mean if putting so much time and energy on such tiny bit of knowledge is really good and in accordance with my ultimate goal of being self-actualized?

Is rape always immoral? Could it be justified under jurisprudence as punishment for a crime or under environmental ethics to save the human race in the event of a near human extinction?

If every thing has being then how can non-being, as a concept, not have being? Wouldn't it have being by virtue of its distinction from being? I.e. in being 'non-being'- it 'is' that which is 'not being' (the conceptual complement of being) and as it 'is' non-being - distinct from being, it is 'being' no? And so if this is the case, and being is thus a characteristic of all things - then what of being itself?

Do philosophers always embrace rationalism? Why not irrationalism? What's so bad about my voting for a political candidate based on how attractive his wife is?

Is a society that criminalizes incitement to violence and libel really a free society despite all other forms of speech being legal?

People who want to adopt children typically must demonstrate that they would be good parents (they must be financially stable, reasonably healthy, law-abiding, and so on). This is often a very difficult process, as prospective parents are placed under intense scrutiny; and many couples who would likely make fine parents are denied. What reason is there to regulate adoption in this way that would not apply to parenthood in general? I think most of us agree that it is a good thing that not just anyone can adopt. But why should having one's own biological children by any different? I am normally repulsed by the claim that only certain people should be allowed to breed. However, I don't see what would justify applying such demanding standards to adoptive parents but not biological ones.

An acquaintance believes that mandatory vaccination laws are "immoral." Her basic argument, as best I understand it, is that even if vaccines benefit almost everyone, there IS a risk -- however small -- that someone may be injured or even killed by a vaccine. Therefore, to force someone to get a shot that might possibly be hurtful is immoral. Somehow she equates mandatory vaccination to slavery -- something being imposed on people against their will. I don't think mandatory vaccination laws are immoral in the least. Her argument seems pretty wrong to me. Is it?

Suppose I have never played a game of chess. If I now make the claim that I've won all the games of chess I've ever played, is that claim true, false, or undefined? A group of friends had an argument over this, and I figured that philosophers are deeply logical thinkers that can give us the answer and also to get a proper understanding of why the answer is what it is.

If we as professional and amateur philosophers are to accept psychology as a science (see question 5362 answered by Charles Taliaferro), then what does that make psychiatry? Even if a person fits all the criteria for having a mental disorder according to principles of psychology yet he refuses treatment, why should medical or pseudo-medical psychiatrists intervene so long as that individual decides to refuse to concur with the diagnoses or more importantly refuses to to acknowledge the treatment while accepting the diagnoses? Isn't psychiatry then just a mostly futile exercise in normative ethics to the whim of the patient?

Just what is a definition? Are definitions ever proved or are they all man made? If they are man made, what good are they?