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Existence
Physics

The big bang theory says that time began with the big bang. Is that correct? Then does that mean that those who describe the big bang theory as an idea that something comes from nothing are incorrect? If time began with the big bang doesn't that mean there never was a time when there was nothing?

I can't resist responding to one thing that Prof. Stairs says in his excellent reply: "If there's no such [necessary] being, then it might be that there's no explanation for why contingent things exist." I used to think that myself. But as I thought more about the question "Why do any contingent things exist?" I concluded that the question has a very simple answer -- indeed, many simple answers -- if it's a well-posed question in the first place, and those answers have nothing to do with any necessary being. I try to explain why in this paper .
Animals

Is torturing an insect less immoral than torturing a non-human primate?

I take it that being tortured implies the experience of pain or other suffering (physical or psychological) or, at the very minimum, the frustration of the victim's desires. Now, insect brains are surprisingly complex: according to Wikipedia, there are 100,000 neurons in the brain of a fruit fly, and as many as 10 million synapses; no doubt there are many more in mantids. But are insect brains complex enough that insects can experience pain, suffering, or frustration? I don't think anyone knows. But the answer may well be no , in which case your question would rest on a false presupposition. But suppose an insect can be tortured. If a case of torture is otherwise gratuitous, then its degree of immorality probably varies with the suffering that it causes. It seems highly likely that at least some nonhuman primates can suffer to a greater degree than insects can, making it worse to torture them, all else being equal.
Knowledge

Although I can experience feelings of fear, pride, and shame in my dreams, I cannot experience the sensation of sharp pains in my dreams. Right now, I am pinching myself and I am experiencing pain. How does this fail to prove that I am awake?

If I'm genuinely skeptical about whether I can know I'm awake, then I can't properly take as given the data you cite in your question, namely, that I can experience fear, pride, and shame while dreaming but not sharp pain. Trusting those data would presuppose that I can tell when I'm awake and when I'm dreaming. So the proof would be persuasive only if I can already know when I'm awake, in which case why would I need or seek a proof? By the same token, however, I can't properly appeal to the convincing dreams I've had in order to conclude that I can't know I'm not dreaming right now. For when I claim that I've had convincing dreams -- i.e., non-waking experiences that I mistook for waking experiences -- I also presuppose that I can tell when I'm awake, which runs counter to the skeptical conclusion of the dream argument.
Knowledge

On 'Cogito Ergo Sum' If this statement means that the only thing I can know to be true is that I exist, then that means I don't know if the reasoning used to deduce this statement is logically sound. What evidence do we have that our reasoning is to be believed? The only reason that we trust our reasoning is because have reasoned that it is trustworthy. We trust our reasoning because we trust our reasoning. I know that I came to this conclusion with the same human logic as cogito ergo sum, so this conclusion must be equally invalid. Humans are imperfect-> humans 'invented' logic-> logic is not necessarily perfect. "I do not know if I know anything." Please fix any broken logic I have, or point me in the direction of relevant articles on how my thinking was outdone hundreds of years ago. Thanks

I don't mean to criticize Prof. Reid's excellent scholarly response on behalf of Descartes. But it's worth pointing out that the reasoning from the Second Replies that he attributes to Descartes is more complex and dubitable than the inference from 'I think' to 'I exist' is to begin with. In the quoted passage, Descartes seems to make a universal generalization about human psychology based on a single known case, his own. That generalization can't be more reliable than inferring 'I exist' from 'I think', or else we wouldn't need an empirical science of psychology. Likewise, the psychological claim that a two-step inference is always less reliable than a one-step thought is a claim that's got to be more dubitable than inferring 'I exist' from 'I think' or calculating the sum of 2 and 3. It would have been better had Descartes denied the very intelligibility of doubting the simplest inferences we make -- or at least had he challenged a skeptical opponent to make sense of such doubt.
Philosophy

Do minute quantities of alcohol consumption enhance or degrade philosophical enlightenment?

I don't know how alcohol affects philosophical enlightenment, but it wouldn't surprise me if alcohol (especially in more than minute quantities) enhanced many people's desire to wax philosophical. Really, you've asked an empirical question; without a systematic experiment, all anyone could offer in reply would be anecdotes. Depending on what's meant by 'minute quantities', the answer to your question might well be neither . Philosophy is a difficult cognitive activity, and it's hard for me to think at the moment (and I'm sober) of any difficult cognitive activities that alcohol helps me do better. You might find something relevant in these two lighthearted collections: Wine and Philosophy and Beer and Philosophy .
Freedom

Why don't determinists believe, at least partially, in the notion of free will? If all events are simply outcomes of antecedent choices and events, wouldn't my decisions now affect me, to some degree, in the future? Thanks for considering this question, as rudimentary as it may seem.

Many philosophers believe in both determinism and the existence of free will. Even more philosophers accept at least the compatibility of determinism and free will: they're known as 'compatibilists' (see this link ). Some philosophers go so far as to say that free will requires determinism: see this link . Accepting determinism doesn't by definition imply any particular stand on the existence of free will. That's why the term hard determinist is reserved for those who deny the existence of free will because they accept determinism. You may also want to look at these questions recently answered on this website: 5408 ; 5397 ; 5349 ; and 5178 .
Mathematics

My understanding is that we can use systems like Peano Arithmetic to prove the seemingly basic truth that 1+1=2. Do such proofs actually give us reasons to believe that 1+1=2 that we didn't have before? Are they more fundamental or compelling than whatever justification a mathematically-naive person would have to believe that 1+1=2?

There are genuine philosophers of math on the Panel, but while we wait for them to respond I'll take a stab at your questions, which are epistemological as much as they're mathematical. I think we can answer yes to the first question without having to answer yes to the second question, but the answer to both questions may be yes . As I understand the Peano Proof that 1 + 1 = 2 , the gist is that the definitions of 'successor', 'addition', and '2' imply that 1 + 1 = 2. The successor of 1 is defined as 2, and addition is defined so that the result of adding 1 to any number is the successor of that number. Therefore, the result of adding 1 to 1 is 2. If the Peano Proof constitutes a reason to believe that 1 + 1 = 2, then it's surely a reason we didn't have before we had the Peano Proof. So I (somewhat tentatively) answer yes to your first question, regardless of the answer to your second question. Even if we grant the infallibility of the deductive inferences in the Peano Proof, the...
Ethics

I recently read a philosophy book and it got me thinking about morality. Is not morality a tool of society to make it run smoother? If an action effects the world in a positive way than the action is good. If it effects in a negative way than it is bad. Now each human beings deepest desire is happiness and thats what each human strives for so I can only assume that society, as a group of humans, must strive for happiness as a whole as well. If this is true than the way society would decide if an action is good or bad would be the overall effect on happiness. So if we take all of this as true than it would seem that the morality of a decision can be measured and morality itself even made into a science. Is this not so?

I agree with you that the consequences of an action matter to its moral status. But unfortunately it's hard to specify exactly how the consequences matter. You wrote, "If this is true [then] the way society would decide if an action is good or bad would be the overall effect on happiness." On the most straightforward reading of your claim, there seem to be clear counterexamples to it. To use a fanciful example, suppose that we can spare each of 1 billion people the discomfort of a mild headache only by secretly subjecting you to excruciating torture for 24 hours, and suppose that the pain of your torture would be less than the aggregate pain of those 1 billion headaches. Nevertheless, it would be wrong (I take it) to torture you for that purpose, even though arguably we'd increase net happiness by doing so. So the impact of consequences on the moral status of an action can't be quite so straightforward. Therefore, even if we could "measure happiness" much more reliably than in fact we now can, it's...
Profession

Alright, I have a small problem. I am applying to graduate schools for my ph.d. My application is OK, decent grades, great writing sample, but there's this one credential that I definitely want to include but can't put on the online application. These days, the applications are all online, and for a lot of schools what you can't upload to the application, you can't mail in either, because they simply won't accept it. I wrote a book on skepticism and philosophical naturalism, and I am getting it published by an academic publisher, and I desperately want to include what I think is an important credential with my application. I don't just want to mention the book on my resume and in my personal statement, I actually want to send it. I can send it to a couple of places, but other places (that I want to get into) don't accept supplemental materials. I'm definitely not bragging or anything, because my book has a lot of flaws, but I think that if the admissions committee sees the actual book that will definitely...

I think I replied to an earlier question of yours on the topic of graduate school (14 September 2013). I strongly recommend against sending an unsolicited book to any graduate admissions committee, particularly if they've said they don't accept supplemental materials. At best you'll waste postage. At worst you'll annoy them by ignoring their rules and saddling them with extra materials to store and dispose of. No one on any admissions committee is likely to have time to read your book before admissions decisions are made; if they read any of your writing carefully, it's going to be your writing sample. By all means make prominent references to your book in your cover letter and curriculum vitae. If your publisher doesn't object, you might include in your cover letter a URL where members of the admissions committee can read an online draft of your book. If the publisher is already advertising your book, include a URL for the advertisement. I strongly doubt that seeing the physical...
Knowledge

My question concerns epistemology and "post-modernism". Why do philosophical books on epistemology fail to discuss the problem of how one knows what a text means? Postmodernism have raised various questions about the possibility of how one knows what a text means, but the only books on epistemology I've seen talk about things like foundationalism, coherence, Gettier counter-examples, etc, but miss talking about Derrida's deconstructionism, and the positions of people like Fish and Foucault. Furthermore, who are the philosophers working on epistemology "answers" to postmodern thinkers? Is there a must read rejection of postmodern scepticism? I am aware of important critiques amongst Christian thinkers (e.g. D.A. Carson's "The Gagging of God") but I suspect there must be more philosophical responses.

I discern the following meaning in your text: You're asking why epistemology books generally don't cover postmodernist arguments for skepticism about our knowledge of a text's meaning. One reason might be this: Arguments for skepticism about our knowledge of a text's meaning are merely applications of more general skeptical arguments about, for example, our knowledge of other minds. If so, then it's probably best to focus on the more general skeptical arguments to see if they're good enough to warrant applying them to specific cases such as textual meaning. A second reason might be this: Arguments for skepticism about our knowledge of a text's meaning arise mainly from philosophical issues outside epistemology per se -- for example, issues in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. If so, then you'd be more likely to find them discussed in books on those topics. Some analytic philosophers have engaged with postmodernist thinkers in detail. Two examples come to mind: (1) John Searle...

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