Is it wise to purchase insurance? For example, if I buy auto insurance, then I'm betting that I will be in an accident, and that the insurance payout will be worthwhile, notwithstanding the amount I will have paid in premiums. The insurance company is betting that the amount I pay in premiums will outweigh what they pay me in the event of a claim. Given that they have a lot of actuaries and other smart folks working on this, shouldn't I assume that they are right? I.e., does the fact that someone very smart is willing to sell me insurance count as a reason not to buy the insurance?

I suspect concepts like fate, destiny, happenstance, kismet, etc. are meaningless and, worse, misleading to non-critical thinkers but I find myself using expressions involving luck or lucky all the time! 'Luckily another bus turned up so I wasn't late.' It seems to be the same thing as fate, etc. but seems unavoidable and even useful in everyday speech. Is there any difference, or is it just a linguistic convention? No one would say 'A causal chain of events extending back to the Big Bang led to another bus showing up.' Thanks to you all for a fascinating site.

Hi: In meta-ethics there is an ongoing, heated debate about whether moral propositions are "objective" or "absolute" vs. "subjective" or "relative." This debate appears to be progressing nowhere fast. Could it be that moral propositions are like theorems in geometry, i.e. that they are deduced from and depend for their validity on the truth of the postulates or axioms that underlie them? So, nobody seems too concerned about the "subjectivity" of geometry in spite of the fact that it is impossible to "prove" that parallel lines never intersect--we either accept this axiom or we don't. Is it possible that propositions like "it is wrong to take innocent human life" should be viewed as a postulate from which we can then deduce (in combination with other postulates) moral conclusions? Does this approach offer a way out of the "objective" vs. "subjective" debate? Thanks. Mark

A friend of a friend of mine posed a really odd problem regarding our beliefs that I’ve not really been able to answer to my own satisfaction. If we believe that X is the case, then it seems to go without saying that we also believe that we believe X is the case. It would be odd to say that we believe X but don’t believe we believe it. But then if that has to be so, it also seems that we must also believe that we believe that we believe that X is the case. And if that’s so then it seems we must believe that we believe… You get the picture. What’s going on here? We’re finite beings so we can’t have an infinite number of beliefs, can we? I’d put forward some of the thoughts I had about it, but I’m not entirely sure that I think I had them.

Can robots have human feelings?

I read that questions are directive speech acts, where the questioner requests for some information or, in any case, for an answer. An exception is usually accepted for rhetorical questions. Being a teacher who has to examine students, I often ask questions, but I'm never requesting information or, at least, never on the questioned subject. My students are also always absolutely free not to answer, and I will certainly not blame them for that. Does this mean that my questions aren't real questions?

During a heated argument about social placement resulting from speech, a close friend of mine asked me "WHY should I speak correctly?" The question was an inclination that he wanted to be persuaded by my answer, more so that just asking for a fact on the matter. As I answered him, he started to dismiss my opinions, question everything I posed with a simple phrase: "But if I CHOOSE to speak improperly, and I know I can switch back to proper speach (he tried to make it seem to me he had prior knowledge of more enhanced words that he could use when I know he did not (he is pretty dull)), then shouldn't it not be held against me to do so?" I disagree with him. If one knows how to speak properly, they should not need to be persuaded into doing so, they should just do so, knowing it is correct and proper to do so. Can one of you please afford an opinion on this argument.

If there was a God who existed and was prepared to punish you for not believing in him, then if this God was fair, it seems that there would have to be some pretty good (obvious) reason why he could expect everyone to believe in him. Even if some of these difficult (for me) cosmological or ontological arguments are any good, then a fair God could hardly punish you for making an incorrect evaluation of such difficult arguments. So maybe there is another reason why God could expect someone to believe in him - could you maybe make a decent argument as to why someone should believe in God along these lines: It seems (obviously this is controversial) that there is something a bit more virtuous about believing in God than in not. What I mean by this is that belief in God seems very humbling, optimistic, honest and hopeful, whereas rejecting the existence of God seems a bit more cynical, easy and self-centered. In other words it is a better reflection on a person's character if they believe in God than if they...

My question pertains to the idea of happiness being induced by a drug. If the drug--like modern anti-depressants--actually changes a person's neurochemistry such that for all intents and purposes the brain looks just like a "happy" brain, then wouldn't you consider that person happy? (Would you give a different answer for a drug like Ecstasy that alters the brain in slightly different ways than classic neurochemical happiness but still brings about a perception of happiness?) And what about the perception of happiness over the long haul? If someone is on anti-depressants for, say, fifty years, and has an over-all sense of peace, purpose, etc that they would NOT have otherwise had, have they, in fact, been happy?

How do we know our right hand from our left hand when there is literally nothing that can be said about one which cannot be said about the other? -ace