What is stupidity? IS it thinking the wrong way or is it having the ability to know and not using the potential? Also, is asking a stupid question necessarily stupid or does it make the person intelligent to make an unobvious connection when the answer should be obvious?

Death is widely considered to be the permanent and irreversible end to life. So would you consider someone who died in the present day and was cryogenically frozen and bought back to life to have ever been dead? What are the implications for how we define death?

It seems that human beings are hedonistic by nature. We use reason to find the course that will serve us best when a decision needs to be made. However, we are also passionate by nature. On some occasions our passion, be it in the form of love, hate, ecstasy, or anger, will cause us to abandon reason and perhaps act in a way that is not in our best interest. It is often said that we should follow our hearts and embrace our passionate side. My question is should we live passionately, for better or for worse, or should we try to contain our passions and live by reason?

Do ideas exist independently, out there in the ether, waiting to be discovered. For instance did the idea of the motor car exist say 1000 years ago before any human ever thought of it? Steve B.

I am having trouble understanding the difference between a 'necessary' and a 'sufficient' condition (in philosophical usage). Would I be right in thinking that the former is a condition that must be present in order for something to happen, while the latter is merely 'enough', i.e. that no other condition needs to be met (while with a necessary condition others can be met)?

Is it wrong to secretly feel that an acquaintance is acting hypocritically and making stupid decisions, but to just smile and nod when they talk, and not tell them what you really think? Or...worded differently... Is it wrong to feel internally that you just plain don't LIKE someone -- their morals, their behavior, their attitude, their actions --- but you don't tell them, and you allow them to think that you are their friend? (You do this partly because you are afraid to tell someone to "go away", and you hope over time that they will just drift away from you, without you having to do the ugly job of telling them to go away. You also do it partly because this person, although morally repugnant, is somewhat entertaining and makes fun stories to tell your spouse later on.)

I was shown a paper that my brother had gotten off of a website and it was about Taoism. Now, I am not to educated in the subject at all, but took a look at one of the questions posed and gave my opinion as to what I thought the answer was: If nothing has potential to be something is it really nothing? I started to think of it like this: 0 = nothing (in mathematical terms) 0 has potential of being any number but let's keep it simple and say that 0 has the potential of being 1. 0 is still 0 and always will be 0 until the moment 1 is added to it. If we rephrase the question using this logic it seems to answer itself: If 0 has potential to be 1 is it really 0? Of course it is still zero. Then I started to think of the context they use it in. The "nothing" they question seems to be thought of as a tangible item. Just because we as humans define a space as nothing, does it mean it is in fact a thing- no. An area in space is obviously nothing, so why do we think it could be something just because we...

Could you please tell me what is meant by the term 'sense data'? I am not clear whether it refers to what we immediately perceive around us, or to images inside our heads. Or is there a third meaning? And why is it controversial?

If I read something I wrote long ago, am I engaged in a different sort of activity than reading something someone else wrote? What if I don't remember writing it?

The word 'color' has three meanings, as far as I can tell: 1, certain properties of atoms and molecules that make them emit electromagnetic radiation in the so-called visible range; 2, mixtures of frequencies of this electromagnetic radiation that go to the eye of the observer and produce an image on his/hers retina; and 3, sensations of color that this observer experiences. So if I am looking at a green leaf, which of these three meanings of 'green' am I experiencing?