Not sure I follow, but by "concrete" I'm guessing you mean either "objective" or "easy to settle." If you do, then on either alternative I can't see why there would be any difference between the two. In any case, the way you've put things suggests that nose-counting may be relevant. That's surely wrong. The percentage of philosophers who think Israel does or doesn't have a right to exist doesn't seem to me to tell us much of anything about whether that's the best view of the matter; likewise for questions about epistemology. What really matters are the reasons. I'd add this, however: most philosophers have spent a fair bit of time thinking about epistemological questions; it's part of their training. And so if most philosophers held a particular epistemological view, that would be interesting and might suggest something about the weight of the arguments. However, most philosophers have not spent much of their training thinking about political philosophy; insofar as we can talk about expertise here,...

To say that all questions demand a philosophical response (whatever exactly that is) would be at best a very controversial philosophical view. And a philosopher who thought that philosophers should have more say on large practical questions than anyone else would be hard pressed to justify his or her position. To take your example, the question of whether there should be a united Ireland has many parts. Some of those parts no doubt call for philosophical reflection but some don't. (For example: what people in Northern Ireland and in the Republic actually think is surely relevant; but isn't something we can sort out by doing philosophy.) And even the philosophical aspects (having to do, say, with how we balance competing values) needn't be addressed by professional philosophers; philosophers don't have a monopoly on philosophical thinking. Of course, there's a more straightforward way to deal with questions of the form "Do philosophers think X?" If X is something controversial (and often even if it...

Others can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the solution to the puzzle is straightforward: physicalism isn't the same as reductive materialism. Indeed, that's part of Dupré's complaint against Nagel: Nagel's view of materialism is narrow and outmoded. You might have a look at this section of the article on physicalism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which distinguishes reductive and non-reductive varieties of physicalism.

Games typically involve a blend of things that a player can control and things s/he can't. A golfer can work on her backswing; she can't do anything about the moment-by-moment shifts in the wind and the fine-grained condition of the greens. Things like the winds and the lay of the greens or the outcome of a dice-roll are what we might call externalities. It's not that they have no explanations and it's certainly not that they have no bearing on who wins and who loses. But the players don't deserve any blame or credit for how they turned out. In that sense, they're matters of luck. Depending on the game, skilled players may have ways of compensating for them to some extent, but they can produce advantages and disadvantages that are outside the players' control. With that in mind, I don't take Kahneman's appeal to "luck" to be an explanation. An explanation would call for specifics about conditions and causes, and the mere appeal to luck doesn't provide any of those. I take the appeal to luck to be a...

It's an interesting question. One way to put it: are we obliged to put all our charitable resources where they will do the most good? Or can we donate to causes that are intrinsically worthy, even though we'd get more bang for the buck by giving everything something else? I'm reluctant to say that utilitarianism requires putting all our resources into the "biggest bang basket," though even if it does, there are some considerable imponderables here. We may save more lives directly if we put all our resources into rehydration kits. But there may be indirect benefits from other kinds of giving. For example: even though we may save more people initially by spending on rehydration kits, if we give no money to medical research, the long-term consequences might end up being worse than if we'd spread our charitable resources around. The utilitarian calculation, in other words, isn't as clear as it might seem. Also, whether "fairness" is quite the right term, there's something unsettling in the prospect...

Singling out rape allegations for special skepticism would be problematic to say the least. As far as I know, there's no reason at all to believe that allegations of rape are less likely to be true than allegations of other sorts of criminal behavior. But in any case, skepticism and the presumption of innocence are two different concepts. The presumption of innocence is a legal principle about the burden of proof in criminal cases, and it has nothing to do with how likely it is in general that people accused of certain sorts of crimes are guilty. In the American legal system, before someone can be convicted, the state must provide specific evidence (not generalities about the kind of crime at issue) that establishes guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." This means that even if a defendant is probably guilty, the probability might still not be high enough to meet the standard for conviction. A jury member might believe it's more likely than not that the defendant committed the crime and yet might not vote...

I think the clue to answering your question (and answering no) is to think about your own brief answer: "It seems to me that this really must be so; otherwise, why would anyone even bother to even finish the thing in the first place." This assumes that the only reason someone would subject themselves to an experience is because of the pleasure it gives them. But why believe that? Not every worthwhile experience is a pleasurable experience. I'd have thought, for instance, that some unquestioned works of art are profoundly disturbing and that this is part of their value. Whether we can conjure up some notion of "pleasure" according to which they also give pleasure seems to me doubtful but also beside the point. We might stretch the word "pleasure" so that any worthwhile experience automatically counts as a kind of pleasure. But if we do, we've robbed the word "pleasure" of much of its distinctive meaning. You seem to have it in especially for Cage's 4'33". But suppose we agreed that it doesn...

Interesting. It's true that we do sometimes rely on assumptions, premises or whatnot that we simply take for granted. In fact, it's hard to see how we could avoid doing that; otherwise we'd end up in an endless regress of justifications. We could use the term "worldview" for broad premises that we use this way, but I'm not sure the term adds much so I'll leave it aside. But there's another question that leaves an ambiguity in what you're saying. Is the theologian offering an argument that s/he think should persuade a non-believer? Or is he offering arguments that a believer might accept whether or not anyone else does? If your asking this person "Why do you believe that homosexuality is wrong" then pointing out that it's a consequence of other assumptions that the person accepts and sees as more basic is fine. In that case, he's simply setting forth the internal logic of his view. Whether or not you accept the first two beliefs, there's no circularity in saying "The Bible represents God's...

I'd say most of what you're asking isn't something that philosophers have any special insight into—at least if "important" means "most likely to make for success." When it comes to questions about how daily life actually works, philosophers are in the same boat as everyone else. I suppose someone might say that we can make a distinction between what's likely to work best and what's most important in some not-merely-practical sense. Philosophers might then have something to say, but I find it hard to image that there'd be a single compelling answer. Your last question, however, did pique my curiosity: could there be a romantic relationship without sex or affection? That's a conceptual matter, and is therefore the sort of thing that spins philosophers' wheels. A romantic relationship without sex is clearly possible. Couples who are "saving themselves for marriage" provide lots of examples. And it might be that many people would call an ongoing sexual relationship a romantic relationship even if...

I'd like to pause over the first half of your first sentence (the 'if' bit): the idea that philosophy is difficult to understand and difficult to put into practice. I'd suggest that this isn't the best way to put things. Philosophy may or may not be difficult to understand, but no more so than any number of other subjects. Philosophy can be difficult to follow because when done well, it depends on careful arguments and subtle distinctions. That means there's a lot to keep track of, even if the writing is crystal clear. Compare: each step in a math proof might be clear by itself; seeing the argument entire might not be easy. The next bit is supposed to be that philosophy is difficult to "put into practice." What's striking here is that very few of the philosophers I know think of philosophy as something you "put into practice" in the way that, for example, I might put the Golden Rule into practice. By and large, philosophy isn't in the business of giving practical advice. For example: some...