Can a society exist without a concept of time? If a society was forced underground, cut off from cycles like day and night, without any time-keeping technology, would one be invented at some point or would people simply dictate everything by the "now," eating when they are hungry and sleeping when they are sleepy etc.

Would it be better to have set punishments for crimes (Ex. murder = 20 years imprisonment no matter the circumstances) or to have the punishments be defined with the individual that caused it? Would it also be better for punishments to be more "aggressive" than needed (Ex. littering = 5 years imprisonment)

Many astrophysicists speculate that everything came from nothing. How can something come from nothing? The above speculation would break the law of conservation. Either something has always been here or what we call something is actually made of nothing (nonmaterial.) Please give me your prospective. Thank you, Awareness1963

Existence is filled with happiness and suffering, but the amount of happiness and suffering is not guaranteed. Non-existence, on the other hand, has no happiness or suffering. Non-existence isn't good or bad, yet existence is labeled either good or bad. Why is it that existence must be labeled good or bad (or fulfilled/not fulfilled) with no middle ground, yet non-existence must remain neutral?

If science, robotics, and society progressed to the point where all human basic needs were provided for (food, clothing, shelter, health care, daily chores) at no cost and therefore nobody was required to labor, what would be of value?

Can something with attributes not have a definition?

How much does one has to "know about" a person to "know" a person? When does a stranger become an associate or acquaintance, an associate or acquaintance become a friend, and a friend become an intimate? When is a stranger no longer a stranger? How does one know when one is "close" to someone? Those questions have bothered me for quite some time. If I read a biography of a celebrity whom I have never met, and I am able to memorize the entire contents of the biography, could it be argued that I "know" the celebrity without actually having never met the celebrity? Since no human being has complete knowledge about any other human being, do we truly know anyone except for ourselves?

In an answer to a question, Stephen Maitzen wrote, "if one's argument depends on controversial premises, then one ought to improve the argument by finding less controversial premises that imply one's conclusion." Am I mis-reading what he wrote? Does it come across to others as "one starts with the desired conclusion and then works backwards to develop premises that would support the desired conclusion." ? There may be evidence from recent psychological studies (e.g., Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow that indicate that our minds actually do work in this manner. However, I was under the impression that philosophers generally reason by starting with premises that seem reasonable, and then using logic to determine where those premises lead. His statement perhaps indicates a different path.

First of all, I'd like to express my personal thanks for having this resource online. I'm having difficulty understanding the distinction between metaphysical possibility and logical possibility. It is said that Kripke's example, "Water is H2O" is an example of a metaphysically necessary truth, but not a logically necessary one. However, to me it seems that the extension of the terms "water" and "H2O" is the same, so the meaning of the statement is of the form A is A. (Isn't it with the meaning of a statement that logic is concerned, and not whichever semantically equivalent terms are used?) Isn't the statement that A is A logically necessary? A world where A is not A seems to be a violation of the law of identity. I guess it's likely that I am wrong. What are my mistakes? Thanks again.

Irrational numbers and infinity have made me come up with this problem: pi, for example, is an irrational number, which means that it doesn't terminate or repeat. Every new digit found in pi increases the value of the number, no matter the value of the digit (for example, 3.141 is larger than 3.14, and 3.1415 is larger than 3.141). If pi never ends, then that means that there is an infinite amount of digits that will increase the value of pi by a tiny fraction. Therefore, pi should be infinitely large. So, pi = infinity. But there is a problem: pi is between 3.13 < x