Not an easy question to take on! This sounds like a question about the USA theatre of debate on gun control and not, say, a question about Great Britain. I will assume a USA context and the debate about background checks, allowing for conceal and carry, and the permissibility of allowing private citizens to have guns that are "military grade" such as an AK-47 or an uzi. None of the three were pacifists or believed that it was wrong to serve in the Athenian army or navy; Socrates actually served as a foot soldier and was a veteran of the war between Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies. We have some reason to think Socrates served with distinction. In Plato's version of Socrates' trial (the Apology), Socrates spoke to his judges and the people of Athens to not neglect the care of their souls. This may plausibly be understood as Socrates urging others not to be victims of their own pride, to question their claims to know what is just or holy. Such self-questioning and...

Interesting question --not unlike questions like "Would Jesus recognize those who call themselves 'Christians' as true followers of him? Or would Marx recognize those who call themselves 'Marxists' truly followers of his work? I think Socrates might have a few things to say to us all. Here are four things Socrates might communicate to you and I: First, Socrates might prefer that philosophical dialogue take place in person rather than through writing. In one of Plato's dialogues Socrates expressed some misgivings about writing. He (or at least the character 'Socrates' in the dialogue) argued that in-person dialogue was superior to writing for when we engage in dialogue (practicing philosophy) we can pick up clues straightaway about whether one has been misunderstood or has offended or pleased one's dialogue partner. Maybe Socrates might suggest this site includes skyping and audio transmission. Second, Socrates might be especially pleased about this site, for while we are each "professional"...

Hello Tim. This is Charles. Age 60! You have asked a deep question. I will reply with what I have found to be sound in all the years I have considered a question like that, but then step back and note how other philosophers would answer you. In general, I think that "evil" refers to things, events, persons that should not be the case. Something evil (such as a grown up hurting an innocent child) should not occur or, putting it differently, it should be condemned or disaproved of and prevented. Something good (such as rescuing someone drowning) is something that should occur; its occurrence is preferable and should be loved rather than its non-occurrence (allowing the person to drown). I further suggest that understanding what is good and evil will very much depend on what kind of things or persons are involved, because what fulfills and makes one thing good, may not make another thing good. So, it is good for a fish to live under water, but not for a human; it is good for someone like yourself to...

I feel certain that even in this extreme case, the mother would be at least charged with homicide, if not murder, from a legal perspective. And I think it would also be a case of wrongful homicide or murder from a moral point of view (or, more specifically, from the stand point of natural law, which I accept). You are, after all, asking us to imagine a killing, the mother actively taking her child's life through, say, suffocation or a gun shot or drowning or using a knife to cut off the baby's head. This would seem very much like a murder and just as murderous than if the mother cut off the head of her healthy baby. Still, the way you describe the case, it seems that even keeping the baby alive through childhood alone would require extraordinary measures. Often ethicists think that (under normal circumstances) while a person is obligated to take ordinary measures to stay alive, she is not obligated to take extraordinary measures. So, if I am dying of heart failure, but simply taking a few aspirins...

Tough question! In a very fine book, The Concept of Faith, Lad Sessions argues that there are at least four different kinds of faith. But setting aside Sessions more ambitious, technical proposals and work, I believe the term "faith" in English can be used either to describe the object of belief (for example one may speak of the Christian Faith) or trust. In the latter sense, faith may involve hope, belief, reason. It need not be "blind" --which I assume means something like 'on the basis of very little, if any evidence.' I suggest faith can be based on tremendous evidence even rising to the level of knowledge. I have faith in my neighbor's integrity as I feel I know him well and have seen him act with integrity when things were highly stressful. In a religious context, one may claim to believe in (for example) God or to have faith in God and this may be a way of disclaiming CERTAINTY or KNOWLEDGE. After all, those who follow some religious traditions are sometimes referred to as ...

Good question! There is reason to think that at various points in his life Wittgenstein was very much gripped by religious forms of life. According to McGuinness, during the first world war Wittgenstein was so taken by Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief that "he read and reread it, and had it always with him, under fire and at all times, and was known by other soldiers as 'the one with the Gospels'." Long after the war he said to O.C. Dury "I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view." While Wittgenstein changed his mind on various matters, he seems to have always had a kind of sacred wonder about the world (or existence) itself. In the Tractatus he wrote: "The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is." And later in his 1929 "A Lecture on Ethics" he described the experience of "seeing the world as a miracle." He noted that when he had such wonder at the existence of the world this was "exactly what people were referring to when they said...

Good question! I suggest this very much depends on the relationship, the circumstances, and motives. I don't think there would be any disrespect if the engineer had told you in the past that he knows your thoughts and motivations better than you, and when he told you that (for example) deep down you still wanted to be an art historian even though you left the field to make more money in a computer firm, you made a life-changing, satisfying decision to return to art history. In that case, you might well be trying to help him, just as he helped you. But even without this past, I think that an intimate friend (though if the person is unable to connect with others, the notion of an intimate friendship might be a stretch) may avoid being disrespectful if in the course of telling the engineer this, you add something like "And I want to help you connect with others. Let's spend some evenings after work with Michelle and Osama. They have been concerned with your over-working this year and want to make some...

Very interesting! A philosopher who worked hard on this very matter was Paul Grice. He studied what he called conversational implicature, a fancy term for the ways in which the meaning of what we say can be shaped by a variety of conditions. For example, if you asked me to pass you some water and I replied saying that I am glad to hand you a glass of water which, as it happens --and then I go on to tell you all the properties of water, how much water is there on earth, and so on. Most people would (I think) conclude that I am trying to be funny or I am insane or simply a bore. I can imagine this exchange between two philosophers. George: "Good to see you. Based on seeing you, I now think it more likely that all ravens are black.' Ringo: "So, you are still trying to solve the Raven Paradox! Give it a rest!" An "outsider" would not get this, but for students of induction and reason they would also (probably) infer that the only reason someone would say what George did is if he was thinking about...

I could be wrong, but I am not aware of a formal or informal term that gets at precisely that defense of reprehensible action, but one could see it as what may informally be called a Red Herring or a case of what may be called "Two Wrongs Make a Right." Arguably whether one person's act is unethical does not rest on the grounds that if the person did not do something wrong, another person would do the wrong act. The actions of others is thus irrelevant or distracting, as in a Red Herring. This might be slightly qualified, however, when the wrongful acts of others may make it excessively dangerous for one to obey the law. Imagine that you are on a highway in which all the cars around you are exceeding the speed limit by 30mph, and that if you were to drive the prescribed speed limit, you would endanger your own life and those of others. In terms of drugs, I believe it is illegal for you to sell or give a drug that has been prescribed for you to another person. Imagine you are seated next to a person...

Good luck in your studies! Philosophers have thought quite a bit about self-interest and selfishness. What is often called psychological egoism is the thesis that humans always act in ways that they believe to be in their self-interest (either directly or indirectly), while ethical egoism is the thesis that people ought to do what is (either directly or indirectly) in their self-interest. One point to clarify here is the difference between "selfishness" and "self-interest." If psychological egoism is taken as the view that all persons are selfish because all people act in their self-interest, this seems either false or to involve an odd use of the notion of "self-interest." Clearly many people are interested in living lives of justice, compassion, humility, and so on, but to call such people "selfish" would seem to be quite the opposite of what they are like: namely, they are generous, caring, non-vain, non-pompous, humble. So, I suggest that we use the term "selfish" in ways that pick out traits...