Thank you for these observations and the question of how virtue ethics comes into play with the streetcar thought experiment! The dilemma is, indeed, intended to force us to think about the moral status of action versus omission, and this goes to the heart of some utilitarian and Kantian matters. Utilitarians tend to treat an act and an omission on equal terms: so if you do not throw a switch in which case you would have saved five people at the cost of one, some utilitarians are prone to think that you would be responsible for the death of four people. Kantians or deontologists tend to think that what you do is not crucially dependent on consequences but in terms of treating persons as ends in themselves, and they think in terms of duties (come what may). In an interesting new two volume book, On What Matters, the philosopher D. Parfit argues that Kantianism and utilitarianism ultimately are compatible and should (on reflection) reach the same conclusion. Your question was about virtue theory,...

Very difficult and interesting question! Those of us who are Platonists and believe in abstract properties would acknowledge (maybe with some qualifications) properties like being a monarch, being feline, being blue, being a mineral, being gold, being a mineral with a certain atomic number, being a watch, being an artifact, and so on. On this view, properties can certainly be constituitive of individual objects: hence the gold watch instatiates the property of being made of gold. What might be deemed relational properties like (being a gold watch owned by a monarch) may not be constituitive, however, and may be accidental (the monarch may give the watch to a duke). While I am in the Platonist camp (I think there are truths about gold, even if there were no actual instances of gold in the world), probably more sober philosophers gravitate to some form of what is called nominalism or conceptualism. On one version, "gold" refers to a scattered object (all the gold that exists) but would lack a referent...

Good question. Today it seems that there are versions of Christianity which are very heterodox, treating the incarnation more as a saving metaphor rather than a real event and so on. On the traditional concept of God in Christianity, I think few Christians would describe God as "anthropomorphic." Yes, the Bible and Christian creeds refer to God as a creator, a being who has power, knowledge, super-abundant goodness, and one might think of this as anthropomorphic insofar as humans are also creators and have power, knowledge, and some of us are good (!), but the attributes of God in traditional Christianity God is omnipresent, eternal or everlasting, Triune, not just knowing but omniscient and this seems to amount to thinking of God as quite distinct from an anthropomorphic deity such as we find in Greco-Roman contexts of Zeus / Jupiter, etc... A more vexing issue today is over the question of whether the God of Christianity should be thought of as personal or as three persons (in the Triune Godhead...

This is the sort of question that has vexed many in philosophy of language (Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, Lynne Baker, etc). Actually, in my dictionary "migraine" designates the pain as "usually confined to one crania" as opposed to always being so confined. But let's assume the public definition is more restrictive. Philosophers who are sometimes called 'externalists' locate meaning primarily in terms of social discourse. On this view, Jane has said something false. Philosophers (like me) who are sometimes called 'internalists' tend to think of meaning in terms of the speaker's intention. On this view, what she meant to say is true, though the words she used simply failed to identify what the public thinks she is referring to. To feel some of the intuitive appeal of internalism, imagine a man walks into a room where he sees a group of women and some female dogs. He does not know English very well, but he does know that "bitch" refers to female dogs. He says: "Look at all those great bitches!' ...

Great question. Some philosophers seem to have deliberately sought to secularize the story of philosophy. I think this is probably true in the case of John Dewey (even though he did praise a naturalistic piety or "religious sensibility"). A classic, intro history to philosophy, Will Durran't The Story of Philosophy glides over the whole medieval era, Many philosophers both during his life time and today, seem (in my mind) to utterly miss or underestimate the deep sense of mystery that runs through the work of Wittgenstein. There is a wonderful overview of Wittgenstein's spirituality in the opening chapters of Kai-man Kwan's The Rainbow of Experiences, Critical Trust and God. In terms of histories: Copleston wrote a multi-volume history of philosophy that is fair minded, and (as himself a Roman Catholic thinker) he is keen to explore matters of the divine, deep questions of values and their role in the universe. Anthony Kenny is probably the greatest living historian of philosophy, and he, too,...

I suggest it is not always ethically permissible to seek self-preservation. Imagine that you need a heart transplant to survive and the only way to get a heart is by harvesting and thus killing another person (imagine the person is innocent, unwilling to die to offer you his heart, etc). Or imagine you and another person are in peril at sea, the other person has a life preserver that she owns, it can only support one person, and while it is likely she will survive in time for a rescue boat to arrive, you will otherwise drown. In that case, I suggest it would be wrong in fact, it would be a case of murder for you to take the life preserver from the other person with the outcome that you survive and she drowns. I believe that the criminal law in many countries does not permit self-preservaton as an excuse for killing: for example, I think that if someone made a plausible threat to you ("I will kill you unless you kill those people over there") this does not mean you can do just anything to preserve your...

Excellent question! There are a number of theories of art over the centuries that philosophers have proposed. For Plato and Aristotle art involved what they called techne (technique) and imitation (mimisis), for romantics (and this was especially advanced by Tolstoy), art involved the expression of emotions under certain conditions, for others works of art involve the embodiment of emotions, and there are still other theories. A view of art that comes closest to your suggestion about our lumping together "a contingent collection of cultural pursuits" is called the institutional theory of art --introduced in different forms by George Dickie and Arthur Danto. A very crude version is that a work of art is whatever is identified as a work of art by the artworld. I personally think the latter is not the best way to go philosophically, as it leaves one without any guidance as to what someone in the art world should recognize as a work of art, and it also seems somewhat circular, like defining science as...

Great issue(s)! Two thoughts to consider: first, it may not be obvious that all language is time-bound or tensed. The sentence 'two plus two equals four' or 'squares are four sided' might be interpreted as tensed (both sentences were true on Monday, and on Tuesday, etc) but they may also be understood as tenseless (their truth does not depend on temporality unlike the sentence uttered by me 'I am writing in response to your question now'). Second, I suggest that we can have interesting, competing philosophical theories of time when we look at the meaning of what you are calling "time bound language." So, for example, those who embrace what is often called four dimensionalism, treat all times as equally real. On this view, the French Revolution is occurring in 1789, and that is as real as the Battle of Waterloo which is occurring in June of 1815 and my writing you a reply in 2012. According to what is sometimes called presentism, only the present is real, so while it is true that the French...

Great set of questions. Certainly, these are matters that involve psychology and have an application in medicine, though philosophers from Ancient GreeK though onward have found it important to reflect on responsibility, habits, and determining when actions are truly voluntary. I suspect voluntariness is the key. The more we become habituated to a pattern of behavior, it seems that the more will power is required to break the pattern. I believe that Aristotle was right when he described the path to virtue in terms of habituation or the developing good habits or dispositions (to act justly, temperately, etc). In a sense, the virtuous person is someone who has developed a character so that they naturally and without struggle seek to do what is good. And the opposite would be true of a person in terms of vice; their character is such that they naturally and without struggle do what is cruel, destructive, and the like. Speaking more directly to your question(s) it seems that voluntary action is a...

This is such a personal matter, I have no right to reply, but your question(s) are hard to resist. There is no "official" philosophy of love out there for us all to consult. Still, philosophers in the past have suggested a few things that might be helpful. First, you might apply the "golden rule" of 'do unto others as you would want done unto you": what would you want or what would you do if the roles were reversed? How would you want him to act if he missed you, wanted to see you, but he did not want to be romantically involved with you and seeing him might trouble you? Another point to consider is Kant's thesis that you should never treat people in a way that is incompatible with regarding them as an end (or of value) in themselves. So, if I flirt with X only for my own pleasure, not caring how X might feel and without any serious regard for X's life, it seems I am simply using X rather than also considering X's own life. Perhaps one other thought: you ask about what responsibility you...