Is a poem about nature beautiful because of its form, or is it beautiful because it reminds us of the beauty inherent in nature? Philosophers tend to equate aesthetic beauty with the form of a work of art and our 'interests' get in the way of appreciating the form. However if this is the case why is there not more beautiful poems about rubbish dumps and oil spills.

Why can't philosophers agree? In the natural sciences you seem to find disagreements at the frontiers of new research, but after a sufficient time has elapsed, agreement is reached and the frontiers advance to new areas of enquiry. The research takes place in professional journals, then the final story makes it into textbooks, with undergraduates in the natural sciences reading only the textbooks. In philosophy, undergraduates read journals as much as anything else, and the textbooks are as controversial as the journals. In what does progress in philosophy consist?

Do you think it is a bad thing that musical genres are fragmenting? In the past there were clear movements in music, Baroque, classical, Romantic. As time goes on, movements seem to become more specialised, with the Beatles and rock then split into punk, metal, indie, dance, hip-hop, soul, nu-punk, nu-metal. Each movement seems to be targeted at a sub-section of the population, and so music is losing some of it universal themes. Music created with less artisic merit and effort is reaching the public. Is the inevitable result of new technology, or the rise of an instant gratification cuture that wants to listen and create without any serious effort?

Is there any test in philosophy to verify or refute the philosophers' guesses/hypotheses?

I desire to produce a Great Work - the term I will use to avoid a lengthy, linguistically-bound dissertation on its specifics - but I find that, while I long to produce and offer a work (a work of art - writing, animation, film, or a combination) of Content (something with meaning and value beyond surface value; also, thought-provoking, e.g. the animated series Neon Genesis Evangelion or Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis ,) I hate the thought of ignorant persons maiming the work, or enjoying it in a puerile manner for superficial reasons alone (e.g., thinking Metamorphosis was just some cool story because the guy turns into a bug, or Evangelion because it has giant robots.) This makes me reticent to create anything. Is this purely some sort of narcissistic elitism, or is it a legitimate concern? How have prior artists worked through misanthropy towards the ignorant to continue to create? Is there an established explanation of why myself or others feel this way about the full value of a work being...

When philosophers try to answer a question like 'is it right to do X?', or 'do I have a soul?', they are asking the same questions which we all ask, and answer for ourselves, in everyday life. If philosophers research these questions intensively (perhaps for many years) before publishing their findings, and if even then there will be some counterarguments, how can we ever hope to find approximately true answers in our less formal, everyday musings? Thank you.

Does free will fare any better under a Dualistic or Deistic system than it does under materialism?

In a code of intellectual conduct in a truth-seeking argument between A and B for positions X and NOT X respectively, starting a new thread of attacking the person A either by B or by the some members of the audience is definitely a fallacious argument (Argumentum ad Hominem) for the context under discussion. What about glorifying tributes to person A by some members of the audience as a part of the SAME thread of discussion? It obviously is irrelevent to the argument or the issue under discussion. How far is it inappropriate, sinister, or otherwise in the code of conduct in an intellectual truth-seeking debate between two participants A and B in front of the gallery of audience? My strong gut sense is the behaviour is inappropriate because it does not contribute to the strengthening or weakening of arguments in favor or against X. What do the panel of distinquished philosophers have to say on this (not so much the irrelevance but the inappropriateness as an intellectual conduct)?

I have a rather simple question. I am majoring in biology right now and am thinking of switching to philosophy. The thing is the advisor told me that there really aren't any jobs for that field. He said I would basically have to go to a prestigious school to get one of the few jobs out there. Is this true? Are there really not many jobs in the philosophy field? Thanks.

What is virtuous about a partnership in marriage (not necessarily the legal construct - the idea of committing to a life together)? What characterizes what is virtuous in leaving such a partnership (even) when the partners love each other and want one another to flourish but one partner doesn't see the partnership as a whole flourishing? To put it another way: How is it that most of the parts of such a partnership can individually appear to be so esteemable, and even to outweigh the less esteemable parts, and yet the whole be judged lacking?