You've offered a literal reading of the phrase that does, indeed, seem to imply dualism or something like it. Whether the expression was originally intended that way would be something that calls for etymological digging. However, I think it's safe to say that these days, when many people use these words, it's simply another way of talking about death, with no commitment to anything like dualism. Indeed, it seems fair to say that whatever the words "lose your life" once meant, these days, the primary meaning is simply "die." Language is full of expressions whose "literal meaning" is not a good guide to what they actually mean. If I say "John blew his top," actual explosions or lost skulls aren't part of what I mean, nor what most users understand me to mean.

Given that I'm in the rotten situation of being charged with a murder I didn't commit, it may be a good thing for me that I can avoid being executed. But I'm in a rotten situation; all things considered, my situation is bad. It's bad even if I would be a fool not to accept the plea deal. It's bad even if the possibility of plea deals is a good thing in general, and even if the prosecutor is acting entirely responsibly. (Let's suppose the murder I'm accused of is a particularly heinous crime and that the evidence is strong, even if it points to the wrong conclusion.) It could be good for the justice system overall that plea deals like this are possible, good for me from a narrow point of view that I can accept the deal, and yet, given that I'm innocent, a bad situation from my larger point of view. What about coercion? If we use that word, most people would understand it to mean that the prosecutor shouldn't be putting me in this situation---that a responsible prosecutor wouldn't offer such a stark...

Both, surely. Is there any reason to think otherwise? If I think there's a mugger around the corner, I won't go there. (What I think affects what I do.) If I'm prejudiced against midwesterners and I end up working with several smart, interesting, friendly people from that part of the country, what I think about midwesterners is likely to change; what I do affects what I think. We could multiply examples indefinitely, but this should do.

The term "soul" is a sort of a place-holder for a certain kind of something-we-know-not-what that may well not exist. That's the reason why there's not much to be said. The "definition" you cite is really just a way of fleshing out what people have in mind when they use the word "soul." It's not a stab at a theory. If there is anything fitting this "definition" of a soul, then what internal structure it might have is a further and puzzling question. Since souls are supposed to be immaterial, it's not clear what it would mean to say that they have internal structure. Internal in what sense? Structure in what sense? If someone asked me what features souls have that explain their supposed capacity for consciousness, my answer would be "How the h*ll would I know?" By insisting that souls are immaterial and yet still have physical effects, we've put ourselves in a hard spot: we can't call on any of the resources we usually use when we try to explain the goings-on of things in the world. Physics, biology...

A familiar old question! If the only reason I behave well is that I'm afraid I'll be punished if I don't or rewarded if I do, then my motives aren't moral motives at all. The fact that an all-powerful being commanded me to do something might give me a self-serving reason to do it, but by itself, it wouldn't provide a moral reason. That we can be moral without religion is clear from the fact that so many non-believers have deep moral commitments. Of course, that leaves open the possibility that they're somehow confused, but the crucial point is this: if there's no basis for morality without God, then adding God to the story doesn't change things. As for what the basis might be, there's a lot that could be said. But to take just one sort of consideration: I know that I don't like it when people treat me in hurtful ways. I also know that there's nothing special about me in this respect; my pain doesn't obviously count for any more than anyone else's. And I don't just know this intellectually; I...

A confession: I've never read more than a few words of Schopenhauer. However, as I hope will be clear, that doesn't really matter for the question you've asked. Whether or not reading Schopenhauer can cure sex addiction is something we could only find out by experimental means, and philosophers—even those intimately acquainted with Schopenhauer's writings—have no special insight into how the experiments would turn out. But let's suppose reading Schopenhauer really had this benefit. I take your question to be whether normative ethics should strive to have a therapeutic effect on the reader, helping him or her overcome vices and moral defects. I'd suggest that even though this might be a fortunate side-effect, it wouldn't be a criticism of the enterprise if things didn't work this way. What's needed to change people's dispositions and motivations might be quite different from getting clear on the question of how they ought to behave and what those dispositions and motivations ought to be. Normative...

Perhaps it depends on what sort of application you have in mind. Suppose we want to understand the sorts of conflicts you've singled out. Surely the attempt to understand isn't immoral—quite the opposite given what's at stake. And suppose that the branch of mathematics known as game theory helps us come to that understanding. It's hard to see what the objection could be. On the other hand, if a country has unjustly gone to war against another country and uses game theory to come up with strategies for winning, then we might want to say that this is an immoral use of game theory. However, the immorality here has nothing special to do with game theory. What's wrong is the waging of the war in the first place.

I'm guessing that by "personal philosophical beliefs" you mean not just philosophical beliefs that someone might happen to hold (such as the belief that numbers exist as Platonic objects, for example) but beliefs and commitments about matters that someone takes to be of great personal significance—the kinds of things one might build one's life around. To clarify: I might think that numbers really exist as abstract objects, but if I were talked out of that belief, not much about how I live my life would change. For many religious people, on the other hand, religious beliefs are part of their core. A committed Christian, for example, might well think that if she lost her Christianity, there's an important sense in which she wouldn't be the same person. However, as you apparently recognize, religious beliefs aren't the only ones in that category. Ethical commitments are a good example. Many people with deep ethical commitments are not religious, and yet those commitments are every bt as important to...

When it comes to what will happen, I'll have to plead lack of a crystal ball. I can't even say what might happen. I'm not sure what sort of administrative politics you have in mind, but at least at my institution, I haven't noticed that administrators have any special animus against philosophy. I suppose at some institutions, someone might argue (whether soundly or not is another matter) that studying philosophy leads to poor employment prospects, or that in general, philosophy is in some way or another "impractical"; more on that in a moment. As for philosophers being unpersuasive in their arguments, I gravely doubt that most administrators either have an opinion or are qualified to. (That's not a criticism of administrators. It's just the usual situation for people outside a discipline; they tend not to be familiar with its workings.) Would it be a good thing to force philosophers to justify the existence of their field? Only if it would be an equally good thing for people in other disciplines...

In the event—rare or otherwise—that all physicists in the world agreed on the answer to a physics problem, that wouldn't mean that the problem was solved. It wouldn't mean that because it's at least possible that all the physicists could be mistaken or could be missing some crucial piece of information. So if a discipline's being worthwhile requires that universal agreement among its practitioners amounts to a problem being solved, then there likely aren't any worthwhile disciplines. Perhaps the preceding remarks show that philosophy can at least provide us with useful distinctions, and that's surely worth something. But forget about agreement; if the criterion for a discipline being worthwhile is that it provide definitive answers to its problems, then deck is already stacked against philosophy. It traffics in exactly the kinds of problems where it's unreasonable to expect definitive answers. However, why think that's the criterion for a discipline's being worthwhile? Definitive answers to...