This is one of those cases where as long as we're clear on what we mean, there's not much of an issue. It would be perfectly in order to say "that creature existed two weeks ago; it was a chrysalis then." It's like saying that you existed lo so many years ago, though you were a toddler at that time. Leaving aside more radical doubts about identity over time, there's no problem with talking this way. If you say "that butterfly existed two weeks ago" and you mean something like "that creature, which is now a butterfly, existed two weeks ago" then there's nothing to worry about. But obviously if you mean "two weeks ago, this butterfly was around, as a butterfly," then you'd be saying something false. There are more subtler issues that a philosopher might raise, having to do, for instance, with whether the butterfly (or you, for that matter) is present at any one moment (as opposed to being a 4-dimensional being whose time-slices are present at various instants). But that question would come up even...

Initial disclaimer: I am no epistemologist. But I'm not sure I quite understand. First, why are all assumptions about basic beliefs, etc. dogmatic? Are you perhaps demanding that one must be certain of such things? Why isn't it good enough to say "I know Peter was at the meeting because I was there and I spoke with him?" People who say things like that could be mistaken, of course. But suppose that as the world turns out, I'm right: I did attend the meeting and I did speak with Peter. Then don't I know that he was there? If not, why not? Perhaps the worry is that I don't know that I know this (doubtful in this case, but happens sometimes.) But it's long been doubted that knowing X requires knowing that you know X. Perhaps the thought is that to know X always requires being able to give some particular sort of justification. But reliabilists wouldn't buy that. On their view, I know something (roughly) if my beliefs about it come to be in a reliable way, even if I have no clue what the...

One obvious problem here is that teachers have a sort of power over students. They can give them bad grades, refuse to write letters of recommendation... If the students "consent" to the arrangement, it will be that much less clear that the "consent" was strictly voluntary. So in addition to the inherent wrongness of the scheme, the extra problem is that the teacher is quite likely taking unfair advantage of the students.

"Fulfill" is a bit of a weasel word, isn't it? Suppose one partner would like to make love every night. The other, less libidinous spouse is more a two-or-three time a week type. We might say that the first spouse is "unfulfilled," but that sounds like a really poor excuse for adultery. If the lack of "fulfillment" amount to some deep incompatibility, a good question to ask first might be: have the partners in the marriage talked about what's not working? Can it be fixed? If the answer really seems to be no, then the next obvious question is whether the marriage is worth saving. Life is complicated, of course and blanket generalizations don't do justice to the complexity of people's relationships. But the old question: "How would I feel if the tables were turned?" is always a good one to ask when we're trying to decide if we're acting rightly. It's not just an old bromide; it gets at something pretty deep in our notions of right and wrong.

I could come up with an argument that you don't exist, but it would be harder for you to. Descartes' point is that even in doubting that I exist, I seem to presuppose that I actually do. Descartes claimed that in any moment when I reflect on it, I know for sure that I exist. That said, this shows much less than it might seem to. In particular, it doesn't show that there is any unified "self" that has a continued, coherent existence over time. The existence of that sort of "I" has been doubted by many thinkers, going back at least to the Buddha, but also, famously, by David Hume and more recently by Derek Parfit. Views of this sort are sometimes called "bundle theories" because they replace the idea of a unified self with a picture according to which we are an ever-changing bundle of sensations and thoughts. Here's a link to the section of Hume's Treatise in which he sets forth his views on the self. Enjoy! http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/TreatiseI.iv.vi.htm ...

Same as they are if God does exist. The idea that God (if such there be) has control over truths of math and logic is one that a few philosophers have argued for (Descartes, for instance, if I'm not mistaken) but even staunch believers in omnipotence typically understand omnipotence in a way that doesn't call for the puzzling idea that God could change the laws of logic. Briefly, the view of many theists would that God can perform any logically possible task. One reason for saying that is that logical "constraints" help us make sense of what omnipotence might mean.Why anyone would want more is hard to fathom. Suppose someone asked God to light up a set of pixels on an infintely high-resolution screen so that these pixels made a figure that was perfectly round and perfectly square. What would count? Is there actually a genuine task to be done here? If not, then it hardly seems to be a limitation on God's power (or anyone else's) that s/he can't complete the task.

If "natural" means "part of nature broadly conceived," then it's hard to see what's uncontroversially not natural. But what this really shows is that there is mre than one meaning of "natural" and more than one contrast that someone might make. Someone who believes that the material world was made by an immaterial creator would contrast the natural with the supernatural. On that usage, more or less everything in space and time would count as natural. But someone might also have the distinction between natural and artifactual in mind, and if that's what they mean, then my computer is not natural, but the flower on my windowsill is. No contradiction here; just a different distinction. As for what makes something an artifact, that's not easy to say with real precision. But it's easy to come up with a wealth of examples that more or less everyone will agree to. (The fact that we can't articulate a distinction doesn't show that we can't make a distinction.) There's another notion of ...

If setting the meaning of words always required sticking within the circle of language, we'd be stuck. At some point, someone said "Let's call this day 'Monday'." (This is fictional history, but something like this happened.) It's a bit like my parents saying "Let's call this child 'Allen'." In general, to get words to stick to things, we need some way of getting outside the circle of words, and pointing, indicating, stipulating, etc. are ways of doing that.

I'll leave it to Freudians and others to speculate on what part of some people's psyches makes virginity seem valuable. Suffice it to say that I share your bewilderment. Obvious caveats and qualifications assumed, there's no clear reason why staying a virgin should be considered virtuous. (Odd, by the way that there is a close conventional association between virtue and virginity.) That said, it's not really so strange that we might think about the first person we made love with -- or even kissed, for that matter -- with a certain wistfulness. But that's different from wishing that the person we eventually end up with should have been the first.

Although I think the argument is fraught with difficulties, I don't think it simply begs the question. Suppose this hypothetical theist -- call her Thalia -- is arguing with an agnostic, Agatha, who nonetheless believes that there are objective moral standards. Agatha has real-life counterparts, and some of them are even sophisticated philosophers. Suppose Thalia makes a case for premise one: that moral standards really do presuppose the existence of a divine lawgiver. At that point, Agatha has a choice: give up belief in objective moral standards, or take up theism. Depending on how convinced she is that there really are moral standards, she might well decide that she should opt for theism. Notice that from Agatha's point of view, there's no need for proof that there are objective moral standards. She already believes that. What she'd need to be convinced of is that premise 1 is true. And although I'm personally skeptical of premise 1), I do think there's more to be said here than meets the eye ...