Yes, this makes sense: philosophy as clear articulation of certain insights. I'd add two qualifications, though. First, sometimes what feels like a compelling insight disintegrates under scrutiny. Think, for example, of some of the apparent insights Socrates is described as demolishing in the Platonic dialogues. Second, philosophy does much more than merely seek to articulate what people already know from insight. For example, some of the most brilliant philosophical writings ask new questions that had never occurred to anyone before. Thus Kant, for instance, asks how time consciousness is possible. All I am aware of stands together in one mental state. So how do I so much as get the idea that things happen (follow one another) in time? His predecessors took this for granted -- Hume, for example, who sought to explain our sense of causal connection as based on repeated experiences with some A-event followed by some B-event. Kant's response is that, in order for us to take events to belong to...

No. That A is a necessary condition for B means that B presupposes A, that B cannot hold without A also holding. That A is a sufficient condition for B means that A implies B, that A cannot hold without B also holding. That A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B thus states a symmetrical relation between A and B: Neither can hold without the other, that is, both hold or neither. If A being a necessary and sufficient condition for B indeed implied that A caused B then, given symmetry, it would likewise imply that B caused A. A and B would have caused each other -- a rather odd way for them to come about. An example may help. In this example, A is that you are an unmarried male human adult at some given time t, and B is that you are a bachelor and this same time t. Your being an unmarried male human adult at t is a necessary condition for your being a bachelor at t. (For you to be a bachelor at t, you must be an unmarried male human adult at t. Your being a...

This clearly depends on how severe the damage is. If there's a slight crack in the glass, people would still call it a window. If glass and frame are lying about, smashed into a few thousand pieces, no one (except an eccentric philosopher) would say that what's left is a window. So how severe -- you will ask -- may the damage be exactly? This depends on standard use of the words of our language. Interestingly, things may cease under one description and continue under another. After some creative modification, what was a Hercules statue is still a statue, but not one of Hercules. After further modification it's no longer a statue at all, but still a piece of bronze. Similarly, when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, a caterpillar ceases to exist, a butterfly begins to exist, yet an animal continues to exist throughout. Philosophers have argued a great deal over whether what we say about such transformations is merely conventional (having to do with the words we have in our language and how...

If we understand welfare broadly in terms of the fulfillment of human interests, then the idea of a social contract among human beings is related, in the first instance, to individual welfare. Each contractor will work out, on the basis of her or his own interests, what agreement to seek or to make. Social welfare (understood as some aggregate of individual "welfares" or in some other way) is typically said to result from social arrangements justified through a social contract -- either because contractors do not know how alternative designs of the social order would affect them in particular and therefore seek a design that is good for all or because each contractor will resist designs that impose great risks or burdens upon herself. A widely shared element of social-contract thinking is then that the agreement or contract brings the contractors a net welfare gain relative to non-agreement. The contractors are more than compensated, in welfare terms, for what they give up.

I am on your side, see response to question 1075 .

I agree that philosophers -- and not just professors of logic but especially also moral and political philosophers -- ought to play a much greater role in public political debate in the US. Our country contrasts here with many European countries where -- thanks to extensive media access -- the name recognition of the leading philosophers (e.g., Juergen Habermas) is vastly higher than that of our leading philosophers (e.g., John Rawls) is in the US. The reasons are complex. I don't think it's merely a matter of getting academics to submit OpEds to the New York Times and similar outlets. Another important factor is that the US media will simply decline to print academic comentary outside the mainstream. Here again the contrast to Europe is interesting. I have tried on numerous occasions to get important comments published in the media. I have found this to be difficult in Europe (including the UK) and vastly more difficult in the US. The reason given for rejection is typically that, while the point...

This question cannot be answered in general terms. Some killings that you may be required to perform may be justifiable, others not. Generally, killings in war are thought to be justifiable when two conditions are both fulfilled: Your country must have a just cause for being involved in the war in the first place. And each potentially lethal action within the war must be aimed at a legitimate target while taking great care to spare others who are not a threat. You must reassure yourself on both counts before you start killing people on the orders of others. This can be quite straightforward when you are ordered to defend your country against invading soldiers. But it can be far more difficult, if not impossible, when you are ordered to participate in an attack upon, and occupation of, another country. Taking the U.S. invasion of Iraq as an example, there is considerable doubt about the first condition. The U.S. sought but failed to obtain UN Security Council authorization. The weapons of mass...

The main reason for adding "social and" to "political philosophy" seems to be to include conceptual, empirical, and normative questions about human social life that do not fall within the political as conventionally conceived -- for example, issues about shaping the personality and character of young people through education in schools and in the family. The expression "social philosophy" for the whole field would be quite bland (the expression occurs rarely on its own). It would not make sufficiantly clear that the central concern is to think about political systems and the rules that structure them and the rules generated by them (which importantly organize and condition much of human life in the last few millennia).

Your idea works fine on a certain modest understanding of religion. If religion were only about the Divine, perhaps with the additional thought that God created the universe, then no explanation given by science of anything in the universe could interfere with religion. Religions are typically not so modest, however. A typical religion may ascribe certain duties to human beings along with the freedom and responsibility to live up to these duties. And this can raise scientific (and philosophical!) doubts about whether human beings have the requisite freedom. In response, you might propose dividing human beings over your two levels: into a physical body (brain included) and a spirit or soul. But this proposal raises further puzzles about the relation between these two parts or components of human beings. If religion attributes some of what you do to your soul it may compete with scientific theories that attribute all your conduct and thinking to physical causes. If religion attributes nothing you...

The conflict you see would really exist if the only way to reward the best ideas/practices were through superior opportunities (either for the person or for her offspring). This might happen in a society in which opportunities are for sale. In such a society, the more affluent people can buy a superior education for their children, one to which the children of poorer citizens have no access. And the children of the affluent can then qualify for jobs that children of the poor have no chance of obtaining. Our society is of this kind, and so are -- to a lesser extent -- most other societies. But societies don't have to be organized in this way. A society might financially reward the best contributions but then block conversion of these financial rewards into educational opportunities. The quality of the public schools of such a society would not vary with the affluence of the area it serves (as is the case when public schools are funded through local property taxes). And any private schools would be...