"A picture held us captive," Wittgestein writes in the Philosophical Investigations , "and we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language...." The sort of picture to which Wittgenstein is referring here consists of pre-philosophical assumptions about the nature of language, of mind, of knowledge that shape the kind of philosophical answers that are given to those questions. On one interpretation of Wittgenstein, his aim throughout his later writings--that is, the writings beginning with the Blue and Brown Books and continuing on to the end of his death, was to expose such pictures in order to break the hold that they had on the great early analytic philosophers, such as Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, and Wittgenstein himself (in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ). On this reading of the later Wittgenstein, his later philosophy is largely 'therapeutic', aimed at enabling those inclined to philosophy--including himself!--to live content with a 'pictureless' approach to...

It depends on what one means for it to be bad to have a favorite sibling. I'll take the question to mean whether it is appropriate or morally permissible to have a favorite sibling--i.e., to like one person to whom one is biologically related more than another. Now it seems to me to be natural to prefer some people to others, and, hence, equally natural to prefer some of one's siblings to others. (This, of course, doesn't bear on the question of the appropriateness or moral permissibility of preferring one sibling to another.) Provided that this preference isn't manifest to the sibling in question, then it would seem to me not to be bad, not morally impermissible to prefer one sibling to another. However, in such a case, it seems to me that one must take special care not to manifest one's preference--that, it seems, could be bad, for it might be harmful to the sibling in question.

This excellent question goes to the heart of the vexed issue of what philosophy is (itself a philosophical question, which has received widely divergent answers in the past 2500 years.) Today, there is a profession of philosophy: in order to enter into this profession, it is nearly always required that one have a Ph.D. (there are exceptions--there are professional philosophers, i.e., philosophers with academic positions, such as Saul Kripke and, I believe, Myles Burnyeat, who do not have Ph.D.'s, just as there are professional scholars of English literature who lack Ph.D.'s--my former colleague at Johns Hopkins University, the esteemed critic Neil Hertz, never submitted his Ph.D. dissertation). This requirement reflects the fact that today, academic disciplines such as philosophy are professions, entrance into which requires certain credentialing. Although all the Ask Philosophers panelists have professional positions and Ph.D.'s, this of course does not imply that any of these professionals is...

Let's distinguish the question of whether it is wrong to lie from the specific example that you offer; I'll treat them in turn. Whether it is ever appropriate to lie depends on what one thinks determines the permissibility of an action: Kant, for example, at least on some interpretations--the topic is vexed--seems to say that lying is never permissible (much has been written on this topic: I recommend Christine Korsgaard's advanced, but stimulating essay, "The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil," in her collection, Creating the Kingdom of Ends ); a utilitarian who believes that the permissibility of an action is in some sense determined by its consequences (the sense in which consequences matter to utilitarians varies, depending on the form of utilitarianism in question), might say that lying is justified when the consequences of lying are more beneficial than the consequences of not lying. (For a interesting treatment of the permissibility of lying, see another essay by Korsgaard, "Two...

There are numerous books on the topic. I recommend the recently published, excellent book by John Deigh, An Introduction to Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

The day before Socrates' trial began, the Athenians had launched a ship, dedicated to the god Apollo, bound for Delos in commemoration of the victory of the Athenian Theseus over the Minotaur. During the ship's voyage, no executions were allowed in Athens. Although the length of the trip was variable--it depended on weather conditions--according to Xenophon (as reported in Debra Nails's excellent, informative entry on Socrates in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ) it took thirty-one, and consequently Socrates lived thirty days beyond his trial.

You are absolutely right that Kant's conception of intuition is crucially important to the argument of the first Critique . It is, however, quite difficult exactly to say what intuitions are, for Kant. In the Transcendental Aesthetic of the first Critique , Kant writes: "In whatever way and through whatever means a cognition may related to objects, that through which it relates immediately to them, and at which all thought as a means is directed as an end, is intuition. This, however, takes place only insofar as the object is given to us; but this in turn, is possible only if it affects the mind in a certain way. This capacity...to acquire representations...is called sensibility. Objects are therefore given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone affords us intuitions..." (A 19/B 33). Here's a start at understanding Kant's conception of intuition: intuitions are representations, given in sensation, that provide the material--the starting point--for all cognition.

Can one retain a commitment to divine benevolence even if one has abandoned the interventionist conception of God? It is a standard feature of early modern thought about God that "the time of miracles has ceased," and that God no longer directly intervenes in the natural world, or acts to bring about events in the world by particular volitions (i.e., God does not will that a particular house be destroyed). Rather, God governs the natural world by means of general laws, and all particular events in the natural world admit of natural explanations in terms of laws of nature. As for why natural evils befall one man rather than another: this is due to the operation of natural laws, not to God's particular volitions, so God is not directly responsible either for the destruction of one house or for the fact that another house was spared. This does not imply that God has withdrawn from the world: He sustains the world in existence, and it is in virtue of His power that natural events take...

The question reminds me of Schiller's lines. Scruples of Conscience I like to serve my friends, but unfortunately I do it by inclination And so often I am bothered by the thought that I am not virtuous. Decision There is no other way but this! You must seek to despise them And do with repugnance what duty bids you. These lines are often cited as an objection to Kant's account of moral worth; Frederick Beiser challenges the standard reading of these lines in a discussion of the relation between Kant and Schiller in Schiller as Philospher: A Re-Examination . I want also to add a few remarks about Kant to Matthew's perceptive response. First, a point about the examples in the Groundwork . Kant introduces those examples in order to isolate the moral motive, in order to explicate the concept of a good will, which Kant introduces in the first sentence of the body of the Groundwork : "It is impossible to think of...

In Book II, Chapter 21, Section 8 of the New Essays on Human Understanding , Leibniz draws some distinctions that are relevant to your question. Responding to Locke's discussion of freedom, Leibniz writes: The term 'freedom' is highly ambiguous. There is freedom in law, and freedom in fact. In law, a slave is not free, and a subject is not entirely free; but a poor man is as free as a rich one. Freedom in fact, on the other hand, consists either in a power to do what one wills or in the power to will as one should. Your topic...is freedom to do , and there are different degrees and varieties of this. Speaking generally , a man is free to do what he wills in proportion as he has the means to do so....The freedom to will is also understood in two different senses: one of them stands in contrast with the imperfection or bondage of the mind, which is an imposition or constraint...; and the other sense is employed when freedom is contrasted with necessity....It is in that way that...