Well, I don't know if it could be quite like that, but one dominant approach to contemporary linguistic theory holds that questions like, "How do descriptions work in natural language?" are ultimately questions about the psychology of competent speakers. Assuming that (cognitive) psychology in some sense or other ultimately reduces to facts about the brain, it follows that the question how descriptions work in natural language is, in some sense, a question about the brain. But the nature of the relation between psychology and brain-facts is the difficult question here.

It's no doubt true that Zionism as such doesn't necessarily insist that Jews are "unique" and so deserve "overriding rights". That said, there's a case to be made that "national ideologies" are intrinsically racist, on the ground that the very notion of a "nation" that is being deployed here is intrinsically racist. It is certainly true, for example, that there are people who regard the French as constituting a "nation" that deserves its own homeland, but most of those people would generally be regarded as extremists, and the same goes for British and German nationalists. If so, then nationalism is fundamentally inconsistent with the Enlightenment values the questioner mentions. Whether any of what I've just said is true, however, is hotly debated. In particular, the question to what extent "shared community values" might inform the basic structure of a political system has been much discussed over the last few decades. As good a place to start as any is Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice .

I agree with Eddy that atheists are indeed regarded with a good deal of skepticism in the United States, and, in particular, that an "out of the closet" atheist would have a hard time being elected to national office. That said, I think his own comments reveal that he is almost as ignorant of the varieties of religious belief as are the believers he is criticizing. I think it's probably safe to say that a majority of the people at my church do not "believe in a God with supernatural powers ... or in special creationor in immaterial souls", with the only question I'd leave open being how many of us believe in some form of continued existence ("life" is probably not the correct term) after death. To borrow from the words of someone who wrote recently in Time discussing Barack Obama's religious beliefs, for many relgious folks, God is more a matter of mystery than of miracles.

The clarification is welcome, but the reason for my remark was simply that I was putting these two remarks together: (i) "I think that an avowed atheist would have absolutely no hope ofelection to President or likely to any major office in any (or almostany) state, regardless of his or her other attributes orviews..."; (ii) "Once one recognizes that atheists can and do believe these [sensible] things, itis difficult to see why choosing not to believe in a God withsupernatural powers...should count against one's ability to bean effective political leader or most anything else." Unless I'm missing something, (ii), read against (i), strongly suggests that an atheist is someone who rejects supernaturalism , etc, which rather strongly suggests that a theist is someone who endorses it. Perhaps (ii) was badly stated, and should have said simply, "...it is difficult to see why choosing not to believe in a divine being should count against...".

It may not help very much, but the argument you describe is not (usually considered to be) logically valid. It's true that 2+2 could not have been other then 4, but almost no-one nowadays would suppose that it was logic that guaranteed that fact. So we might say that the argument is "mathematically valid", since there is no mathematical possibility of its conclusion being false while its premise is true. One other thing worth saying is that one shouldn't confuse the question what implies what with the question what you should infer from what. It does indeed seem silly to infer that 2+2=4 from the premise that the sky is blue (or pink, or green!). But it only follows that "the sky is blue" doesn't imply "2+2=4" if you assume that correct implication should always entail reasonable inference. But you shouldn't assume that.

There's a need for some care here. In classical logic, one certainly does have the rule: From A <==> B and ...A..., infer ...B..., in the sense that the former things will always imply the latter thing, and also in the sense that, in any complete system, applications of this rule could always be replaced by applications of other rules. So, in such systems, this is what is sometimes called a "derived rule". But we do not always have this rule. Indeed, there are plenty of systems in which one does not have it. A simple example is a modal logic that has the additional operator ◊, meaning "possibly". It certainly does not follow from A <==> B and ◊A that ◊B. It does follow (at least in the usual systems) if A <==> B is not just true but a theorem.

One thing the questioner seems to want to know is in what kinds of theories the first incompleteness theorem can itself be proved. As Peter says, the proof of the theorem is fine given informally, as almost all actual mathematical results are. But still, one might want to know: Where is this theorem provable? The answer is: Not in Q, but in fairly weak theories. It can certainly be proven in PA---full Peano arithmetic---though that hardly counts as a "weak" theory. I am fairly certain, though, that it can be proven in the theory known as "I-Sigma-1"---though I'd have to check that before betting my life on it. Part of the reason I'm sure about this, though, is that I-Sigma-1 is susceptible to the second incompleteness theorem. What you get in such cases is (e.g.) that PA |- Con(PA) --> G PA ; but then, if PA |- Con(PA), then PA |- G PA , and PA is inconsistent, by the first incompleteness theorem, and this works for any theory T that extends Q and is capable of proving: Con(T) --> G T . ...

Sorry, I didn't see this one, or I'd certainly have said something about it. Unsurprisingly, different people have different views about what the evidence for God's existence might be. And, for that matter, very different conceptions of who or what God is. Most of the suggestions Jasper considers are familiar and ancient, and still popular. And I'll agree with him: pretty unconvincing. But there are other views. Speaking just for myself, I'm not really sure if I'd say there was any "evidence" of God's existence. It's not that I don't think there's any reason to believe that God exists. I do. It's rather that I don't think I could describe my reasons in terms of "evidence". I suppose that much of my own conviction lies in my personal experience of the divine. But of course I don't expect anyone else to find that convincing, and such experiences aren't like (say) visual experiences, where you can just say, "Well, look for yourself". And I wouldn't want to model this, as some philosophers have, on...

This is a thorny topic, and I doubt there is any detail concerning philosophers per se. But for some data, see the Harris Poll on Americans' Religious Beliefs , which found that people with post-graduate degress are somewhat less likely to believe in God. But the difference isn't very impressive: 85%, as opposed to 90% for the general population. There are larger gaps concerning belief in miracles, which is perhaps not so surprising, either.

This much I'd agree with: There's a big difference between defending oneself against aggression and undertaking aggressive action oneself. What's not so clear is that one can (let alond should) do absolutely anything in response to aggression. Take the mugging case. It isn't at all clear that, if you are being violently mugged, then you are justified in killing your assailant. If killing your assailant were the only way you could protect yourself, then it would presumably be justified---or better, excusable. And if that were not the only way, but if you were to defend yourself in other ways that were justified and were to kill your assailant more or less accidentally, then you would not be blameworthy. But you do not get to kill someone just because they are mugging you. (And how violent exactly does the mugging have to be?) The same is true of war, even justified defensive war. Civilized nations have long recognized limits to the conduct of war. The use of chemical weapons, for example, is...

This kind of argument has been made by many different philosophers. Two that come immediately to mind are Ludwig Wittgenstein and Donald Davidson. Their considerations are broadly along the lines of: To have any beliefs at all about pigs, beards, etc, I must have some (mostly?) true beliefs about them. For Davidson, the argument involves considerations about what he calls"radical interpretation", the process of making sense of anotherthinker. But that just seems to me to answer the wrong question. The issue isn't about what's involved in making sense of someone. Maybe you do have to agree with the person about a lot of things to do that. The issue concerns what it is to have beliefs. Jerry Fodor has written at length about a great conflict between broadly "pragmatist" theories about the contents of beliefs and, uhh, non-pragmatist theories. According to Fodor's view, for example, being able to have beliefs about pigs involves being in the right kind of causal relation with pigs, and there isn't any...