Many philosophers and psychologists find this argument compelling. I, for example, am a philosopher who finds the argument compelling. (See also Jerry Fodor, The Language of Thought , for an extensive discussion of this kind of consideration.) But not everyone finds the argument compelling, and even those of us who do need to be careful here. The most we can really conclude is that some kind of cognitive activity is present in pre-linguistic creatures. Someone might think that there are important differences between the kind of cognitive activity present pre- and post-linguistically, and one might think that the reason has very much to do with the acquisition of language. One view I have heard expressed, for example, is that language plays an important role by providing a common form of representation that allows otherwise isolated cognitive systems to "talk" to one another. Whether that is so is, presumably, an empirical question. There are some interesting experiments that point in this...

Your question concerns real numbers and measurement of physical phenomena using them. The question would not arise if we were talking about non-negative integers and the use of such numbers to answer "how many" questions, like: How many panelists are there on askphilosophers.org? The answer "39" is perfectly accurate. Nor would the question arise if we were talking about the use of real numbers within mathematics itself: The ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle in Euclidean space is π, amd that too is perfectly accurate. On the other hand, if we are, as I said, talking about real numbers and their use in measurement, the question does arise. And I think one might have to allow that, by and large, no measurement one makes is every completely precise. But scientists are quite well aware of this fact. That is why, when they are being careful, they will say that a measurement is, say, "accurate to within a millimeter". That is also what makes the concept of "significant digits" ...

I'm not sure I follow this argument. People who think there are no such things as "souls" think human beings are living creatures, and to be a living creature is not just to be "electricity and cells" in the sense that I,for example, am not a dead body over here plus a generator over there. Now, as you note, a living person who is in a coma also, presumably, feels nothing. Someone who thinks people do not have souls should, however, say that this is because a certain part of the person's brain is not active, or is not active in the right kind of way. Its not being active means, to be sure, that there is no the right kind of electrical activity in that part of the person's brain. But this is not to say that it is the electricity that would have feeling, if only it were there. It means that the person does not feel anything because that kind of electrical activity is not then present. Indeed, there is a classic challenge here to the conception of people as embodied souls: If people are...

See this response for some remarks that may be relevant here, as well.

There are really two different kinds of "illusions" one might have in mind, and they are "real" in different senses. Consider first the railroad tracks. We can describe this phenomenon in purely geometric terms. Take a point P and a line segment AB. Then as AB is moved further away from P the angle <APB becomes smaller, and as the distance tends to infinity, the angle <APB tends to zero. So what we're dealing with is just a fact of geometry. On the other hand, consider the horizon illusion: When the moon is close to the horizon, it looks much larger than when it is overhead. My understanding is that it still isn't well understood why, but whatever the reason, it has something to do with how our visual system works. So this illusion is real not in a geometrical sense but in a broadly psychological one.

I expect teenagers have been hearing their parents say that the music to which the teenager listens isn't "real" music for about as long as there have been teenagers, parents, and music. It's not at all clear what that is supposed to mean. Is it that the music is fake music? the way a toy car isn't a real car? Presumably not. I expect it is meant, rather, in the sense in which one might say that someone isn't a "real man". It's not that the person isn't a man, or is only pretending to be one. It's rather that, although he is a man, he doesn't meet some standard for manhood the speaker endorses; or again: He's a man, but not a very good example of one. So, in that sense, saying that something isn't "real" music means: It's music, but it doesn't meet some standard or other; it's music, but not very good music. Of course, different people can be presumed to have different standards, but it certainly doesn't follow that there are no objective standards. What those objective standards might be is, of...

I take it that the desire for "world peace" is a desire for an absence of war. So my question to you would be: Why do you think that the fact that there will always be disagreements and conflicts means there must always be war? Surely there are other ways to resolve such disagreements. The United States has disagreements with Canada; Canada has disagreements with Japan; and so on and so forth. But they're not shooting at each other. The real obstacles to peace, I'd have thought, are things like greed, pride, and a desire for power.

When I asked this question of my undergraduate mentor, he asked me a series of questions: Does it keep you up at night? Would you do philosophy anyway, no matter what else you were doing? The point of these questions was that, to be a professional philosophical researcher, you really do have to feel "called" to it. (OK, I'm sure there are some exceptions.) There are a couple reasons for that. For one, getting through graduate school and then getting a good job is a difficult process. That's not to say one can't have fun doing it. I certainly did. But the various times I as "on the market" (that is, looking for a job) were among the most stressful and difficult times of my life. Moreover, and this is the second reason, philosophical research tends to be a very lonely, and very frustrating, business, where the criteria of success are not very well defined and the rewards not much more so. To keep at it, especially through the lean times, which we all experience, one has to be very committed, from inside,...

There are a lot of introductory textbooks, most of them collections of material on various themes: mind-body, skepticism, etc. Bratman and Perry's Introduction to Philosophy was what was used at MIT when I was a graduate student, and it seems popular, from what I can tell. But I don't know whether it would be appropriate to your needs. The American Philosophical Association has subparts that are concerned specifically with philosophy at the pre-college level. I'd try writing to them for some advice and some resources.

This question is obviously similar to this one . And the answer is much the same. You are not seeing two computer monitors. You are seeing one monitor, although it seems to you as if you are seeing two monitors. There is one monitor that both appears to be slightly to the left and appears to be slightly to the right. Note that this is not the same as to say that there is one monitor that appears both to be slightly to the right and to be slightly to the left. I doubt we could ever have a visual experience correctly described this latter way: Could it ever look to you as if there was one thing that was in two places? But there is no obstacle to our having a visual experience correctly described the former way: It can be that, although it looks to you as if there are two things (in different places, of course), in fact you are seeing only one. If that seems confusing, well, it is confusing. The logic of this kind of situation is extremely subtle. Philosophers and logicians spent a lot of time...