Well, if that were the argument one had used, one would be in a bind. But I doubt many people are vegetarians for that reason. Nonetheless, most people, vegetarian or otherwise, think it wrong to cause animals unnecessary suffering. If it turned out that plants (say, grasses) feel pain, then I take it most people would be in a bind. Fortunately, there doesn't seem much prospect that organisms with no nervous system (let alone a central nervous system) feel pain.

Extending Alex's last point, one might say that you would harm your wife were you to cheat on her, whether or not she ever discovered your infidelity . Of course, it wouldn't cause her emotional pain, but one might suppose that she has an interest in your fidelity that is quite independent of her knowledge.

As has often been mentioned here, one cannot "prove" very much, if "prove" means something like: Establish beyond absolutely all doubt, reasonable or otherwise. It simply does not follow, however, that one cannot know very much. To suppose otherwise is to suppose that one can know only what one can "prove", and there is simply no reason to believe that. That said, it may yet be (and I take it, indeed still is) a puzzle what exactly it is to know something.

I don't know that the beauty of a thing is diminished by its prevalence. Roses, blue jays, and the newfallen snow, for example, continue to strike me as stunningly beautiful no matter how often I am privileged to see them. Perhaps there is something different about human creations. Or perhaps, with art and architecture, we respond to something other than beauty, such as originality.

Someone who knows more about the physics than I do would need to answer the latter question, but I believe that certain physical phenomena are supposed to be random in a much stronger sense that just "unintelligible to humans". There is supposed to be nothing other than probabilistic facts about when and how the phenomenon might occur. Even God cannot know in advance when and what is to happen, for there is simply no such fact to be known. There is a sophisticated mathematical theory of randomness. See the Wikipedia entry on Kolmogorov complexity . It describes a way, in terms of informational complexity, to characterize when a sequence of 0s and 1s is random.

No, it doesn't prove that time is subjective. It just proves that we're not aware of it when we sleep. Indeed, since time clearly does pass while we're asleep, that would seem to suggest that time isn't subjective in the strong sense you are suggesting it is.

I don't understand the comment that follows the question. I can't think of any philosophical questions in which I'm reguarly interested that would look terribly different if I knew I was going to live forever. Indeed, as Wittgenstein writes in the Tractatus , it's quite unclear how much the fact of eternal life would do much even to solve philosophical questions about the "meaning" of life. As Wittgenstein notes, an eternal life would in many ways be as much of a puzzle as a mortal one.

Well, you're in a tough position. (And I agree with you: I see no reason marijuana should be outlawed when alcohol and tobacco are not.) But I don't think you're likely to be compared to the Nazis. So you should let yourself off a bit. Still, as I said, you are in a tough position. I take it that deliberately not busting people for pot could get you in a fair bit of trouble, even fired. Obviously, if you felt sufficiently strongly about this issue, you might find yourself with little choice but to quit being a cop. That'd be a tough choice to make, I'm sure. So I wonder if there are alternatives. To what extent is it possible for you to speak out on this issue, given your profession? The issue of mandatory sentencing is a very important one here. Could you speak out on that issue?

I'm not sure I understand the question: Is it this? Let's say we have a fair coin, C, and that it is going to be flipped once every minute starting at noon tomorrow. Now let's imagine a person Fred. Fred is about to have an amazing streak of luck. Each minute, he is going to call "heads" or "tails", and Fred is going to get it right every time, and he will continue to do so for as long as he keeps going. I don't see anything impossible about that. Maybe it's unlikely, but it's clearly possible, and nothing much seems to follow. Now we don't have Fred making an infinite prediction here. So maybe we should change the story. Let's say that Fred says that the first flip will be even, every even flip will be followed by an odd one, and every odd one by an even one. And now let's suppose that, for as long as we keep flipping the coin, Fred turns out to be right. We can even suppose that we flip the coin forever, and Fred is always right. Again, that's clearly possible, if very unlikely, but nothing much...

A Google search will turn up a handful of articles on Hegesias. Or you can start with the article at Wikipedia .