Yes, and not only Dawkins. but lots of scientists think wrongly that they have solved longstanding philosophical issues with their theories. I suppose the difference between a scientific theory and a philosophical theory is not that easy to grasp, especially after a difficult day looking at a test tube or doing nasty things to laboratory animals, but it is important nonetheless.

I remember in the 1960's there were many political philosophers who argued that the state tolerated opposition provided that it was ultimately not going to threaten the status quo. When liberals complimented their society for its freedom those opposed to them would say that the freedom only extended as far as allowing non-revolutionary change. In fact the latter sometimes suggested that the toleration of opposition was repressive, since it directed what would otherwise be radical demands for change into something more amenable to social cohesion. Whatever one thinks of such a theory, the idea that people should be free to say absolutely anything at all has recently been challenged by the Charlie Hebdo events, and in many countries there is legislation forbidding people from saying things that are held to be offensive by others since that might lead to violence. Are we not entitled to demand a level of respect for other people and their beliefs? If I have a Jewish neighbor and I greet him each...

There are disagreements in many areas of thought, not just philosophy, and historians, physicists, classicists and so on all argue with each other much of the time. The people who work in these areas are all thinking, but philosophers are generally thinking about thinking itself, and not directed at a particular subject matter, which distinguishes the discipline from others. So they are not all doing philosophy at all.

It is not unusual for there to be conflicts in life, and for us to have obligations to different people which cannot be reconciled. In that sort of situation you should expect whatever decision you take is going to leave you with regrets and doubts about whether you have done the right thing. I understand how guilt can arise here, and how inevitable such feelings are, but what is left out of your account is what would make you happy. You do have a duty to listen to the concerns of other people but many philosophers would say that you also have a duty to yourself to be happy. You might want to think seriously how in this situation your happiness is going to find a place, since it seems to me that the desire to be a martyr is likely to satisfy no-one in the long run.

It is certainly true that moral philosophers recognize that people who are in receipt of orders are operating under duress, and this may play some part in excusing their behavior. The fact that one is under duress does not necessarily excuse everything that is done, though. The evidence of what happened in the Holocaust suggests that people who did not want to carry out the various atrocities that went on did not suffer as a consequence. In fact, most of the participants were enthusiastic and profited directly from their cruel conduct. Even where this is not the case, many would refuse to do something immoral even if the consequences are serious for the agent. Utilitarians might contemplate the balance between the pains and pleasures involved, but from the point of view of deontologists there are many situations where the fact that the agent will suffer if he or she does something evil would be irrelevant to the issue of whether they should do it or otherwise. If it is wrong you do not do it...

I don't think so, since it is really difficult to indoctrinate anyone in anything, if by that one means that it is very hard to change your mind on the issue later on. As we know, children brought up to be religious often abandon the religion and vice versa. Religious parents may say that bringing their children up within their faith gives them an appropriate background to decide when they are older what attitude to take to the religion. Obviously the parents hope it will be a committed attitude. Should they not though just do nothing with the children and allow them when older to decide on what if any religion to pursue? The trouble with this is that a religion is more than just a set of doctrines, it is a way of life, and children need to experience this before they can make an informed decision. It is a bit like learning a language. It is useful to be brought up within a language community, and when one is an adult you can decide if you want to continue using that language, or perhaps would it be...

I am sure you are right that the strong tend to prevail over the weak, if that is what you mean by social Darwinism.But that does not mean it is justified. If parties need to come to an agreement then they should freely choose what is in that agreement, and any imbalance of power is likely as you say to interfere with this. It is not necessarily bad since what the stronger party wants to do may be in the best interests of everyone, or it may be the most just action overall. On the other hand, it is likely to be whatever the stronger party thinks is in its interests, and that is unlikely to be fair. That is what is wrong with exploitation.

Transcendental idealism does not mean that we create our own ideas, but that we can only apply them to our experience. That is, we can only know they apply to our experience, since what counts as objective knowledge is defined in terms of them. We cannot say whether those ideas extend anywhere beyond our experience, that would be transcendent realism, and transcendental idealism is far less ambitious. It just claims that what we call an object has to be characterized by particular categories of thought and those categories can only be used by us to describe experience, nothing else. It is anthropomorphic in the sense that the rules of what counts as an object for human beings is indeed limited to human beings. We are not crucial to reality, but what we call reality has to be based on our ideas of it. It is in fact a very restrictive and limited principle. We cannot say whether what we call objects really exist outside of our approach to the world, since our ideas stop at experience. Not a lot to be...

There are plenty of rational and responsible young people and just as many adults who clearly are not capable of making their own decisions. States have to posit an age when certain activities can be legally carried out because they use generalizations about how most people are at those ages, but these are just generalizations. Whatever the law says, we should judge individuals case by case where rational action is at issue.

It might be argued that people who want to have children and cannot then fail to live the lives they choose for themselves, and since other things being equal children are generally taken to be a good thing, their efforts should be supported. After all, we are naturally designed to have children, as members of a species that reproduces, but not everyone can have children at all, or not without complicated procedures. Whether this should count as a right is an interesting question. It is a bit like the right not to have children, where otherwise one would. It is often argued that if having a child is not something welcomed by someone who is pregnant then they have the right to discontinue the pregnancy by removing the fetus. There are two interesting aspects of rights language here. If someone has a right to something, then someone else, like the state, has the duty to support them in exercising that right. The other pertinent remark is that rights language has tended to replace the idea that one...