What you describe is one response (one that has occasionally been used by theists) to the problem of evil. It is sometimes called the "contrast" argument. It is found for example in Leibniz's Theodicy of 1810, in various forms, along with other arguments defending theism. The version that you propose is that evil must exist for there to be an understanding of good. In some versions of the contrast argument, evil must be there if good itself is to exist. I think it is possible however to have a very good understanding of something positive (the positive numbers, for example) without understanding something negative. Again, I can perfectly well enjoy a good ice cream without ever having tasted a bad one, and know that it is good, at least in the sense that I enjoy it. I don't think that I myself have ever had a bad ice cream, rather than the odd less than perfect one, though I may be wrong, but in any case my enjoyment of all the good ones would be much the same even if I had had a bad...

We tend to regard the will as something that is marked off from the rest of the person, because, somehow, it is a direct manifestation of the person's being. So an ADHD drug could not be described as "strengthening people's will", because it if were described in this way it could not then be said to be be their own will that was being strengthened; they would be having it down for them. Similarly, one might think, you can do my work for me, but not my thinking, because then it would not be my thinking that was being done. (Still, in that sense you would not be doing my work - my working - and it is just as impossible for you to do my work as it is for you to think my thoughts or even perhaps to wear my boots, taken to be the ones I am wearing ("Look, his boots (borrowed boots) have mud on them")). One might on the other hand regard the will as the energy or strength to carry something through. Or one might regard it as determination, though here too the paradox shows through. If my...

I don't believe it is abnormal to be perturbed by the fact that relative to the size of the universe we are less than specks of dust, in the sense that very many people have been perturbed by it. Russell's "A Free Man's Worship" is based on this sort of idea, and it is very much a creature of what Thomas Nagel calls "the external perspective", the view from nowhere in particular. Is it abnormal in the sense that there is something philosophically wrong with the thought, or unsound about it? I think that it is abnormal in this sense. I am growing some cabbages, and they are very very small with respect to the moon, say, though they are MUCH larger than the ones in the allotment next to mine. Does their small size relative to the moon make them less valuable? Not to me; I plan to eat them, and they will get me through part of the winter. They even have economic value, and you can't eat the moon. I am with Frank Ramsey, who wrote that, 'Where I seem to differ from some of my friends is in attaching...

Most aestheticians make the distinction between aesthetics and philosophy of art, with "aesthetics" being the wider term and "philosophy of art" the narrower one. "Philosophy of art" is only the philosophy of works of art or art objects as they are unappealingly called these days. In other words, these philosophers accept that it is not only works of art to which the terms of aesthetic appraisal apply, such as "attractive", "unattractive", "lovely", not lovely", "unlovely", "majestic", "grubby", "oily", and on and on, without end. They also apply to the human face and the human form, to nature and parts of nature, including natural landscapes, the sea, etc. There is practically no word, I believe, that cannot one way or another be used as a term of aesthetic appraisal. The aesthetic is everywhere; a happy thought.

Here are some questions about time that are not scientific but are philosophical. Does time flow? Does it pass? What does it pass? Does it move? If so, how fast? If speed (s) = d/t, what is d/t when s is the speed of time? What temporal distance does time travel in a unit time? Surely the unity distance. But then the speed of time is 1 sec. per sec. How can time be measured, as the past does not exist and the future does not exist and the present is merely a point - nothing to measure there! - dividing the past and future? Does time exist? What (if anything) is it made of? Is time travel possible? In a completely unchanging universe, would time pass anyway? If every true statement corresponds to a fact, how can statements about the future be true now, in the present, as there are no facts about the future now, in the present? If there were, they wouldn't be future. Does it mean anything to say that time has a direction? What does it mean? If omelets came first and then eggs afterwards, time would surely...

Descartes sought certainty because he thought that if we know something with certainty, then it must be true. And he was right, if only because 'S knows that p ' implies p , so that in 'We know with certainty that . . .' the phrase "with certainty" is redundant; there is no such thing as uncertain knowledge. I suspect that the sense of your question may be Cartesian: is it the case that certainty implies truth? There are several concepts to sort out here: 'We know for sure, or for certain, or with certainty that . . .', 'I am certain (sure) that . . .', 'I feel certain, sure, that . . .', 'It is certain that . . .' (but not 'It is sure that . . .') There is a very useful paper by G.E. Moore called "Certainty" that might be helpful here, which is sensitive to distinctions of this kind. Sean is right in his response above that psychological certainty or "feeling certain" may not be a mark of truth, though I wonder whether anyone has troubled to test the correlation empirically in...

Once the premise is accepted that the treatment of animals that is required to make fur or leather goods is cruel, it does seem to follow that we should do everything we reasonably can to stop it, or failing that, we should not support it. I suspect that you are right to call your friend's view "extreme". For one thing, manufacturing fake fur and leather and vegetarian or vegan food that tastes a bit like meat, though it isn't, may actually help the campaign against the cruel treatment of our suffering evolutionary cousins. On the other hand, even if one was attracted to the idea, there is something very wrong with manufacturing handbags to look like human skin, or fake human meat for morally scrupulous cannibals. Why the double standard?

Try this. Suppose everything that is explained is explained by facts about the physical world - that's physicalism. If zombies were possible and existed, we would be physically indistinguishable from them. But they would have no consciousness. So whatever explains our consciousness cannot be physical. If it were, it would also make consciousness for the zombies. That's the point of the physical indistinguishability between us and the zombies. There is a very good article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy called "Zombies", by Robert Kirk, by the way, which will clear everything up for you.

This is a profound and difficult philosophical question. I have toyed with the idea that it is wrong to teach children anything normative in the areas of politics and religion - at least they won't know enough to spoil dinner table conversation when they grow up. Seriously, I am not sure what the answer is, but I think that I would want to take my stand on a distinction between teaching by indoctrination and teaching by example. It is difficult to see that there could be an objection to people raising their children in a context in which the faith of the parents is evident. (But what happens when the child is to copy the parent in the recitation of the Nicene Creed? - "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible . . ."?) And when it comes to explicit religious instruction, things can get sticky. As long as the transmission of the faith is restricted to example and reason, though, I think it is acceptable. When the method of transmission is authority and...