" I recognize that there is some not inconsiderable paradox in doubting the very idea of being able to form a thought and using thought to achieve that doubt". Well spotted! Suppose that your doubts about memory lead you this: "I cannot trust any thought, including this one". Where do you go from there? It doesn't look as though the paradoxical nature the thought undermines it in such a way that you can conclude that it is false, and proceed to trust some thoughts. It sort of leaves you with nowhere to go. I agree with Stephen. Memory is not that unreliable. It is much less reliable than we think. When we seem to remember things our brains seem to do a lot of construction and interpretation, and present to us a partly made-up image of some past even as if it were a perfectly accurate representation. This can get us into trouble. But our short-term memory is pretty good and serves its purpose. It is not hard to keep track of the thoughts involved in a short line of reasoning. It also gets a...

If a computer appears to possess intelligence, then we need to consider why it appears so. One reason might be that it is intelligent. Another might be that has been constructed to appear intelligent and is a good fake. There are in fact a lot of programs that seem to be like that: good fakes - in particular, ELIZA, designed by Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s, and others inspired by it. These are basically tin-pot little boxes of tricks that are very effective at giving answers that appear to be intelligent. Lesser animals have brains that resemble ours in some ways, but not others. We don't yet know which aspects of our neurology give us self awareness. So we are not in a position to tell whether lesser animals are self-aware by comparing their brains to ours. Do you think that it is programming or neurology that gives rise to self-awareness? If it's the former, then do you think that a very very very simple program would give rise to self awareness? If its the latter, then do you think...

It is true that a number of psychologists treat intelligent use of mirrors as evidence of self awareness. But I am not convinced. Animals can gather information about their own bodies via various forms of perception, including, of course, vision. Some can also use a mirror - extending the range of their vision - to get information about their own bodies. But I don't see how that implies that they have any concept of self. My guess is that lots of animals do have something that we might reasonably call 'self awareness'. But I don't know of any serious evidence for this.

Have a look at Ned Block's article 'Semantics, Conceptual Role' in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy . You can find this by Googling 'Conceptual Role Semantics', or going here http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/ConceptualRoleSemantics.html.

I think that the best argument against the existence of God is the standard one: if he as great as the leading religions make out, he would not have created a world like this one. Of course it is not a demonstrative argument. But I haven't come across a plausible response to it. But accepting your premise, I'd say: in order rationally to believe in something you need some evidence or argument for it. After all, it's easy to come up with endlessly many ludicrous hypotheses that are consistent with the evidence available to us: e.g. the world is densely populated by very small, very clever, very fast little green men who take care to remain undetected. Why believe in God and not believe in them? You need a reason.

I am not sure who argues that the act of dealing arms is not morally wrong. It looks like a bad argument to me. If you sell someone arms, then you have no guarantee that they won't use them to kill people illegitimately. In fact, often, that is just what happens. So it is imoral to deal arms. A parallel argument applies to drug dealing.

Are you talking of scientific laws? If so .... Calling something a scientific law doesn't imply that there is an enforcer. It just requires that there be some kind of regularity - constancy - in the universe. Philosophers dispute what kind of regularity. But they don't typically go for a regularity enforced by God. Nor do philosophers or scientists typically want to place humans at the center of meaning. I'd call the claims of scientists 'hypotheses' rather than 'suggestions' and add that they are hypotheses backed by arguments. The extent to which the arguments are convicing varies from case to case.

I don't know what you mean by: "One can create axioms that make statements like 'all bachelors are married' true". I assume that by 'married' you mean 'unmarried'. But I still don't understand. Perhaps you mean that one can write down obviously true principles from which the truth of every analytic sentence, and no other sentence, follows. But we can't. Not yet anyway.

Our atomic structures don't remain the same over time. Some changes in structure sustain personal identity. Others don't, such as death. And some would argue that certain types of changes in neural structure would result in person a being replaced by a different person, b, as owner of the same body (say if b's neural structure were copied in a's brain).

Quite so. I think it depends in part on who the religious person is. If there is almost no chance that you will change their views then there is no reason why you should spend your time and energy on the matter. And I expect this applies to a lot of people. If there is a decent chance that you will change their views, then a good question is: would it benefit them? I expect that the answer will often be 'yes'. If I had once been religious and someone had convinced me that I was wrong, I'd be grateful. Lots of us want to know the truth.