I agree with everything Thomas Pogge has said in his reply, but also think that one assumption of your question needs to be questioned. Consider the following example: It is my night to cook dinner, but I have forgotten to buy an ingredient. I ask my wife to run down to the store to purchase it, but as I do so, it occurs to me (what is obviously true) that driving a car puts one at risk for injury or death. Now, I think there is an important moral distinction to be made between asking my wife to drive to the store precisely because of the risks I know she will face in driving, and asking her to drive to the store (despite the risks) to purchase an ingredient necessary for the dinner I (or we) have planned. Since I do not believe that it is the intent of the law, as it were, to put inmates at greatly higher risks of victimization by beating, rape, or murder (note that none of these are legally mandated, and all are legally proscribed and are often legally punished, even when they occur in...

It might help to notice that there are distinct senses to "reasons for believing that P." The first sense (usually called "propositional justification" by epistemologists) has to do with there being some fact of the matter that would make it reasonable for me--that would justify me--in believing that P, should I happen to be aware of that fact. Hence, to use an example that has been used by others, the fact that there is smoke billowing out of the house (whether or not anyone is aware of it) is a good reason to think the house is on fire. The other sense is called "doxastic justification" by epistemologists, and has to do with what a person actually has, among his (other) beliefs, as justification for that person's belief that P. So I would be doxastically justified in believing that the house is on fire if I was aware of the smoke billowing out, and was also aware of the connection between smoke and fire. It is a point of contention among epistemologists precisely what role...

The list would be a very long one, I'm afraid! Nearly all of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers did; all of the early and medieval Christian philosophers, most of the early modern European philosophers, until perhaps the 20th Century. In the 20th and 21st centuries, probably most of the best-known philosophers have not believed in an afterlife. It is much easier to identify the best-known philosophers who have not believed in an afterlife. These would include: most or all of the Epicureans (among the Greek and Roman philosophers), and among the early moderns, Hobbes and Hume. I'm sure there are others, as well, some of which might also count as "major philosophers."

It really depends upon what you mean by "wisdom." The way you put it, it would appear that you mean the same thing by "wisdom" as some information or statement that might otherwise be produced by philosophical argumentation. I am not inclined to call such things "wisdom" at all, though they may be produced by wisdom of a certain sort. Rather, I am inclined to think of wisdom as a kind of virtue or excellence of character--one which is characterized by intellectual skill, perhaps, and also by practical intelligence. If this is right, then wisdom is not simply some information that can be concluded via argumentation or for that matter enunciated in poetry or other art forms. One with this virtue, however, might reveal or enact his or her possession of such wisdom in the things they might say or write, and also in the appropriateness and effectiveness of how they say or write what they do. It could well be that the very best way for a wise person to communicate something of importance to a target...

I think it is reasonable to suppose that in order to have the character defect of being cruel (and thus, in order to act not just as a cruel thing would act, but actually to act cruelly) the being in question has to be able to do something like deliberate about the moral or ethical value of different courses of action. A hawk might be able to do something like deciding whether to attack this squirrel, but I strongly doubt that hawks can consider whether or not attacking squirrels is for the best. Now, if you tortured a mouse, I would fault you as cruel, because I regard you as capable of deliberating about whether torturing mice is for the best. But when your cat does it, the cat acts in the way a cruel thing acts--you, for example, if you did that--but the cat does not act cruelly and is not cruel, in my view.

I just responded to a question almost exactly like this one. Please see my reply to that other question.

Who the hell do you think you're talking to??? (Just a joke! But one I would like you to take seriously for a moment. After all, if you really were a solipsist, you wouldn't expect an answer to your question from anyone, right?) It may be that solipsism cannot be refuted as such. (After all, if one is dedicated to holding the truth of solipsism, the one attempting to refute it is put into...well...a bit of an awkward position!) But there may be another angle: What should we think of a theory that not only nullifies all morality (you can't wrong something that doesn't exist), but also all discourse (who are you talking to?), and which cannot even be accepted in living one's life (go ahead and make believe that other consciousnesses don't exist, and see if you can make that work!). If a theory cannot be lived , how good a theory can it be?

Descartes imagined that he had found something that could not be doubted in what is known as his " cogito " (a shortened form of the Latin expression " cogito ergo sum, " which means "I think, therefore I am." You can see the intuitive strength of this: What would it be like to think that you were thinking, but be mistaken about that? (How could you be mistaken--because even to be mistaken, you'd have to be thinking something , right?) Others have supposed that certain mathematical or logical truths are also indubitable (such as 2+2=4, or "if p then p"). But even Descartes thought that mathematical and logical truths are dubitable in some sense--even if we can't imagine what it would be like for them to be false, Descartes argued that we can imagine being so badly deceived (by an immensely powerful evil demon, say) that it could be that something we couldn't imagine being false might still actually be false. And some philosophers have also said that we can provide some reason...

"Consistent" indicates the logical condition of not being contradictory. In logical contexts, "coherent" is used synonymously with "consistent." But in other contexts, "coherent" is intended to make a stronger connection between two things than the (very weak) connection of being non-contradictory. So, for example, those who claim that "coherence with one's other beliefs" (or some variant of this) is a necessary condition of knowledge do not think that mere consistency is enough. Rather, to say that a believe "coheres" with one's other beliefs is to say that there is some evidenciary or justificatory connection between the coherent items. A very crude, but perhaps useful way to think of this is as follows: Conceive of "consistency" as simply meaning that the items in question do not clash with one another or rule each other out; conceive of coherence as the condition in which the items in question actually "fit" with one another.

I believe the oldest expression of this injunction appeared as an inscription at the shrine at Delphi. The inscription itself is no longer extant, but it is referred to in ancient sources as having been one of the things displayed at the shrine. See Plato's Phaedrus 230a. Many subsequent authors liked to use this expression, and each may have meant something somewhat different by using it. Socrates' own use of it seemed to mean something like, "Be aware of your own ignorance!" We can only speculate about what thoe who inscribed the words at Delphi might have meant, but I would surmise it was something like this: "Know that you are merely a mortal, and do not presume to be in any way the equal of a god!"