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Animals
Ethics
Value

Why don't humans think of all lives as equal, and instead that other creatures' lives hold more importance than others? For example a human kills an animal such as cows or pigs and no one (except animal rights activists and the like) has a problem with that, but if that same person killed another human they would be charged and sent to prison. In both cases a life is taken but (one human) and that person's life for some reason holds more importance than the animal's.

Your question seems to presuppose that life itself has some value all on its own...or maybe it doesn't, because you don't mention ending the lives of plants that we eat, or bacteria that cause infections, or stinging or blood-sucking insects. I use these examples to make a point: Virtually no one believes that life of any kind should be protected. Vast resources are spent each year on exterminating certain forms of life (for example, those that cause malaria). So this leads to the more important (and more philosophically interesting) question: What lives should we value, and what is it about these forms of life that makes them valuable, whereas the others are not (or even have negative value)? Now, we often think that just because we asked the question, the burden of argument shifts to those asked. My point in this response, however, is to suggest that some reason needs to be given even for thinking that we should value lives we do not now value. Animal rights activists, as...
Love

How can a person love another without knowing him/her personally?

Depends upon what you mean by "love." It is hard to see how one could romantically love someone they didn't know. But if by "love" you mean something like "respect for the lives and interests of another," it seems to me one can do this for perfect strangers. Indeed, it seems to me that good people will habitually have this to offer to everyone they meet (and also to those they never meet).
Philosophy

Why is philosophy so difficult?

There is an ancient saying (in Greek): "Chalepa ta kala." This means: "Noble things are difficult." Not all things that are valuable are difficult...but some are. And part of their value, I think, derives from the difficulty. In difficult endeavors, even the smallest successes are thrilling. But here is another answer (also with ancient roots): Aristotle, in the beginning of his work, Metaphysics , says that "philosophy begins in wonder." I think that's right, and it is right about any kind of inquiry at all . But that means that producing results, in an inquiry, is going to be difficult--because in every serious inquiry, we begin in wonder. And we wonder because we are ignorant : If we already knew what we wondered about, we wouldn't wonder! Conquering ignorance is a tough business; as Socrates noted (see Plato's Apology ) even recognizing our own ignorance can be difficult...and is all too rare (then and now).
Value

Why is it that even though we cannot predict how long a person's life would be, the value of a person's life generally decreases as their age increase? I have in mind an assumption of the measurement of a person's life as what order of priority others would place in trying to save that person's life. For example if person A and person B's lives are both in equal danger and person C decides saving person A's life is of higher priority than saving person B's life, then person A's life is rated as having higher value than person B's life. For example, people would value a 2 years old life more than the life of a 60 year old person, regardless if the 2 year old only have 2 more year to live and the 30 year old have another 20 years. I speculate that the reason why the value of a person's life is inversely proportional to their age is because as a person age they have been able to experience and enjoy more of life. However, I disagree that a person's age can be an accurate measure of how much of life they...

As the old joke goes...Hey! I resemble that! As someone pushing 60 myself, I guess my first reaction is to say that I most certainly do not think my life now has less value than that of a 2-year-old. Nor do I think the value of a human life is measurable in terms of how many (more) years the person will live. Answers to this sort of question will differ on the basis of which style of moral theory one applies to it. In one sort of moral theory (consequentialism), a human life will be valuable in terms of the overall balance of benefits and harms that derive from it--really good people will have really valuable lives and really bad people will have lives that have negative value. A really bad 20-year-old, in this view, would have a life that was worth less than Mother Teresa's life, even when she was getting very old. In other accounts, all human lives are equal in value. So, according to Kant's categorical imperative, we should treat all people as if they were ends only, and not...
Logic

Can counterfactuals ever provide reasonable support to an argument? It seems as if this shouldn't be the case (why should something that hasn't happened be of relevance to anything), yet in some instances appears to not be entirely unreasonable. For example, "if you had listened to me and turned LEFT at the light, we wouldn't be late right now" seems valid enough in some favourable circumstances. In fact, whether or not such circumstances are favourable seems to be tied to the (thorny) problem of being able to perform induction. I ask because a lot of people use counterfactuals to "explain" failures/situations ("if you had worked harder, you wouldn't be in this position right now" or "if we hadn't struck first, they would have" etc.). Is this a legitimate argument?

If no one had asked this question, I wouldn't be answering it! Of course counterfactuals can provide good reasons for thinking certain things. (I'm inclined to add that if they weren't, we wouldn't use them so much...) The very fact that something is recognizably true gives us reason to believe, right? And this is recognizably true: If no one had asked this question, I would be doing something else right now. In fact, I am inclined to think that counterfactual reasoning is so deeply embedded in reasoning itself (especially deliberative reasoning, or choosing between different possible means or ends from which to choose) that we couldn't reason without them. In other words, if it weren't for our ability to use counterfactual reasoning, we couldn't reason at all! OK, I admit it--I'm having some fun here. If I weren't, I wouldn't have answered this question.
Ethics

Is there a moral difference between wishing for a selfish outcome (e.g. someone's death) - and acting on that wish (murder).

In some ways of thinking, there is no significant moral difference between the two cases. For example, have a look at the gospel of Matthew 5:28 ("But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.") I gather that what this means is: One who experiences lust for someone not his wife is already guilty of the sin of adultery. But I must say, this seems like a pretty goofy idea to me. For one thing, if the mere wish made me already guilty in every morally relevant way, it is hard to see why acting on that wish would make matters worse ...but of course, it obviously does. Depending upon how one assesses moral value, the mere wish (not enacted) might have no negative value at all. For example, if we count moral value in a consequentialist way--that is, by determining whether the consequences of something are (predictably or actually) beneficial, then a non-enacted wish, having no (notable) consequences, is morally neutral. ...
Ethics

Why is sexism wrong?

Strange question! I am sure others can give a host of more sophisticated answers, but how's this, for starters: Sexism is wrong because it treats one group of people who are morally equal to another group of people as if they were not morally equal to that other group. Why is racism wrong? (Same reason.) Why is discrimination on the basis of any morally insignificant difference between people wrong? (Same reason.) But perhaps your real question is a different one: Maybe you are asking why differences in gender are not considered morally significant. To this, I am inclined to challenge you to explain to me why you think they are (or might be), and to regard the idea that they are not as the obvious default. So, here's my challenge: Give me a good reason to think gender difference is morally significant! I deeply doubt that anyone can meet this challenge...but if someone can persuade me otherwise, well, then we can return to the question you asked at that point.
Animals
Ethics

In your opinion, is it OK to kill a spider, or a fly? I'm sure everyone has done so at some stage and felt no guilt, or only just a fleeting moment of sadness at the life just ended. But, should we go out of our way to avoid the killing of other living things, even seemingly insignificant insects? Can we allow ourselves this luxury on the basis that these are so much "lower" creatures as ourselves and therefore not worth bothering about? I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

There is more to your question than you might think. In the case of some living things, it looks as if it is not only OK to kill them, but actually good--disease organisms, for example. I raise this kind of case to try to show that "respect all life!" is not likely to serve us very well as a moral mandate. If not, then the questions become much more complex: Which lives? Why? On the one hand, your intuition (widely shared, I'm sure) that even insects' (and arachnids') lives have some worth seems to be counter-balanced somewhat by an intuition that these lives are not worth as much as human lives (or, perhaps, those of primates). As with so many other questions that seem to require straightforward "yes" or "no" answers, I am inclined to think that the expectation of clear decision principles in these and many other kinds of cases is unwarranted. In the approach to ethics that I favor (virtue theory), the real question will not be about whether all (or some) lives are intrinsically...
Mind
Perception

In what ways do perceptions (what we see) and images (what we imagine) differ? Is a hallucination an image or a perception? How about a dream? Bob

I'm not quite ready to accept your terminology, but will try to respond in spite of that. I think the most obvious difference between ordinary perception and things like hallucinations and dreams is that the former sorts of experiences are reasonably assumed to be verific (that is, to tell us something true about the world), whereas the others are not verific, or at least are only very unreliably so. The fact that I dream that such and such is the case (assuming I have no reason to think that I am some kind of dream clairvoyant) is of course compatible with it really being the case...but gives me no grounds for believing that it really is the case. The fact that I perceive something to be the case does give me grounds for believing that it is the case. I am not claiming, of course, that perception is infallible, for it plainly is not. What I am claiming is that there is evidenciary value in perception that is lacking in hallucination, fantasy, dreaming, and other such experiences.
Ethics
Suicide

Considering the ethical reasons of stopping suicide: Why is it that, by default, our society would tend to reject suicidal behaviors and promote the prevention and stopping of suicide? Why can't a person have the right and freedom to choose what to do with his/her life without approval from others? If leading a lousy or good life is the choice and responsibility of the individual, why should choosing to live no life at all be an option not considerable?

Although I am somewhat sympathetic with your intuition that we should be free to choose to end our own lives, if we decide that they are no longer worth living, I am also cautious about removing all social interventions intended to prevent suicide, as well. My reservation comes from the (not implausible, I hope) observation that many of those who attempt suicide are not in a fit condition to make that decision, and would not make that decision under other circumstances that are actually available to them. For example, as we all know, depression can make someone suicidal--and when deeply depressed, a person can come to the decision that his or her life is no longer worth living. But depression is a treatable condition (at least in many or most cases), and if the depressed person is given effective treatment, he or she will cease to think that his or her life is not worth living. So I think society (and all of us in it) has a strong interest in intervention, precisely because so many cases of the...

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