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Ethics
Freedom
Religion

My question is about the relationship between God, determinism and ethics. In my opinion if there is no God, then it looks like people do not have any non-physical "soul". I think most people would agree with this, partly because people usually reject God in favour of a naturalistic worldview in which the soul similarly has no place. But if people do not have any "soul" then that must mean that that people do not have free will, because they are entirely physical. But if people do not have free will then I don't understand how any ethics could exist, because ethics surely requires that people can choose. So, if this is correct, then if you want to argue for some kind of ethics, then you have to accept the existence of God. But there is clearly an endless amount of Philosophers who don't believe in God and do argue for some kind of ethics, such as David Hume or Bertrand Russell. But how can they do this? What I think you will say is that maybe ethics can exist even without free will. But surely this...

Most of your question is an excellent formulation of a major philosophical issue: whether minds, if they are merely parts of the general causal order, can possibly have the sort of authorship of their actions that would be required to hold them responsible---how can right and wrong get a foothold if we're just machines? Some say there's no problem here; others are more concerned. Rather than attempt a paltry paragraph on current views about this, let me point you to Timothy O'Connor's article in the Stanford Encyclopedia. One thing I will say, though, is that it is not clear that the worry would be lessened if it turned out that our minds were immaterial "souls". Souls would have to work somehow or other---a full ("God's-eye") understanding of their workings would presumably involve an inventory of the various states, structures, and processes that souls host, together with the "supernatural laws" that describe how these change over time. These laws might be deterministic or indeterministic,...
Religion

There's no rational argument to prove the existence of God. St. Thomas d'Aquinas' famous "God is that of which nothing greater can be thought" is, to my knowledge, the most rigorous attempt to apply reason to the subject of supernatural existence--but it achieves exactly the opposite of what it purports to achieve: it shows merely the limits of reason, rather than the existence of God. This said, and as a consequence, reason can't provide any arguments against the existence of God, either. For that which can't be proved, can't be disproved either. (And, in fact, can anyone think of any law of physics or rational argument which disproves the existence of something? Non-existence is "disproved" on mere empirical basis--and it is thus never certain). Therefore, the only rational (which does not mean necessarily: correct) position regarding God is agnosticism. Any thoughts? Thanks

It's not true that "what can't be proved can't be disproved either": it can't be proved that there is a largest prime number, but that can be disproved, at least according to the standards of proof that every mathematician accepts. I am inclined to agree with you that reason alone, without empirical evidence, can't settle whether there's a God. But since we in fact have lots of empirical information about the world, it doesn't follow that the only rational attitude for us is to suspend judgment. Reason alone can't settle whether there are socks in the drawer, but you can prove to me that there are no socks in the drawer by opening it and showing me the empty drawer. In normal circumstances, it would be unreasonable for me to regard the question whether there are socks there as still unresolved. Indeed, any reasonable person would now believe that there are no socks there and indeed would be certain that there are no socks there (using these terms in their ordinary senses). ...
Animals
Happiness

Do chimpanzees really enjoy eating bananas?

Perhaps you mistyped the URL for the "Ask Chimpanzees" website? Chimps do have brains very similar to ours, and it's likely that when they eat the food that they pursue, they are in states that are physiologically like ours when we eat what we enjoy. Plus their brain states play similar roles to our enjoyments: they lead the chimps to keep eating (and not to discard the food and look elsewhere), they reinforce the chimps' preference for the food item, and so on. I think most people familiar with chimps would say, obviously they enjoy bananas. Ah, you say, so they have pleasure analogues when they eat bananas, but do they literally experience pleasure? And how could we ever answer this? What is pleasure--what constitutes feeling pleasure? Is it a physiological sort of state that requires having brains like ours? Maybe so--maybe what we're confronted with when we notice our pleasure is in fact some physiological state, and it's this that we call "pleasure". Or is pleasure...
Color
Time

I was once asked at a University PPE interview, Does time have a colour? I found it both extremely interesting and baffling. My opinion was that as time was not a physical property it could not have a colour yet I questioned myself countless times. What's your opinion - could time have a colour? K(17)

I am unsure exactly why you found this either interesting or baffling. It seems clear that what makes things colored is their tendency to reflect or otherwise emit certain sorts of light. Time doesn't do that, nor could it. As an uncolored phenomenon, time has plenty of company, including space, music, the square root of two, and philosophy. Now, someone might associate time with a color. People do, after all, report strong "cross-modal" associations between smells and sounds, or tastes and colors. Such a person might describe time as cobalt blue, or as tasting like a turnip. But I think we would be wise not to regard their claims as literally true.
Identity
Mind

Dear Philosophers, What's it like to be another person? Milo (age 6)

That's a really good question. I guess the answer is, it feels normal. Because it feels normal to them, and so if you are that person, then feeling like they do feels normal to you. But what we really want to know is, how would it feel for me to feel what they are feeling? If I could "see" what a red apple looked like to them, would it look red to me? Or would it look green? If I could feel their sleepiness, would it feel like mine? Fortunately, Milo, philosophers have thought long and hard about this question. Unfortunately, we haven't figured it out yet. What do you think?
Perception

When I encounter a rock is there a two way flow of information? The rocks rockness reaches out and meets my me-ness at some point and information about the rock is sent to me via my senses. Is there a reciprocal flow of information to the rock? I'm finding it hard to express my thoughts about this. Is there a 2-way communication between me and the rock? Steve B

In perception, you are affected by the rock. You are changed, and the rock is the cause of the changes. Change means that you acquire some different properties. Now, some of your properties are intrinsic and some extrinsic . Philosophers have a hell of a time trying to explain that distinction clearly, but, roughly, an intrinsic property of something has to do purely with the situation "inside" it as opposed to elsewhere. Since your conscious states, and other sensory and cognitive states, are changed, you have undergone intrinsic change, and, as you say, your new intrinsic states bear information about the rock in virtue of its having caused them. Now, the rock is also changed intrinsically by the encounter. Your gravitational attraction affects it some, and light bouncing off you hits the rock and changes it in various slight ways. Unlike you, however, the rock is unable to collect and decipher the traces of your presence that impact it, and so your effects upon the rock's...
Environment
Ethics

Since life first evolved on Earth, a huge number of species have developed only to subsequently become extinct, a key feature of Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' model of evolution. A number of species face extinction today - is it right for mankind to intervene to try and stop this process?

Saying that natural selection favors the "fittest" creatures makes it sound like interfering would obviously be bad because it would risk diminishing a good thing, namely fitness. But first of all, there is nothing in Darwin's explanation of natural selection that assigns any value, positive or negative, to reproductive fitness. The central idea, of course, is that when genetically passed-on traits cause members of a species to have more descendents than others, the traits become more common. That has nothing at all to do with whether the outcome is "for the best" in any sense. It's just what will in fact happen. And secondly, the role of humans in a way changes nothing: we are part of the enviroment, and our behavior affects the natural selection of other species fundamentally no differently from any other environmental factor. Our fondness for juicy oranges or annoyance with intrusive coyotes can explain why certain organisms have more or fewer offspring than others in the same way...
Children
Ethics

Is it morally wrong to tell children that Santa exists? Regardless of how much joy and excitement kids get from believing the Santa myth, it is an outright lie, so how can it be regarded as morally right? Should we always take the moral high ground and tell the truth where children are concerned, or should we make exceptions? When they find out the truth, aren't we teaching children that no one, not even their parents, can be trusted?

This is an interesting question about which I have no settled view. I was relieved when my kid tricked the truth out of us early on. Probably it's true that when a kid discovers the Great Santa Lie their disposition to assume that their parents are always telling the complete, literal truth diminishes somewhat. But surely the big question of trust is not whether parents can be counted on always to tell the complete, literal truth, but whether they can be counted on to act in the kid's best interests. Intentionally misleading the child in a way they're sure to discover may normally undermine this trust (and so it does seem a bad idea in general), but I see no reason to assume that it always would. And indeed I think kids often react to their growing awareness that there's no magic, no Santa, and so on, not with resentment for being convinced otherwise but with a wistful attempt to keep up the charade just a while longer. In a context where it's an obviously exceptional case against a...
Happiness

Is it possible to measure sorrow or happiness, if so can a person's grief or joy be greater than another persons'? BJ Hebert Lafayette, LA

This is one of those questions where your first impulse is to say "of course!" and "impossible!" at the same time (which is of course impossible): Of course! We have little trouble discerning that the suicidal depressive is less cheery than the tiny tot with her eyes all aglow. We're very confident even about much subtler discriminations: for instance, that runner who has finally achieved his personal best is more elated than this chef who is satisfied that her new dish will maintain the restaurant's reputation. But, impossible! We can't get the chef's satisfaction into the same mind as the runner's stoke. And don't we have to be able to do that to compare them? Couldn't it be that the chef's joy is far greater, and yet she reacts to that level of joy in a far more subdued way than the runner would (perhaps her "baseline" mood would make the runner skip and sing)? Maybe brain science can help us? Suppose we've determined experimentally (imagine a really enormous and exceptionally well...

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