I'm with Thomas Pogge on what the real issue is here. For what it's worth, I'm also no friend to the Ontological Argument. But let's see if a supporter of the argument might have something to say in response to this challenge... First of all, what form of the argument are we going to consider? It's been presented in many different ways over the centuries, and some versions have had much more force to them than others. In its simplest form, the argument basically goes as follows. God, by definition, possesses every perfection; existence is a perfection; therefore, God possesses it, i.e. God exists. But this version is notoriously vulnerable to objections like those that, for instance, Kant formulated way back in the eighteenth century. But there are other versions. One of the best (particularly associated with Leibniz, but formulated by several other people too, both before him and since) basically goes like this. (i) God, by definition, possesses every perfection; (ii) necessary existence...

As far as reasons for believing in either are concerned, I'd say they're on a par. But there is a difference: many more people believe in God. And they can't help it; and, if you try to talk them out of it, you're generally going to fail. If you belittle their beliefs with a comparison that they would regard as offensive, the only effect will be to upset or aggravate them: and, other things being equal, that's not to be recommended.

I'm reminded of a famous remark from the economist, John Maynard Keynes. On once being accused of inconsistency -- what I believe the Americans like to call 'flip-flopping' -- he replied: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" I don't think any philosophers would wish to insist that one's ethical behaviour and philosophy must always remain consistent over time . In terms of individual actions, when the situations are not identical, it might well be absolutely appropriate to behave in different ways. And even in terms of more general ethical principles, it's entirely right and proper for us to reassess and potentially revise these in response to changes in the world or even just changes in ourselves. The kind of consistency that I think philosophers would, however, wish to insist upon is consistency at a particular time, or within a particular situation. If one maintains as a general rule that nobody, oneself included, ought to do X, and yet still goes ahead and does X...

First of all, a spot of jargon. Philosophers often draw a distinction between (i) the field of 'ethics' (or sometimes 'normative ethics'), which is basically concerned with the rightness and wrongness of various types of behaviour; and (ii) that of 'meta-ethics', which is not really concerned with behaviour at all, but instead looks at the epistemological or ontological status of those notions of rightness and wrongness themselves (e.g. whether they have any truly objective foundation, or are merely expressions of subjective sentiments). Now, when someone -- and it doesn't matter who they happen to be, whether a professional philosopher or just an ordinary civilian -- claims that slavery is wrong, what they are making is an ethical claim. But nothing whatsoever need be presupposed about the meta-ethical status of such an utterance, or even about the opinion the speaker might happen to have on that meta-ethical question. Ethics and meta-ethics are distinct fields. There are certain links between...

Stick with it. When I first read the Republic , I initially shared your disappointment -- it just didn't seem to live up to its reputation. The first couple of books in particular struck me as deathly dull: but I found that it did gradually pick up as it went along. In the later books, although there is still plenty there that is merely a reflection of its own era with no real resonance today, there's also a great deal that still effervesces with striking insights that can readily be applied to the modern world. The famous allegory of the cave in book seven is certainly well worth pondering if one has never had occasion to look at things in quite that way before. And more interesting still (I'd suggest) are the political discussions, many of which really do come across as if they were being written about this very decade. For instance, Plato is at pains to stress the proximity of oligarchy (i.e. government by the wealthiest), democracy and tyranny, and how one of these regimes can all-too-easily...

If the term 'proposition' is used to mean a sentence -- a string of symbols, be they spoken, written, gesticulated or whatever -- then I suppose there could be uncountably many propositions if we allow there to be propositions of infinite length. In that case, one ought to be able to diagonalise on them just as one does with the infinite decimal expansions of the real numbers. But I think it's reasonable to stipulate that we're only going to countenance finitely long sentences. After all, they wouldn't be much use in communication, if you could literally never get a sentence out. Alternatively, if the set of symbols is itself uncountable, then that will certainly lead to an uncountable infinity of strings of such symbols. But it seems reasonable to stipulate against that case too. Communication would once again be thwarted, because we don't seem to have the perceptual capacity to discriminate between uncountably many different symbols -- indeed, our discriminatory abilities probably only extend...

I guess it's justified if it works . I would say that swear words definitely do have a legitimate, and even an important, place in our wider linguistic behaviour. Used sparingly, they can do an excellent job of adding emphasis when you feel you need to give things that extra little boost. They can often convey emotion more effectively than more neutral terms would. In certain social settings, their use can help to establish a sense of informality and intimacy. And so on. And then, of course, such language also has its disadvantages. In other social settings, the use of these words might cause offence or discomfort to the audience, something which, other things being equal, is best avoided. And their use will often serve to undermine the user's communicative goals, by prejudicing the audience against the speaker in such a way that they are no longer inclined to give any heed to the point the speaker was hoping to convey. I guess the latter point is what's really at stake in the specific case you...

I already addressed your second concern in response to a previous question on this site. I'd invite you to take a look at my answer there . As to the first concern, when we speculate about a possible beginning to time, we are doing so from a frame in time. We start at the present, and we conceptually project ourselves backwards through the period that intervened between the present and that supposed first moment. Was there a time one year ago? Yes. Was there a time two years ago? Yes. Was there a time thirteen billion years ago? Yes. Was there a time fourteen billion years ago? No! The supposition of a beginning to time means that there exists a number n , such that there was a moment of time n years back from the present but no moment n +1 years back. The supposition of an infinite past simply means that there is no such number.

I don't specifically recognise this argument as having been put forward by anyone in particular: but I'm having trouble seeing why it's supposed to be an argument against determinism. If anything, the notion that it is "necessary" to "make free choices" seems to be tending more towards compatibilism: that is, the theory that determinism and free choices are both real, and that they can comfortably coexist together. Determinism doesn't imply that you should "just sit there expecting all the events leading up to this situation to make this decision for you". Rather, it implies that those past events will cause you to make a certain decision. The decision itself might be predetermined, but that doesn't take away the fact that you are the person who is formulating it. By contrast, if things are indeterministic, wouldn't the right attitude be to say: there's no way of predicting what I'm about to do, because my behaviour doesn't fit into the normal causal structure of events, so I'm just going...

Not a silly question at all, absolutely not! But the answer is no. Suppose you built a time machine last year, 2008. Then it is true now that you built a time machine in 2008, and it always will be true that you built a time machine in 2008. Suppose now that, next year, you decide that it would be amusing to create a paradox by using your machine to go back in time and prevent yourself from building the machine in the first place. But it's still going to be true that you did in fact build it in 2008. Which means that, no matter how determined you might be, it will still be a fact that you didn't succeed in your plan of preventing this. Logic alone can show that something or other must have scuppered your plan: because success would indeed generate a paradox, whereby you both did and did not build the machine, which is a logical impossibility. Now, what logic won't show us is what scuppered your plan. Maybe you had a last-minute fit of conscience and just decided not to go through with it. Maybe...