I'm not entirely sure I follow, but perhaps this will be of some use. Whether two propositions really have four possible combinations of truth values depends on the propositions. Non-philosophical examples make the point easier to follow. Suppose P is "Paula is Canadian" and Q is "Quincy is Australian." In this case, the two propositions are logically independent, and all four combinations P&Q, P&~Q, ~P&Q and ~P&~Q represent genuine possibilities. But not all propositions are independent in this way; it depends on their content. P and Q might be contradictories, that is, one might be the denial of the other. (If P means that Paula is Canadian and Q means that she is not Canadian, then we have this situation.) In that case, the only two possibilities are P&~Q and ~P&Q. Or P and Q might be contraries, meaning that they can't both be true though they could both be false. For example: if P is "Paula is over 6 feet tall" and Q is "Paula is under 5 feet tall," then we only have three...

Not sure I follow, but by "concrete" I'm guessing you mean either "objective" or "easy to settle." If you do, then on either alternative I can't see why there would be any difference between the two. In any case, the way you've put things suggests that nose-counting may be relevant. That's surely wrong. The percentage of philosophers who think Israel does or doesn't have a right to exist doesn't seem to me to tell us much of anything about whether that's the best view of the matter; likewise for questions about epistemology. What really matters are the reasons. I'd add this, however: most philosophers have spent a fair bit of time thinking about epistemological questions; it's part of their training. And so if most philosophers held a particular epistemological view, that would be interesting and might suggest something about the weight of the arguments. However, most philosophers have not spent much of their training thinking about political philosophy; insofar as we can talk about expertise here,...

To say that all questions demand a philosophical response (whatever exactly that is) would be at best a very controversial philosophical view. And a philosopher who thought that philosophers should have more say on large practical questions than anyone else would be hard pressed to justify his or her position. To take your example, the question of whether there should be a united Ireland has many parts. Some of those parts no doubt call for philosophical reflection but some don't. (For example: what people in Northern Ireland and in the Republic actually think is surely relevant; but isn't something we can sort out by doing philosophy.) And even the philosophical aspects (having to do, say, with how we balance competing values) needn't be addressed by professional philosophers; philosophers don't have a monopoly on philosophical thinking. Of course, there's a more straightforward way to deal with questions of the form "Do philosophers think X?" If X is something controversial (and often even if it...

I'd like to pause over the first half of your first sentence (the 'if' bit): the idea that philosophy is difficult to understand and difficult to put into practice. I'd suggest that this isn't the best way to put things. Philosophy may or may not be difficult to understand, but no more so than any number of other subjects. Philosophy can be difficult to follow because when done well, it depends on careful arguments and subtle distinctions. That means there's a lot to keep track of, even if the writing is crystal clear. Compare: each step in a math proof might be clear by itself; seeing the argument entire might not be easy. The next bit is supposed to be that philosophy is difficult to "put into practice." What's striking here is that very few of the philosophers I know think of philosophy as something you "put into practice" in the way that, for example, I might put the Golden Rule into practice. By and large, philosophy isn't in the business of giving practical advice. For example: some...

I'm guessing that by "personal philosophical beliefs" you mean not just philosophical beliefs that someone might happen to hold (such as the belief that numbers exist as Platonic objects, for example) but beliefs and commitments about matters that someone takes to be of great personal significance—the kinds of things one might build one's life around. To clarify: I might think that numbers really exist as abstract objects, but if I were talked out of that belief, not much about how I live my life would change. For many religious people, on the other hand, religious beliefs are part of their core. A committed Christian, for example, might well think that if she lost her Christianity, there's an important sense in which she wouldn't be the same person. However, as you apparently recognize, religious beliefs aren't the only ones in that category. Ethical commitments are a good example. Many people with deep ethical commitments are not religious, and yet those commitments are every bt as important to...

In the event—rare or otherwise—that all physicists in the world agreed on the answer to a physics problem, that wouldn't mean that the problem was solved. It wouldn't mean that because it's at least possible that all the physicists could be mistaken or could be missing some crucial piece of information. So if a discipline's being worthwhile requires that universal agreement among its practitioners amounts to a problem being solved, then there likely aren't any worthwhile disciplines. Perhaps the preceding remarks show that philosophy can at least provide us with useful distinctions, and that's surely worth something. But forget about agreement; if the criterion for a discipline being worthwhile is that it provide definitive answers to its problems, then deck is already stacked against philosophy. It traffics in exactly the kinds of problems where it's unreasonable to expect definitive answers. However, why think that's the criterion for a discipline's being worthwhile? Definitive answers to...

I think the best answers to your questions are, in order, we don't know, why not, and we don't know. A bit less tersely: you're asking about the capabilities that computers might one day come to have. In particular, you're asking whether they'll ever be able to pass a philosophy version of the Turing Test (that is: will they ever be able to give response that a philosopher couldn't distinguish from the ones given by flesh-and-blood philosophers.) I'd be very skeptical of any a priori argument meant to show that this is impossible. And I'd keep in mind that it's a mistake to think that the only way this could happen is for the answers to be "programmed into" the computer.

I'd say neither. Ideas can inspire, but knowing philosophy doesn't mean you won't be cruel. Theoretical understanding need not change our dispositions and sympathies. The extent to which it does is an empirical matter, but I'd guess that a sociopath could also be a skilled and brilliant philosopher. Even more important, people don't need philosophy to treat each other well. Whether someone is kind decent, and whether they understand Kant are two quite different questions. There's a related point: even if we have the right theory of goodness and justice, the question of how to get people to be good and just isn't one that philosophy can answer. It depends on all sorts of difficult factual questions that call for psychology, sociology, economics and a great many other kinds of empirical knowledge. In short: on one end of the question, I fear you may be overestimating the need for philosophy; on the other end, I fear you may be overestimating its power. That said, there's a problem I haven...

I'm going to read your question not as a psychological one (that as "What would cause someone to feel inadequate or unworthy or learning philosophy?") but rather as a question about whether there could be good reasons for feeling this way. Before we go on, an important preliminary: what I'll say is intended to be perfectly general and not to be a diagnosis of your particular case. Since I don't know anything about your case beyond the question I've asked, I couldn't possibly speak to its particulars. As for why someone might justifiably feel inadequate, one obvious answer is that they might lack the requisite talent. For example: if someone paid for me to do a PhD in mathematics, I would feel inadequate for the very simple reason that I don't have enough mathematical talent to be a serious part of the community of students in a PhD mathematics program. And if it turned out that my being part of the program meant I was taking the place of someone with real talent, that would reasonably make me...

If word origins were a good guide to the nature of a profession, a secretary would be a keeper of secrets and a plumber would be someone who works in lead. That suggests we have some reason to be suspicious at the outset. Even if we grant that "philosopher" comes from the Greek for "lover of wisdom," that doesn't tell us much about what the discipline of philosophy actually is. Let's take the philosophers who think of themselves as systematically, critically examining principles of being, knowledge and/or conduct. Do they see themselves as engaged in the pursuit of wisdom? Some might, but I'd guess most don't. They're trying to sort through interesting and abstract questions of a particular sort, but no wise person would think of abstract theoretical understanding as amounting to wisdom nor, I submit, would any wise person think that wisdom requires abstract, theoretical understanding. I'd side with the wise here. Wisdom isn't easy to characterize in a sound bite, but I think of a wise...