Iris Young's "Throwing Like a Girl" is a wonderful description of gendered experience. Our experiences of the world are influenced by many factors that have to do with our positions in the world, both our physical positions (biological sex, physical disabilities) and our political positions (race, gender, social class, power). "Experience" is defined broadly to encompass all we are conscious of (some call it phenomenological experience). I recommend Kay Toombs work on the phenomenology of disability as another rich description of perspective.

This behavior strikes me as lacking even-handedness, but not as inconsistent. One may have a view that it is better to risk praising falsly than to refrain from praising at all, and better to refrain from criticising than to risk criticising falsly. It's a pragmatic attitude that makes sense for those who want to deal with others by positively reinforcing their actions (sometimes inappropriately) but never punishing them.

Perceived color is a matter of retinal and neurological processing. People with full color vision see a variety of spectral inputs (from single frequency to mixed frequencies) as purple. Perhaps you are asking, could people who perceive red and blue normally see a mixture of red and blue as anything other than purple (in the same circumstances)? I don't think there are any cases of this kind of odd color perception, so it may well be that our 3-sensor color perception system will always perceive a mixture of red and blue as purple. Does that mean it is a "logical truth" that red and blue make purple? Only in the same sense that it is a logical truth that if you can hear the note A and hear the note C you will hear the combination as a minor third.

Many philosophers, and many other kinds of thinkers, have grappled with this question, from the Epicureans through Heidegger, Sartre, and beyond. You could look at what they say, and/or at some accessible contemporary texts that draw on these ideas e.g. Havi Carel Illness: The Cry of the Flesh and Irvin Yalom Staring at the Sun . Some of us cope by thinking things through, others cope through not thinking about it at all.

You ask an important question about how non-experts should make reasonable judgments when there is expert disagreement. It is not enough to say that the reasonable choice lies with the majority opinion; the majority has been both unreasonable and/or wrong often enough. I think it is important to look at the case in some detail (although obviously not in as much detail as experts are able to do) and see what kind of evidence the minority is putting forth. That is, are they just nitpicking at the dominant theory, when all theories have areas of weakness, or are they themselves engaged in active empirical research? Scientific disagreement can be productive when both sides are engaged in experiment and observation, but less so when one side is working from an armchair.

You are right that we seek to alter our experiences in the world with the use of art, music etc. And insofar as drugs attempt to alter experience and give us new experiences, I agree with you that there is nothing wrong with them. More than that--drugs may be valuable because of the aesthetic and other pleasures they can produce. However, I think those who worry about "altered perceptions of reality" may be concerned that the drug user may be evading responsibilities when they get high ("I don't need to do my work, take care of my kids etc. because life is more interesting on LSD"). Or the drug user may behave when high in a way which does not cohere with his/her values. That is, the objections to drugs seem to me to be ethical rather than epistemic. In addition, the health risks (psychological and physical) of consciousness-altering drugs should be taken into account (another ethical concern). The word "real" is not helpful in this discussion, because it is used to mean so many different things...

I think you are right to discern that the "playing God" objection to stem cell research/cloning is not what it seems to be. Those who offer this objection seem quite comfortable with the idea of "playing God" in well proven medical interventions e.g. appendectomy for appendicitis, C-section for obstructed labor, chemotherapy for leukemia. Of course there are some people (Christian Scientists, for example) who forgo most medical care on religious grounds. But the vast majority of those who worry about "playing God" with stem cell research/cloning are happy consumers of the best that health care has to offer. The question is, why don't they extend that happy consumer attitude to stem cell research/cloning? I am not sure of the answer to this, but I think it may have to do with the uncertainty that currently exists around these new technologies (will they work? will they produce monsters of some kind?). So it may be a risk aversive attitude of the kind "leave it to God, we don't know enough to...

Your last sentence is correct, I think, with the exception of the word "improve," which I would replace with "modify" or "enhance." "Improvement" raises all the questions that critics of eugenics have raised about classifying human beings into better or worse. By the way, we are already Transhumans, if you count glasses, sneakers, computers, etc. Perhaps the movement Transhumanism want the modifications integrated with our biology. But why would that be better?

If the terrorist is alone in the room, then the cops should try to capture him, preferably without injuring him or killing him. Killing would only be justified in self-defense or in defense of other humans. It is up to judge and jury to decide guilt and consequences (e.g. punishment). I think, for moral reasons, the death penalty should be abolished. So there need be no killing here.

You ask an important question. Some philosophers (realists) argue that simpler theories are better confirmed by the data and therefore more likely to be true. Other philosophers (anti-realists) argue that simpler theories are psychologically easier to work with and therefore more convenient for us, but not likelier to be true. It is difficult to state exactly what counts as a "simple" scientific theory. Does it mean fewer causes and/or entities? Or something about the mathematical expression of theory? In any case, simpler theories are only preferred when all else is equal, and that is rarely the case. (We would love a simple theory of the causation of schizophrenia, but simple theories of the etiology of the disease have already been discredited.) Some feminist epistemologists have argued that simple scientific theories are not inherently preferable to more complex ones. Helen Longino, notably, argues that simple scientific theories often reflect/express/derive from a hierachical...