These are great questions! Some works of art seem quite anchored in the material world. Arguably, a marble statue like the David is in Florence. But poems, plays, novels, musical compositions, and so on do seem more elusive. Some philosophers who might be called Platonists tend to think that poems, plays, and the like are not themselves physical events or objects. On this view, the Iliad may be thought of as an abstract object that can be acted out, recited, written down, remembered, loved or hated, but the epic poem is not itself a physical thing. I am very much drawn to such a position and have defended it (in a short book called Aesthetics; A Beginner's Guide), but many philosophers resist recognizing abstract, non-physical objects. Such philosophers (who might be called nominalists or conceptualists) might have to identify the Iliad as a complex cultural object that has multiple linguistic and social dimensions. For them, the Iliad's status may depend upon an on-going social practice, but for...

Yes, this is very much an important philosophical matter. Inquiry into why one exists usually involves a combination of metaphysics (inquiry into what exists) and value theory. There are two major schools of thought about why you or the cosmos exists, and multiple alternatives in between. On the one hand there are teleological accounts of the cosmos, according to which you and the cosmos exist for some purpose or value. In many religions (e.g. Judaism, Christianity, Islam), this purpose or value is goodness itself. To put things a bit simply, the reason why the cosmos (including you) exist is because it is good (or, putting it differently, it is better that the cosmos exists rather than not exist). These relgions generally understand God as essentially good and thus beleive that the cosmos (despite its evil) is the result and is sustained by a good divine reality. On the other hand, there are non-teleological accounts of the cosmos, which claim that there is no purposive end or value as to why...

You are right that the answer or reply will depend on what is meant by "rational" and "irrational." If "irrational" means something (some state of affairs or entity) that defies the laws of logic, this is doubtful. Take the law of identity (everything is itself or A is A) and the law of non-contradiction (A is not not A). Thinking or speaking seems to require both; we must assume that when we think of A (whatever), we are thinking of A and this is not the same as thinking of notA. But if "irrational hings" is more broadly defined and refers to subjects who act or think in ways that seem unreasonable or (at least to us) unintelligible, then matters change. If we pursue this a bit further, though, and ask about how irrational an agent might be, we may come up with some internal limits. That is, so long as a person is acting it may be that she or he has to have some reason or other for their action; the reason may be very odd or fleeting or not fully conscious or out of touch with reality, but if a...

Strange, isn't it? Maybe the key is to appreciate that not all "containment" or things with an inside are physical or spatial. So we might talk about how a theory of justice should contain or include an account of property rights or a theory of what the mind is should contain an account of the origin of mind. And we might talk about what is inside or included in a concept or theory we might even speak of trying to get inside someone else's mind --which (I hope) is not a literal matter but a metaphorical way of speaking about understanding someone else's thoughts and feelings! Pointing out that we use the language of "containment" and "Inside" in nonphysical, non-spatial contexts may make things seem more mysterious than ever! But perhaps we need to appreciate that our language and ways of thinking about ourselves invovles more than speaking of concrete spatial things that contain things, like the way our brain is contained in our head!

Interesting question! There are philosophers who would seek to undermine the whole picture of ourselves that is presupposed by your question. Some of them argue that we do make direct contact with the objects we touch, feel, smell, hear, and taste and that the idea that we only directly deal with sensations (or what is sometimes called "sense-data") is an illusion brought on by people like Descartes or, in the 20th century, by Bertrand Russell or A.J. Ayer. But I am inclined to think we do not directly feel and see what is around us; while I think we do (under normal circumstances) relaibly see and feel "what is really out there" this is mediated (in my view) by sensations, our visual field and so on. On this view, skepticism of an even very radical sort is conceivable. It is logically possible (I suggest) for the movie the Matrix to be right; we merely think we see what is really there, but we are being manipulated by complex computers to have the sensations we are having. One other matter...

The medieval philosophers used to think of existence in terms of degrees, and some in modern philosophy entertained such an idea (Kant, for example, described God as the most real being). but usually existence is not treated as something that comes in kinds or degrees or in different senses. Actually, some philosophers seek to avoid the term 'exists' unless really pressed upon. So, for example, a philosopher might think it less misleading to say that Dumbledor is a character in Rowlings' novels rather than to say that Dumbledor exists in Rowlings' novels. There are, however, two areas when 'existence' as a term / concept gets a bit tricky: some theologians believe that to claim 'God exists' is to treat God as simply one of any number of things that exist. Some of them, therefore, prefer simply to refer to God without the word 'exist' or 'existence' (e.g. affirming there is a God of love rather than claiming there exists a God of love). One philosopher in the last century speculated about whether...