Great questions! As for your main point or the point behind the questions, it does seem a great pity to think that adulthood must be defined in terms of a seriousness which frowns on fun, though I have some hesitancy about the way you are setting up childishness versus adulthood. I am not sure you are 100% right "that most of the things we call childish are things we do for fun." You may be spot on, but I suspect that we also call persons or actions childish when we believe they are immature, reckless, selfish, not thought through or naive. And in my experience children are sometimes just as serious, if not more so, than many adults I know. Also, the term "adult" has a pretty stable use in English for describing (perhaps inappropriate?) fun --as in "adult" films, bookstores, products. Stepping back from the above observations, however, it is interesting to note that in the old days (e.g. industrial revolution) childhood was often not associated with fun and education, but labor, viz. child labor. ...

Excellent question! I wonder whether such disagreement entails that we lack a common, general vision for humanity's future. In your opening example of wide divergence, both parties probably agree on a huge number of points. Probably both groups believe in the importance of justice and compassion, the good of friendship and courage, the importance of intellectual integrity, the greatness of loving others, and so on. And probably both groups, at their best, are not driven by fear, but by what they passionately value. I imagine that those who see an ultimate purposive direction of the cosmos or value in it, are driven by an overwhelming sense that the goodness of the cosmos is too good (as it were) to have come into being by chance. And I imagine that the second group is probably humanist in orientation and share the belief that there is great goodness and value in human autonomy and creativity. In brief, I suspect that when one looks at the wide scope of values each group shares, one can see some...

The way you have framed the question makes it a little hard to answer, as the term "aesthetic" is often used to refer to a wide range of experiences. So, in the broadest sense of the word, the aesthetic properties of an event or thing are its affective or emotive properties, e.g. a melancholy field, joyful music, a haunting conversation. Perhaps most of our experiences have some affective dimension --even our exchange (which I hope is friendly and welcoming). In this broad sense of 'aesthetic,' entertainment films, books, plays all have aesthetic features and values (some are witty, joyful, insipid, sexy, etc). I suspect that the question behind the question concerns what some might call "high art" versus the works one finds in popular or mass culture (the world of entertainment). On this general topic, philosophers today seem to be having a field day doing philosophy in the context of popular culture. There are dozens (at least 50 and growing) books out now by professional philosophers on such...

Some philosophers do think that moral and aesthetic values (right, wrong, good, evil, beauty, ugliness) are reflections of proper or correct priorities and preferences. It is proper to prefer compassion, for example, over cruelty. Some seek to articulate the best values in terms of those things (acts, events, properties) that would be approved of by an ideal observer. There are, however, more skeptical philosophers who think values are neither (in some objective sense) proper or improper except in terms reflecting what individuals or communities happen to prefer. This is sometimes a part of what has been called "error theory" because it claims that most people who are committed to moral (aesthetic / religious) values are in error when they take such values to be objectively binding. J.L. Mackie takes up such a stance in the book Ethics; Inventing Right and Wrong. I personally suggest Mackie's position is deeply problematic and the same reasons he offers to be skeptical about the objective...

Good question(s)! I suggest the idea of a person living on in the memories of others is somewhat problematic, especially given that (assuming you are correct) death involves a person ceasing to be. But it may be that your life still has meaning in at least two ways: while you would not live on in others' memories, the significance of your life and the values you had might well live on with others. Of course if modern astronomy is correct all life on earth will end in about 4 billion years, so this bit about living on indefinitely will be a bit tricky. A second way to approach your question would be to refer to the point of view of the universe or the point of view of some ideal observer. This is also a little problematic, however, as it seems that the universe cannot (literally) have a point of view and if the ideal observer is merely hypothetical (viz. there is no God) and so this might also be a difficult foundation to secure meaning. Perhaps thre is a third option: four dimensionalism. According...

Great question! Someone else will be better at replying to this, but I will take a first shot to get the ball rolling. I do not think the term "interest" has a standard, clear usage, though I think it is probably most generally equated with a preference or perhaps a desire. So, your having an interest in a reply to your question would be the same as your having a desire or preference that someone give you an interesting answer. "Interesting" (I assume) means worthy of interest. In this sense, if someone is uninterested in X it does not follow that X is uninteresting. A few more distinctions: Philosophers sometimes distinguish the interests that a person has and what is in a person's interest. In this sense, a person may be interested in drinking vast quantities of vodka, but it is not in that person's interest to do so. We also sometimes think in terms of hypothetical or ideal interests. Someone may mistakenly think a glass of liquid is water and report "I am interested in drinking that"...

Good question. Perhaps there are at least two points to bear in mind in reply: the literature that is classified as utopia (and recall "utopia" means " no place") often is NOT about some ideal place that its authors hope to encourage establishing. This is pretty clear in Thomas More's Utopia --which contains much satire and fun. It also seems true in Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies, and is probably true also of Plato's ideal polis in the Republic (though this is quite controversial). Second, there is a view sometimes called ethical idealism, according to which we should seek the ideal even if it is virtually certain we will never attain it. Presumably this is the way at least some Christians act: they set out to fully imitate Christ or be sinless, even though they also believe that they will not perfectly attain this. Ethical idealism is in tension with a position associated with Kant that "ought implies can." According to the latter, an essential condition for you to have a duty to do X is...