That all seems right, to be sure. But I'm not sure we're thinking about the question whether hypocrisy is wrong in quite the right way. For note, first of all, that, even if hypocrisy is wrong, that does not mean that the solution should be to cease advocating what is right. It might, rather, be to stop doing what is wrong. But there are other options you might consider. The case you suggest has it that what is being advocated is good, but is privately violated. There seem to me to be other cases, however; and even this case has different versions. Here are some cases: Fred might vociferously advocate that one ought to do X, when, indeed, one ought, but not himself do X. Fred might wholeheartedly insist that one ought to do X, when it is morally permissible but not obligatory to do X, and himself not do X. Fred might repeatedly claim that one ought to do X, when it is morally im permissible to do X, but himself refrain from X-ing. Fred might strenuously argue that one must not...

If I remember correctly, and I may well not, David Lewis explicitly argues that there are uncountably many propositions in Plurality of Worlds and uses this as an argument against any view that would try to reduce propositions to sentences. At the very least, he does consider this issue. So here's an argument that I think I remember from that book that we can consider, anyway. It is based upon the claim that, for any real number x , there ought to be a proposition---a possible content of thought---that I am shorter than x inches tall. Indeed, each such proposition could be expressed by a sentence. All we have to do is give the real number x a name, say, "Fred", and then the proposition will be expressed by the sentence "I am shorter than Fred inches tall". But if so, then there are at least as many propositions as there are reals. The key to this argument, note, is the observation that the claim "For every proposition p , there could be a sentence S that expressed it" is...

I thought about the article idea. And, back in the day, one might have had an off-print for someone to sign. (I once saw an off-print that had apparently belonged to Henry Sheffer, he of the Sheffer stroke, signed by Gottlob Frege!) But it does seem odd to ask someone to sign a photocopy of an article. Anyway, it's nonetheless true that some people like to collect autographs, and that a blank card is often the format of choice, and there's nothing wrong with that. But don't do the napkin. ;-)

Let me just register my agreement with Eddy. It is very common to ask an author to sign a book, and so it's not likely to be shocking or even entirely unexpected. Asking a philosopher to sign a napkin, on the other hand, or a baseball (!) might make the requester seem kind of silly. So if the person hasn't written a book, you might want to skip it.

Yes, and no. If there are exceptions to the law of gravity (whatever that might be), then it is not a law. Fundamental physical laws are supposed to be exceptionless. (I put the point that way because many philosophers hold that the laws of non-basic sciences, such as biology or even chemistry, can have exceptions. But this is a different, and very tangled, issue.) However, the fact that the law of gravity (if it is really a law) cannot have exceptions does not imply that it is necessary. To say that the law is necessary is to say that it could not have been otherwise. Or, to use a popular metaphor, it's contingent if there is another "possible universe" in which the laws are, in fact, different, so that the law of gravity, as it is in this universe, does not hold there. The mere fact that the law holds without exception in this universe does not obviously imply that the laws might not have been otherwise. Some philosophers do think that the laws could not have been otherwise. But...

Let me ask a view questions. Is it clear that viewing child pornography is always wrong? Consider a detective who is viewing it in an attempt to establish the identities of the participants. Is it clear that any photograph of children being sexually exploited by adults is ipso facto wrong? Consider a reporter who takes pictures of some politician in bed with a pre-pubescent boy. What is distinctive of the case in which we would intuitively regard the viewing as wrong? What attitude towards the participants does such viewing involve? In particular, what attitude towards the children does it involve? Does viewing child pornography as a way of achieving sexual gratification seem compatible with a compassionate attitude towards children and a proper respect for their interests and their autonomy? Does it seem compatible with a proper appreciation of their suffering? The wrong might lie less in the viewing than it what one's viewing such things as a means of sexual gratification says about...

I couldn't agree more with what Miriam says here. But let me add a bit. First, the common talk one hears about the "definition of marriage" seems to me to be confused. One might reasonably speak of a definition of the word "marriage", but marriage, the civil or cultural or religious institution, is not something that is "defined" in the way a word is defined. For this reason, among many others, the common refrain one hears, that we can look in a dictionary to find out what marriage is, and in particular to find out whether two men can marry, is just silly. (And, if it weren't silly enough, of course dictionaries change.) That said, one might seek something like a characterization of the institution of marriage, as it has existed in (say) American society over the last few hundred years. One might want to know what marriage is, as one might want to know what goldenrods are. As Miriam says, such an investigation would likely find that there was a good deal of variation, across religious groups...

I'm not sure precisely what is being asked here. The first sentence is true if the following is something Peter knows: Mary does not invite (both) Paul and Peter. Perhaps there is another reading under which it is true if the following are both things Peter knows: Mary does not invite Paul; Mary does not invite Peter. But this isn't likely to be a significant difference, under most accounts of knowledge attributions. Similar things can be said about the second sentence. What I don't understand is what any of this has to do with the de Morgan laws. These say, among other things, that something of the form ~(A & B) is logically equivalent to the related thing of the form ~A v ~B. But neither of these sentences is of that form, unless we're talking about the second mentioned reading of the first one. And, in that case, yes, it certainly is equivalent. What might be at issue is whether, e.g., "X knows: ~(A & B)" has to be equivalent to "X knows: ~A v ~B", which is to ask whether substitution of...

Perhaps part of the problem is the word "prove", which also tends to get used when talking about such things as the existence of God. (No-one can prove that God exists, we're often told.) As our erstwhile leader, Alex George, has often pointed out, however, outside mathematics, one can rarely "prove" anything. So to be told in that sense that no-one can "prove" a negative is unhelpful. One can't "prove" a positive in that sense, either. As Peter said, more or less.

Here's another idea. Figure out how much would it have cost each of you to take the taxi separately. Let's say it's $3 for her (it went straight to her place), and $5 for you (the taxi had to go a bit out of its way, from your point of view). Then each of you should pay the appropriate proportion of what you would have paid, had you taken separate taxis. Let her be A, and let you be C. Let AJ be her fare for your joint ride. Let AS be her fare had you ridden separately; in practice, AJ=AS, since the fact that you are in the cab won't change the route (unless you ask the driver to take the scenic route, for reasons we will not discuss). Let CJ and CS be yours jointly and separately, too. Normally, CJ >= CS (going together didn't make the fare to your place less than it would have been), though we don't have to assume that, either. Anyway, consider now the ratio CJ/(AS+CS). This is the proportion of the actual cost to what it would have cost to get you home separately. My proposal is that she...

No, they are not. They are violating the legitimate rights of the people who are applying for the license. This is the sort of place that a comparision to inter-racial marriage is worth making, even though there are lots of differences between the two cases. It really did happen that inter-racial couples were denied marriage licenses to which they were legally entitled, and the clerks who refused to issue such licenses may well have been, and probably were, acting out of "strong beliefs about the immorality of [inter-raical] marriage", beliefs that may, just like some people's beliefs about gay marriage, have been founded on their religious views. Unless we can find some relevant difference between these cases, then, we shall have to say the same thing about them. People nowadays seem to me to forget how widespread opposition to inter-racial marriage once was. States had and enforced "anti-miscegenation" laws because very large portions of the populations of those states wanted to have such...