This not my particular area, but I suppose one could define the word "consent" however one pleases -- but if you define it such that it stops applying whenever there are 'pressing needs' then you will probably find that very few actions count as consensual ... And anyway 'needs' only constitute some of the conditions which might take away 'consent' (eg what if physical detemrinism is true, that every action we perform we are necessitated to perform by virtue of the laws of nature -- do these count as consensual actions in any sense that matters?) .... You probably couldn't begin to define 'consent' in the absence of further concepts such as 'freedom' and 'responsibility' too -- so probably one useful way to proceed might be to begin making a list of all those factors which 'constrain' or 'limit' our autonomy in our actions, and then seeing if it's even meaningful to determine a 'cut off point' such that once certain factors are present, 'consent' is lost ....... AP

it's never too late! ... I would recommend any of Simon Blackburn's more popular books -- "Think" (or is it "Thinking"?), "Truth" -- just google him and you'll find a few titles -- if you enjoy philosophical reflection on God you might try my own recent book 'the God question' -- or of course read Daniel Dennett's recent book on religion "Breaking the Spell" -- happy reading! Andrew

great question ... we might make some useful distinctions -- whether memories, beliefs, etc. are 'true' does NOT make an immediate difference to the individual, psychologically: we act on what we think, believe, remember etc., and in that sense the false thoughts/memories are just as 'valuable' or 'real' or important as the true ones .... however in many ways we like to orient ourselves towards the truth, to get our beliefs to be true, etc.; and thus when we discover some belief/memory is false we want to correct it .... (why we do or should care about truth in general is a separate issue; but most people simply do) -- so from that perspective, there's a large difference between the true ones and the false ones, as we seek to overcome the latter .... the "idealist' tradition in philosophy -- esp figures such as George Berkeley -- would ultimately deny the difference between the true ones/false ones (or at least reconstrue it very differently from the way I've implicitly done here) -- so if you want...

great point -- I think I largely agree -- but there may, still, be some disanalogy between the two cases (the Irish legend v. 'God') -- namely once you begin describing God's various attributes (omnipotence, creator, goodness, etc.) then it may well be plausible to seek independent/direct evidence of his existence in the world around you, independent that is of the 'source' of the 'tale' itself -- and that might not be equally true, or true to the same degree, as in the Irish legend case -- after all, you may not need to know who thought of the idea of a 'Creator' God first in order to evaluate, perfectly rationally, whether the world around us exhibits any evidence of intelligent design or creation -- of course, when you do learn more about the 'source' of the idea of God that may increase your skepticism about the truth of the claim that God exists, but it does seem to me that claim may also be evaluable independently of its sources -- best, Andrew

haven't read the nussbaum piece alexander suggests; but i believe one of the motivations of the french law is a security one -- though not many french women wear them, there already have been incidents of men criminals/or terrorists wearing them to escape detection ... (there certainly have been many such in the mid-east where burks are more common) .... and there you have the public interest in security weighed against the individual 'right' to obscure oneself .... I can also see a case made that genuine participation in the civic life of a free society requiers being visible -- identifiable -- sure there's an important role for anonymity, but people's whose opinions are only expressed anonymously when they have nothign to fear from expressing them non-anonymously seem to me to be worth less ... (maybe) ... so that might be a second reason to reject such a ban (though weighs less heavily against the religious desire to wear one, I suppose) .... just some thoughts Andrew

let me add a bit more in favor of the argument here ... we do tend to believe that certain very improbable things do not occur by chance -- poker/slot machine analogies common -- if your friend gets five royal flushes in a row you'd almost certainly be pulling your piece on him -- the fine tuning argument suggests that the very same sort of very ordinary, accepted reasoning applies to the universe -- that the specific tuning of the various constants is so improbable, when all others are possible (no combination of which would lead to any foreseeable valuable universe, key point), that just as you respond to your poker friend you should respond to the universe: not likely to have occurred by chance (tho always, of coure, remotely possible) -- but still the fact it is remotely possible that your friend randomly drew 5 straight royal flushes would stop no one from reaching for their piece .... i have a bit more about the argument in my book 'the god question' -- hope that helps! Andrew

Wow, fantastic email -- getting at the heart of some major philosophical ideas and movements. Empiricists tend to stress the role of perception/experience in producing knowledge, while rationalists tend to promoe the role of reason, often arguing on the basis of such considerations as those you mention. A couple of quick thoughts about the specifics of your message. Your example of a problematic perception (spinning cube looks like sphere) doesn't quite/fully show that perception is problematic, partly because some other perception is relevant to getting at the truth, ie seeing the cube not spinning. The rationalist might say that reason is needed to process these otherwise conflicting perceptions, but even if this so, it does seem that perception is playing a key role in generating our knowledge of the world (that a cube exists, and that, when spun, it looks spherical) -- so what you've raised is a kind of problem for perception, but not one which obviously (to me anyway) undermines the importance...

just to supplement Charles's very fine response: first, yes human beings are very irrational, but you can find irrational humans in every domain, theist and atheist ... if you're looking for 'rationality,' or at least approximations thereof, or at least 'reasonableness,' you probably don't want to be listening to local preachers (or even local 'atheists', whatever that means) -- you want to be talking to more philosophically inclined people (which is more or less what Charles is getting at) -- and there are plenty of deep, engaging, provocative things to think about, with respect to religion -- not merely the existence of God but many related topics -- even when you constrain yourself to trying to be 'rational' ... (I've tried to collect a number of these in my recent book 'The God Question,' which presents what a lot of famous philosophers have said on the subject of religion ...) hope that's helpful -- best, AP

let me supplement Eddy's fine response by noting that you will probably have to be very pro-active in making this happen! not only will you get distracted (reasonably) by life, but so will most of the people you're hanging out with, who may not have any initial interest in philosophy anyway! so you'll have to take charge -- for example, start a book club or discussion group at a local coffee shop ... check out 'socrates cafe' on that score ... find organizations that have public events of philosophical import so you can meet more like-minded folks (if you're in NYC you might look up 'socrates in the city') -- make sure your local NPR station carries the program Philosophy Talk (look it up!) and then be sure to listen to it ... organize a lecture yourself -- for example, i recently gave a talk at a bar in New York City that has a tuesday evening literary series ... find such a thing, or start one yourself! .... so don't count on others keeping your philosophy bug alive, you'll probably have to do it...

that's a beautiful (and enormous) question! but is it just a semantic question -- ie how shall we use the word 'peace', should we apply it even to cases where there is merely the absence of war (eg relationship between Egypt/Israel) -- or is it something deeper? Pretty clearly (if not exhaustively) we could begin to identify any number of factors/aspect of 'peaceful' relationships -- starting with non-explicit violence, but then adding things like economic cooperation, cultural exchanges, inter-country travel etc. -- and decide (maybe arbitrarily) to restrict the word "peace" to cases where some of these are present, to some significant degree -- and say things like 'that's not REALLY peace between Egypt/Israel" -- but maybe not much is gained by decisions about how to use the word 'peace', once we begin identifying those factors which constitute genuine relationships between countries .... best, Andrew Pessin