I'm tempted to say that when it comes to love, all is mystery, and leave it at that. But that would be a little too quick, perhaps. You ask several questions, so I will try to reply to them one-by-one. (1) If you show all signs of loving someone, you probably do. However, we make a distinction between infatuation and real love, and so the real test of which of these it is will be a matter of time. Infatuation dies pretty quickly, whereas love is more durable. (2) A good part of love probably really is "just in your head," or, more likely, in your biochemistry more broadly. When we are engaged in this way, there are very significant differences in cognition, sensation, emotion, and all of the neurological and endocrinological systems towhich these are related. It certainly isn't love if it doesn't change you in lots of ways! (3) You also want to know what it is about your beloved that brings out these reactions in you. The answer seems to be that it is lots of things . ...

No, they're not the same. A "slippery slope" argument is one that tries to show that attempting to make a determination about one sort of case will "slide" into another case very like it, and then another very like that one, and so on, until we reach a point where we are no longer willing to endorse the original strategy. For example, a familiar version of "slippery slope" reasoning holds that if we grant rights to gays, then the next thing that will happen is that we have to grant rights to pedophiles, or those who enjoy bestiality or incest. The inference we are suppose to make is that wwe should not take the first step down the slope, as there will be no stopping all of the steps that follow "once you go down that path." As this example shows, many "slippery slope" arguments are simply fatuous, and as a matter of fact none are actualluy logically valid. A reductio ad absurdum, however, is a logically valid form of argument. The way this argument form works is in virtue of a certain fact...

I think that what philosophers call "moral psychology" (the analysis of why people act as they do, where by "act" we mean behavior that is voluntary, rather than involuntary) would hold that the relevant factors here are a bit more complex. Some eating is, as you suggest, simply a matter of pursuing the pleasures of taste. But the whole notion of "comfort food," for example (which which I hope you are familiar) adds yet another factor--namely, that eating some foods provides us with a sense of comfort that is at least somewhat independent from the special pleasures of taste. Eating can also be habitual, and the very act of eating (even when we are not hungry or not enjoying the taste of what we are eating) can provide us with a sense of well-being. In brief, then, I think the explanation of why we pursue things even when they no longer give us pleasure will probably be very complex indeed, because our psychologies of desire are not as simple as just pleasure-seeking of a single, simple kind.

The Forms make their first appearance in Book V, and are also significantly represented in the metaphysics of the Divided Line passage in Book VI. I agree, however, that they also appear in the theory of higher education Plato discusses in Book VII. I can't speak to how Plato's theory of Forms is taught, because I suspect that it is taught very differently by different teachers. But there are very good scholarly works on Plato's Forms. I recommend Richard Patterson's Image and Reality in Plato's Metaphysics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985). I also think a good review is provided in Henry Teloh's The Development of Plato's Metaphysics (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981), Chapter 3.

You are right that there are very high levels of hypocrisy in the US: our actual behavior often fails miserably to cohere with our announced values. But you should also recognize that some of the problems you mention are extremely intractible and may be extremely difficult to remedy. Have we made progress on these issues? I think we have, but I also think that the progress comes in fits and starts and also sometimes moves backward before progressing again. As for our tolerance for the gaps between our professed values and our actual practice, I think lots of factors come into play. One such factor is the degree to which we are willing, ready, or even able to make progress to eliminate the gaps a primary priority. Notice that all of us may value something, but not value it enough to set other priorities aside in order to make progress on this particular thing. The point is that people have limited resources (in time, money, energy) to "spend" on improvement in all of the areas that need...

Kant emphasized what he called the "categorical imperative," for which he gave two formulations. The formulation that seems most plainly to apply here is that we should be able to universalize into a maxim whatever decision we make in individual moral decisions. In this case, the question is whether we would be willing to universalize into a maxim that the policy of the military sshould be "don't ask, don't tell" for anyone of any gender and any sexuality. But it seems that we do not have such a policy for heterosexuals, and as far as I can tell, no one would think that such a policy would sensibly apply to heterosexuals. So it sseems we cannot universalize this policy, in which case the policy looks, on Kantian grounds, to be prejudicial.

On what basis? On any reasonably held ethical basis at all! Your question seems to be based on the idea that we cannot be justified in judging another society, but I see no reason why that would be true. The consequences of sacrificing children looks pretty bad (oops, there goes the society's future!), so on a consequentialist ground, the practice can be condemned. No sensible person would make "sacrifice your children" aa universal maxim for all to follow, so it looks like there are good deontological grounds for condemning it, as well. And what kind of peerson sacrifices his or heer own children to some "god"? Looks pretty baad from a virtue-theoretic point of view, as well. If this were baseball, I'd say, "Three strikes and you're out!"

Having not read the article, it is difficult to provide a very direct response. But perhaps it will help to make a distinction. Forgiveness can be the process by which people who were in conflict become reconciled. There can be value in such reconciliations, but it will also depend on what the costs are. I can think of no good reason for encouraging anyone to accept what is unacceptable (e.g. child abuse), or for someone who has been the victim of unacceptable treatment to be reconciled to the unrepentant agent of that victimization. So if we mean by "forgiving" that we no longer hold someone responsible for some wrong they did, I'm inclined to agree that we should not do that. On the other hand, it seems to me that the very logic of forgiveness is that it wouldn't come into play unless we actually do recognize that the person to be forgiven aactually did something wrong. If we have reason to think that they have changed in such a way as not to do that sort of wrong again, and they feel...

I expect that there will be some overlap in these skills, but strictly speaking, I think the special skill of a theologian will be the ability to organize reasons in such a way as to support certain religious views, the special skill of a politician will be to govern others in a way that engenders support from the governed, the special skill of a logician would be for finding ways to make inferences within a rule-governed system, whereas the special skill of a philosopher will be thinking "outside the box" in such a way as to allow progress on topics in which people "inside the box" find progress difficult or impossible. Philosophers are required not to allow certain religious views, or the need for popular support, to restrict their reasoning. Philosophers also often engage in reasoning where the rules of eviddence are not neearly as clear as they are in formal logic. But as I said, there will be some overlap in all of these skills. Many great philosophers have also been theologians, politicians, or...

A bad person is one who is inclined to act in bad ways. A mentally ill person, accordingly, can also be a bad person. We might think of a mentally ill person as someone who simply can't help doing what they do--where those who are not mentally ill can actually make real decisions. But just because I can't help doing something terrible doesn't make it not terrible when I do it. But I doubt that the expression "mentally ill" is one that iss very clear-cut or well conceived. Plainly, there is something wrong with anyone who acts badly--just exactly what is wrong with them (whether some "mental illness" we now have a name for, or just a lousy background, or poor education in values, or ...) may be somewhat unclear to discern, aand the border between "illness" and other factors may get extremely blurry. My guess is that the more we know about the brain, the more we are going to find out that "mental illness" will be replaced in our descriptions of the world with several other options that make what...