Is this a decent argument (i.e. logical, sound)? If God exists, God is an omniscient, omnipotent, wholly good being If God is wholly good, God would want humans to posess free will If God is wholly good, God could endow humans with free will But, if any being is omniscient or all knowing, such a being would know human choices and actions before they are chosen Under such conditions, free will would only exist as an illusion or in the mind as the human perception of having free will; true free will would not exist because God or some other power has predecided all human choices Therefore, God, if God exists, cannot be both wholly good and omniscient Therefore, God does not exist

If living creatures, such as ourselves, are evolved biochemical mechanisms, and should free will exist, what natural neurophysiologic phenomenon could possibly give rise to it (that would not be as deterministic as, say, any other chemical process)? And if we are indeed biochemical structures (as biologists in general believe), why might not appropriately designed future machines (advanced AI) likewise have the capacity to exercise free will (should free will exist)?

I'm told it's arguable that when people say, "Water is H20", what they mean is, "The stuff from around here that we call water has the molecular structure H2O." Well, what about ethical claims? When people say "Killing is wrong", do they really mean "Killing is wrong in all circumstances, times and places"? Or are they saying something more like, "According to the normal values from around here, killing is wrong"?

If it's possible for a cat to be alive and dead at the same time, or for a particle to be in two places at the same time, would that show there are at least some things about which one couldn't rely on "Either P or not P" as a sound step in reasoning?

I have been intrigued by the theory expounded by the MIT physicist Max Tegmark that the universe is composed entirely of mathematical structure and logical pattern, and that all perceived and measured reality is that which has emerged quite naturally from the mathematics. That theory simplifies the question of why mathematics is such a powerful and necessary tool in the sciences. The theory is platonist in essence, reducing all of existence to pure mathematical forms that, perhaps, lie even beyond the realm of spacetime. Mathematics, in fact, may be eternal in that sense. The Tegmarkian scheme contains some compelling arguments. One is that atomic and subatomic particles have only mathematical properties (mass, spin, wavelength, etc). Any proton, for example, is quite interchangeable with any other. And, of course, these mathematical particles are the building blocks of the universe, so it follows that the universe is composed of mathematical structures. Another is that the vastness of the universe is...

Why should the value we place on freedom of speech extend to cover insult and ridicule, given that these sorts of speech aren't obviously constructive?

What is the point of life? Aren't we ultimately living each day just waiting until the day we die?

It seems to me that most theories involve postulated objects, and then various laws that describe how those objects must or can relate to each other. So, you might postulate an id, ego and superego, or genes, or electrons, protons and protons, etc. It also seems to me that there are at least two types of "simple" when talking about explanations. There's a brevity "simple" -- like a maths proof or a piece of computer coding with minimal steps. And there is also an ontological "simple" -- an explanation relying on as few postulated objects as possible. If it's true that there are at least these two types of "simple", well, does that render parsimony often difficult to apply, if you're committed to it as a good rule of thumb when deciding what to believe in? One candidate theory could be ontologically complex but brevity-simple, whereas the alternative theory might be ontologically simple but convoluted. Here are some things that worry me: (1) does appealing to deities lead to simpler explanations that...

Dear philosophers, I've been told that instead of looking for objective moral facts, many philosophers see the task of ethics as bringing intuitions into "reflective equilibrium". But if intuitions aren't a sort of sixth sense that allows people to perceive moral facts, and are merely behavioural tendencies from nature and nurture, why ought we try to systematise them? What special authority do they have, and why duree action viagra should we care about them?

Why is the sorites problem a "paradox"? Isn't it fundamentally a problem of definition?