Since your question is so timely, given the arrest of the missionaries in Haiti who were illegally taking 33 children out of the country, the first thing to point out is that it might be immoral to adopt such children, even with parental consent, if the adoption was made possible by actions that were illegal . That is, it might be immoral because, in general, it is immoral to break the law. Nonetheless, we might ask whether it would be immoral even if it were not illegal or whether this is one of those cases where breaking the law is not immoral (e.g., though some may take it as controversial, I take it that Rosa Parks was not doing something immoral in breaking the (immoral) segregation laws and that homosexuals were not doing something immoral when they had sex in their own homes in states that had (immoral) laws against such acts). Other philosophers will know this literature better than I, but I take this case of adoption to be one where questions of consent become very difficult,...

Alas, probably not, especially if (a) the crowd is very large and (b) your seat would have been filled by another fan, especially if (c) that fan would have been cheering for your team and about as loudly as you. But even if a-c are not true, it's not clear how much the cheering of the fans changes the players' performances and hence the outcome of the game. On the other hand, it always amazes me how significant the home field/court advantage is in every sport, including soccer (I presume that when you said "football match " you were referring to the beautiful game, not American football). What could explain the fact that a team is at least 10% more likely to win at home than away against the same opponent? (OK, I'm making up the 10% figure, but if anything I bet it's low, and Wikipedia says in English Premier League home teams are almost 40% more likely to score goals.) Well, several things could explain home field advantage other than the crowds, such as familiarity with the environment and...

The syllogism is still valid (i.e., if the two premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true). But you have just found a case (Mushmush) that falsifies the first premise. It turns out John does not really believe that all green people should be killed, but he believes (at least) one green person (Mushmush) should not be killed. Good for logic and good for Mushmush!

This is a nice case of what can go wrong when you (i.e., I) do philosophy too quickly! As Richard charitably suggests, (I think) I was reading the argument (too quickly) to say: 1. John believes that all green people should be killed, and 2. John believes that Mushmush is a green person, 3. Thus, John believes that Mushmush should be killed. Mitch is right that the original question left "John believes" out of premise 2, so it's clearly not formally valid: 1 could be true, but if John does not believe Mushmush is green (even though he is), then clearly 3 would not follow. With premise 2 written as here, with "John believes," then it looks much "closer to valid" but "valid" is not like horseshoes or hand grenades, so close does not count. It's hard to see how John could miss the inference, but perhaps he is like some racists in literature who sincerely hold universal derogatory beliefs about another race and sincerely reject that belief about their friend or neighbor who they...

Yes, you can and should feel good, feel proud, feel accomplished, regardless of whether or not determinism is true. You worked hard, you made hard choices, you did things rather than just let things happen to you. And all that is true even in a deterministic world. (For some discussion of what determinism means and entails, see my response to question 3004 here .) Of course, I'm a compatibilist about free will and determinism, so I think determinism is irrelevant to these issues. However, some incompatibilists also think that even if determinism ruled out the sort of free will required for genuine moral desert, we could still legitimately feel proud of our accomplishments. My view is that to think determinism rules out our ability to feel proud (or guilty) for what we do is to misunderstand what determinism means. It is to assume that determinism--the view, roughly, that everything that happens is complete caused by prior events--means that we are somehow bypassed ...

Determinism is the thesis that a complete description of the universe at one time and the laws of nature logically entails a complete description of the universe at any later time. Though this definition does not talk about causation, determinism is also often understood to mean that every event in the universe is completely caused by a set of prior events, in accord with the laws of nature. I don't think this definition of determinism should be equated with 'fate' since fate suggests that certain things are going to happen no matter what anyone does and perhaps also that some power, such as God or gods or the Greek Fates, has control over fate (and hence what happens to you)--so, Oedipus was fated to sleep with his mother, no matter what he tried to do to avoid that fate and it looks like the gods imposed that fate upon him. Determinism, on the contrary, does not entail that certain things will happen no matter what. On the contrary, it suggests that what happens on the future depends on what...

Yes, especially if it involves the actual infliction of pain on someone else, not just getting pleasure from watching real or fake depictions of people in pain. On every theory of morality, gratuitous or unnecessary pain is wrong and should be avoided. Some theories try to ground that moral claim in more fundamental moral claims, while others, such as utilitarianism, treat "pain is bad" as a fundamental fact from which to derive moral conclusions. If you believe there are no moral truths, then sadism is not immoral because nothing is, but in that case, there's nothing special about sadism except that, like rape or murder, it is a particularly counterintuitive case for people who think there are no moral truths. A more interesting question is whether masochism is immoral (i.e., deriving pleasure from the experience of pain, though this definition itself is philosophically perplexing if one defines pain and pleasure as opposites!). Or what to think about a sadist and a masochist getting together...

Your plan sounds reasonable. I would suggest a few things. First, try to get your GPA as high as possible in your remaining semesters (don't let it slip below 3.0), perhaps doing a little less of your own study this year and focusing on your classes. Yes, try to get high GRE scores. But to get into MA programs you will also need a good writing sample and letters of recommendation from philosophers at UCLA (talk to them about all this). Your writing sample needs to be sharp (and less grammatically challenged than your question here) and include some philosophical argumentation (but keep it tightly focused--don't offer a new theory of something). Finally, if you can do all this, I'd suggest your goal #2 should be to get into as good an MA program as possible!

I hope so. And I think so. Especially if we understand philosophy in a general way to involve careful reflection on what we should be doing with our lives and how we should structure our relationships and societies, I think it can help us live better lives. While reflection isn't always good (e.g., in the middle of making a tennis shot or a guitar solo), surely it is often necessary in order to see how our ideas of what it means to lead a good life and create a good community are consistent with each other and with what other people in our community think. And when we see that they are inconsistent , we can consider how best to reconcile them to find what might be called reflective equilibrium . Another way of putting these points is to say that, whether we know it or not, we all have a philosophy (a set of ideas of which we are more or less aware) that guides our decision-making and personal interactions. It seems that trying to figure out what our philosophy is will make it more likely...

To answer your second question first, you are correct that what is natural is not always good (though of course we need to know what we mean by "natural" and "good"). For instance, if we mean by "natural" what humans have strong desires to do, presumably in part because of our evolutionary history, then it will be natural for humans to eat pretty much as much sugar and salt and fat as we can (in the environments in which we evolved, sugar, salt, and fat, all of which are crucial for survival, were scarce enough that there would be little selection pressure to limit consumption of them). But if by "good" we mean what will keep us healthy and alive, then in our current environment, our natural desires to eat so much sugar, salt, and fat are not good. What is natural is not good. Similar arguments might be given for a variety of desires or behaviors, which humans plausibly have developed in part because of our (natural) selective history, and which we would not call good: promiscuity, racism...

It doesn't. There are several possibilities here. One is that there is a causal relationship between the physical brain and a non-physical mind, which can still make sense of the idea that when alcohol is coursing through your veins into your brain it causes your conscious experiences to be funky or when a part of your brain is lesioned it causes mental disorders. This view is Descartes' dualism. If it is true, then presumably your non-physical mind (or soul) can survive after your physical body dies (though it's hard to imagine how things would be for your bodiless soul in "heaven"--e.g., how do you find grandma? and what would you do for fun?). This view becomes less plausible the stronger the correlations between brain states and mental states become (the soul seems to have nothing left to do). So, supposing such dualism is implausible and we assume this evidence of a causal relationship between brains and consciousness is evidence of a physicalist view, one that says the mind just ...