Great question! Two great sources for this is David Hume's famous essay, "A Standard of Taste" and Mackie's "The Subjectivity of Values" -- a quick response to you, here, is to suggest that perhaps you are BOTH right (a happy verdict!): when we can specify in advance precisely which qualities are valuable, then we can "objectively" evaluate cookies (or food more generallY) to the degree to which the item in question reflects or contains those qualities. (Mackie uses the example of juding the 'best dog' in a competition, I think -- we articulate in advance what the 'good dog qualities' are, and then objectively judge the individual dogs to the degree ot which they have those qualities). But then once THAT is done, we can always ask: yes, but what makes that specified quality a truly 'valuable' or 'good' quality? (We may say 'a dog that is strong is a good dog', so a given strong dog will objectively be 'good'; but now we're asking, 'what makes the strongness itself good'?) And here a very...

was that documentary about the long island family, where it seemed pretty evidne that the charges were trumped up? (if so, amazing documentary ....) ... anyway i just posted an answer to a question about the possibiilty of truly unconditional love, which seems relevant here ... so check it out, when you have a moment! ... best, ap

good question! perhaps distingish between our being justified in using the device for its purpose from its actually succeeding in fulfilling its purpose. in your coin case you would not be justified in believing the answer the coin gives -- but the answer might (luckily) actually be correct. similarly for the clock case -- its being broken means you are not justified in using it to learn the time, but sometimes unjustifiable processes do yield the correct result (even though you're not justified in believing it) -- so on this view the clock IS right twice a day .... hope that helps ap

I've made the same point in my book "The 60-Second Philosopher," though I think it has to made with some finesse to count as being particularly accurate. Young children seem quick to recognize questions about basic principles -- that there is a causal order -- that there may be a supreme being of some sort -- basic moral principles -- but that's still pretty far from saying they ask the same questions as the big questions from philosophy. (Tom Wartenburg has a recent book out on doing Philosophy with Children and on focus groups he's done, which might offer support for your question ....) hope that helps-- ap

why wouldn't that be conditional: you love the person on hte condition that s/he who she is ... does that imply that if she changes in any way she may not be loveable? true unconditional love would be stronger than that: you love a being because it is a being (not even a kind of being) .... maybe that very strict version is implausible (one can't speak of others but it seems doubtable that any one human being has the capacity for this kind of love) -- is it what (say) committed christians at least strive for (don't now)? -- but weaker versions (eg you love your child no matter how awful he ends up behaving), again i can't speak for others but i know that kind of love can be approximated, as it's clear to me that i love my children even when i'm furious with them over things they do -- such love doesn't mean always feeling lovlingly towards them, of course, just loving them -- but where the limits are, i don't know (if God forbid my kid becomes a murderer, rapist, sociopath....?) hope that's useful ...

If by 'logical' you mean 'a decent argument can be constructed of this form' then i would say the answer is yes -- but if you mean 'an absolutely convincing argument ...' then, well, you don't find too many of those anywhere in philosophy -- my favorite version of the kind of argument that Allen Stairs mentions is some version of the fine-tuning argument -- which observes how perfectly fine-tuned features of the universe seem to be, such that they could easily have been otherwise, and yet had they been otherwise then human life (conscious, rational, moral life) would not have been possible -- and goes from there to argue that it is reasonable to think this didn't occur by chance -- a good source on this topic would be any of Paul Davies' recent books ... best, ap

if you're asking 'can some people rise above jealousy?', surely the answer is yes -- i can't help but think, though, that this question is more in the domain of psychology than philosophy .... (unless you believe that a proper theory of the world could help here -- eg Buddhism, which teaches you to free yourself from all attachments -- I suppose THAT would help with jealousy! --) ... For something you might enjoy reading on the subject, have a look at Proust's Remembrance of Things Past -- it's the second or third book, which is the story of Swann's jealousy over a woman named Odette .... best, ap

Hm, it's not quite clear where this question is coming from -- if by 'property' you mean something like 'attribute' or 'feature', the kind of thing that can be possessed by objects or substances, and if you mean by 'metaphysical concept' the kind of thing studied by people who say they are doing metaphysics, then yes! But that seems to simple an answer, as if you have some underlying issue that's motivating the question -- but I can't quite figure out what it is? What turns on answering this question yes or no? ap

Why would you think he wouldn't? By "caveman" do you mean a creature before language? (Then maybe; perhaps philosophy requires language.) Of course, you'd need to be more specific about what constitutes philosophy. If a philosopher is one who thinks reflectively, carefully, asks certain kinds of questions -- then I wouldn't doubt that even very primitive humans, if they have language, might well count as philosophers. (Haven't the earliest humans wondered why we're here? What controls the world? Aren't those philosophical questions?) hope that's useful-- best, ap

There's a lot of interest here, and a lot that's problematic in your questions! ... There are empirical studies in the U.S. at least that show things such as that college degrees increase average earning power over the course of your life -- now whether that means 'the more knowledge you have' leads to 'more success and happiness' I don't know, but it's the kind of statistic that might be relevant to your concerns .... I am not inclined to think that (all) knowledge is 'produced just to be sold' -- it's produced for many reasons, including the inrinsic interest of producing it -- but if it turns out that (much) knowledge is in fact useful, and valuable, then why would it be surprising that it would also be sold, even if it isn't produced for that purpose? Now if you're concerned about more political/sociological issues -- like what sorts of societies choose to have their education be so expensive, etc., that I can't say -- I too would prefer that education be far less expensive, be seen as a public...