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Justice

If the Nazi government can be called evil for committing the Holocaust then shouldn't the American government during the time of slavery be regarded as evil also?

The notion of evil is somewhat problematic in this context, since it is a very loaded term. Indeed, Hannah Arendt's influential Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil , argued that Adolf Eichmann's actions aren't straightforwardly seen as evil (hence the subtitle of her book). One might extend Arendt's doubts to other members of the Nazi government as well, and, even, to members of the American governments that presided over and perpetuated. I would, therefore, wish to reformulate the question as whether the Nazi and American governments are morally blameworthy for their actions, and to this question I would respond, unhesitatingly, that both are certainly morally blameworthy, and probably reprehensible, as well.
Music

What is the difference between music and an aesthetically interesting grouping of sounds? I ask because I was listening to the opening of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and I while I found the sounds which were made to resemble a flock of birds to be very interesting and even quasi-musical sounding at times it didn't sound like music. It really is brilliant so why or why wouldn't it qualify as music? Listen to it yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0DeA6PPbMI/

Your question is very interesting: it is, I think, an instance of a question that might generally be asked of any particular instance of any art: what is it that makes it the kind of work that it is? To fix ideas, consider the following question, which Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , says that he's written down in a book at home: "If a man hacking in fury at a block of wood...make there an image of a cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why not?" Your question, like Stephen's, has to do with the difference between a genuine artwork and an otherwise identical grouping of sounds, not, however, produced in the context of a work of art. It therefore seems to me that brilliance alone is not enough for something to qualify as music; the birds outside my window sometimes produce a brilliant series of notes. But the sounds produced by the birds aren't music, even if they are musical, whereas the sounds heard on the soundtrack of ...
Color
Philosophers

I'm going to be a senior in high school and I've found philosophy podcasts to be a great way to sample the thoughts of famous philosophers without having to drudge through esoteric forests of essays. Between listening to Philosophy Bites and Nigel Wharburton's reading of his book Philosophy: The Classics, I've become familiar with a bit of Hume and Kant. It is probable that I have misunderstood much of the material of the podcasts, so the material of this question does not reflect in any way the reliability of the sources. As I understand, Hume proposed the a priori and the a posteriori, the latter constructed by experience. Kant then respected the two categories but divided them into analytic a priori, synthetic a priori (new after Hume), and synthetic a posteriori. What interests me is the problem of "the missing shade of blue." Because all ideas originate from experience, even simple ones like fundamental colors (or shades of them), then are not all colors a posteriori? For they cannot be a priori in...

Although Hume does not himself use the terms 'a priori' and 'a posteriori', those categories do, roughly, correspond to the distinction that Hume draws between relations of ideas and matter of fact in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding . (The Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is also referred to as the 'first Enquiry', as I will do in what follows, to distinguish it from the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals , the 'second Enquiry'.) Now, by the by, but interestingly enough, Hume doesn't draw the distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, at least explicitly, in the earlier Treatise of Human Nature , much of whose first Book was recast in the first Enquiry, although he does draw a related distinction in Book 1, Part 3, Chapter 1 of the Treatise , between relations that depend on 'intuition' and 'demonstration', and have only to do with ideas, in contrast to other relations, which do not so depend on ideas, and thus do not admit of the sort of...
Value

Duty, engagement, rules, living a life "conditioned" vs. one free, maybe unconventional, following our own inspiration even if it doesn't seem supported by what we call "common sense". Many of us live a life that often is the result of choices influenced by many different conditionings, sometimes unhappily. It is not easy for everybody to understand what one really wants for himself in this life, and strong moral conditioning prevents radical choices. Where I should find more about this topic ? Thank you.

There are a number of classic works that treat the sorts of issues that you raise. (Interestingly, for what it's worth, relatively few contemporary 'analytic' philosophers have engaged these issues.) Chief among them, perhaps--at least in the Western tradition--are Plato's Republic and the New Testament, both of which, I think, are concerned with the kinds of issues that you mention. More relatively recent works that engage the topics that you mention include Henry David Thoreau's Walden , Martin Heidegger's Being and Time , and Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness . (Sartre, of course, is the popularizer of the notion of 'radical choice'.) A very recent book by a living philosopher that treats the issues to which you refer is Susan Wolf's Meaning in Life and What Matters .
Ethics
Mind

Is there a correlation between intelligence and morality? I can imagine an intelligent person giving a sophisticated analysis to a complex moral question before acting as warranted by his/her analysis. On the other hand, I can imagine a person of lesser intelligence acting in a moral and caring manner without much reflection, because he or she has been raised to be kind and considerate, and because kindness and consideration have always been part of the person's personality. Conversely, it is pretty easy to see examples of immoral behavior from both more intelligent and less intelligent people as well. It seems logical that intelligence would confer a greater ability to be moral, but everyday life does not seem to show any firm correlation between the two.

I think that how one sees the relation between intelligence and morality might well depend on how one conceives of morality. If one had a strongly intellectualist conception of morality--as, arguably, Plato and certain early modern Rationalists, such as Leibniz, had--then one might well think that an agent's capacity for moral reflection might well depend directly on her intelligence, and so one might conclude that a more intelligent agent would at least have the capacity to be a more moral agent as well (although, of course, s/he might fail to exercise that capacity). By contrast, if one thought that morality was a matter of following the law (as, for example, early modern natural law theorists, such as Pufendorf, thought), or that it was a matter of habituation (as, at least on certain interpretations, Aristotle thought), then one might think that the capacity to be a moral agent would be altogether independent of one's capacity for moral reflection. Indeed, certain philosophers have suggested that...
Music

Does philosophy concerning music have any worth or substance? Or is music simply too abstract for there to be any meaningful philosophical insights gleaned from it?

Treatments of music have long been a part of aesthetics: perhaps precisely because music is as abstract as it is--that is, it is not representational, or at least not obviously so--consideration of music raises questions about meaning, and human responses that are very different from those raised by representational arts such as painting or film. While there has been much written on the philosophy of music, I think that a very good place to start is with the work of the philosopher Peter Kivy, who has written on a wide range of topics in the aesthetics of music over the years.
Identity

If you alter someone's brain (by surgery, head injury, drugs, etc.) so that their personality changes markedly as a result, is there a sense in which you've effectively killed her?

The answer to this question depends on what one's criteria for personal identity are, as well as the nature of the changes in personality brought about by the envisioned brain manipulation. If, for example, one took personal identity to consist in psychological continuity, understood to consist in a continuation of interests, plans, projects, etc., then if one were to alter someone's brain and that person's personality were to change markedly enough that the person no longer shared the same interests, plans, projects with the person who entered the operating room, than the person would indeed have ceased to exist, as a result of the operation, and so one could be said to have effectively killed the old person in the operating room and caused a new person to be born. If, however, one takes identity to consist in bodily identity, then even in a case when a person's interests, plans, projects, etc., were to change markedly, provided that the person continued to occupy the same body, then the same person...
Education
Philosophy

Somewhat late in life, I have come to the conclusion that I should have studied philosophy in college - not as a career mover, but as a means of improving my mind and developing greater insight into fundamental questions that all of us deal with, to some extent. Recently, I have begun to do some reading on my own, and I am wondering whether there are particular readings or other resources that you might suggest to a serious beginner with a strictly amateur, part-time interest. Thanks to Peter Smith's recommendation, in response to a previous question I posted here, I am currently reading and enjoying "Philosophers Without Gods". Previously, I have read and appreciated Peter Singer's Practical Ethics". These reflect particular interests, but I'd like to start a broader study. Any suggestions? Thanks again. Neil

Another relatively recent, good, general introduction to a variety of philosophical issues is Thomas Nagel, What Does it All Mean? , which I myself read in my first year of graduate school and found most illuminating. Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy is a classic from relatively early in the twentieth century. You might also consider reading some of the canonical texts of Western philosophy (in my ignorance, I don't know Eastern philosophy, and so am not in a position to recommend any works of Eastern philosophy): a good place to begin is with Plato's 'Socratic' dialogues, the Apology , Euthyphro , and Crito ; if you like those dialogues, you might move on to the Republic , which treats many of the problem areas of philosophy, including epistemology (the nature of knowledge), metaphysics (the nature of what there is), ethics, and aesthetics, among other areas; a couple of more 'modern' works that you might consider are Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy ...
Religion
Time

My question has to do with the idea of God’s omniscience and whether God as an omniscient being could somehow exist in time. It seems hard to imagine how any sentient being could exist knowing exactly what will happen to itself in virtually any and every single moment. The concept of time, I realize, is one fraught with philosophical debate; but perhaps we could say, at least for the purposes of this question, that time is defined as the gap between the realization of events that occur between one moment, say Moment A, and Moment B (I realize this may be a bit of a problematic definition of “time”; but I can let it stand for this question). If we are to believe that there is an omniscient being, it appears that there could be no time for it (so defined), no unknown, between Moment A and Moment B for itself as an entity realizing or actualizing events.

The question of God's omniscience is a deep one that has received considerable attention from philosophers. Your formulation of the issue, I think, raises three distinct questions: whether (divine) omniscience is compatible with temporal existence; whether (divine) omniscience can be achieved by a sentient being; and the nature of (divine) omniscience itself. I'll treat each of these issues in reverse order. First, the omniscience at issue in treatments of divine omniscience isn't merely (!) knowledge of what will happen to that being itself at any given moment, but what will happen everywhere in the universe at any given moment, throughout time: so the knowledge at issue is very broad in scope indeed. Second, and given that omniscience is knowledge of what is happening everywhere in the universe, throughout time, it seems impossible that a being that receives all knowledge from the senses--which is what I take you to mean by "sentient"--could know everything that is happening everywhere in the...
Logic

What makes an argument "good"? Is there more to a good argument than raw persuasive power? Does a good argument have to support the right conclusion? For example, might the ontological argument be a good argument for theism even if theism is false?

This is a deep and interesting question, which goes to the heart of what exactly the point of philosophy is. Let's begin, however, by fixing some ideas about arguments. Arguments may be either valid or invalid; sound or unsound. An argument is valid if and only if the conclusion of the argument is a logical consequence of its premises; an argument is sound if and only if it is a valid argument with true premises. So, for example, the following argument is valid: (1) All green ideas sleep furiously; (2) This idea is green; (3) Therefore, this idea sleeps furiously. (This example is derived from Noam Chomsky, who used the phrase 'Colorless green ideas sleep furiously' in order to illustrate that competent English speakers could recognize a meaningless sentence as grammatical.) Obviously--I would claim--the preceding argument, although valid, is not sound, because ideas aren't colored and they don't sleep (except in the most metaphorical of senses). By contrast, the following argument is both...

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