Thank you for this inquiry. Actually, philosophers have returned to the question of the meaning of life after a sort of sabbatical in the 1980s and 1990s. The latest is The Purpose of Life by Stewart Goetz published by Continuum. He thinks that most philosophers have agreed about the meaning of life, at least as far as human beings are concerned. The meaning (or true, desirable end) of life is happiness. Philosophers, according to Goetz, have disagreed about what does or should make one happy or the ultimate end of living a life of happiness, but agree in the abstract on the importance of happiness. I think there is some truth to this. Interestingly, Goetz is a Christian theist, so he ultimately weaves together his view of life's meaning with a whole philosophy of the cosmos, which he understands in teleological (purposive) terms as opposed to a matter of blind mechanism. Other recent contributors on the meaning of life include Thomas Nagel, who has written eloquently on the mystery of the cosmos...

Almost from the very beginning, philosophers have reflected on death and dying. Here are some questions that have exercised philosophers (and I am sure the list is incomplete): Is the death of a person physically a matter of the person ceasing to be or is it possible (or even likely) that there is life after death (or, putting it differently) life after life? If so, what shape may it take? Reincarnation? Heaven or Hell? If a materialist view of persons is correct, might there still be an afterlife through, say, resurrection or God's re-creating a person? If death is the ceasing to be of the person, and if we have reason for thinking this is true, what bearing does this have on our ethics? Religious beliefs? Our sense of the meaning of life? Should death be feared? Why or why not? When is a person dead? At one time, we measured death with the ceasing of the heart to function. Now we tend to go with the irreversible loss of consciousness. But could it happen that a person in New York...

A great question, and not easily answered! The English Romantic poet and philosopher Samuel Coleridge drew a sharp distinction between fantasy and imagination in which the first is relatively feckless and futile (and your examples would fit under what Coleridge would classify as fantasy), whereas imagination is more constructive and is employed to think about the meaning of life, God, the good, and our relationships and responsibilities to one another, and the life. I believe the Cambridge University philosopher Douglas Hedley defends position like that. I tend to take a somewhat more relaxed view. While clearly fantasies can be horribly self-absorbed, even cruel, surely (I suggest) our lives would be poorer without some fantasies --a child fantasizing about becoming an astronaut or an adult fantasizing about being a great diplomat who both gets Hamas to recognize that the state of Israel to exist and insures that the Korean peninsular is nuclear free. Sometimes the entertaining of outright...

Your frustration is understandable! In English, we used to have fine distinctions between the terms ethics and morality, duties and obligations, labor and work, recklessness and negligence..... but we English-speakers seem less keen about the finer distinctions at work. One might easily conflate the terms just and moral; saying a law is unjust seems the equivalent of claiming that a law is immoral (or the establishment of the law is morally wrong). But, there is still some distinctions to observe: justice usually pertains to matters of governance and human rights. And there are different domains of justice: Distributive justice concerns the distribution of goods and burdens; Retributive justice refers to matters of punishment; Restorative justice refers to compensation for past wrongful harms, and so on. Such forms of justice are related to rights, distributive justice may concern itself with a person's having a right to health care, retributive justice needs to address respecting or violating a...

Thank you for this inquiry! You raise a complex matter. Some philosophers have gone through changes, sometimes quite radical: we sometimes refer to the pre-critical Kant and then to Kant after the Critique of Pure Reason, Wittgenstein changed his mind in such a significant way that we refer to the early and the later Wittgenstein, same with Heidegger. I am not sure that we can say (in the abstract) that change is itself a good or value: there is a famous philosopher of mind, Frank Jackson, who first introduced a brilliant argument against materialism, but then changed him mind and concluded the argument failed. Personally, I think the first argument works, and the "latter Frank Jackson" is mistaken. As I noted, it is very hard to claim that either constancy or change (in the abstract) is good or bad, but perhaps it may be concluded that the tradition of philosophy and the current philosophical community is enriched by both philosophers who change their mind with great frequency (Bertrand Russell...

Great question! Some philosophers have actually disparaged the term "exist," possibly for similar reasons. They have thought that "exists" may be redundant, as the sentence "There is a baseball game today" seems more tidy and less odd than a sentence like "A baseball game exists today." A similar point is sometimes made about the term "true" --it appears that the sentence "Snow is white" gains little if we add "It is true that snow is white." And yet other philosophers (like Meinong) even introduced the term "subsist" to refer to things that hover between existence and non-existence. All that to one side, I suggest the terms "exist" and "true" are perfectly respectful, even if they may sometimes appear redundant. It would be apt, for example, to say that an atheist thinks God does not exist, whereas a theist believes that God exists. What you are on to with the terms you suggest (something occurs or arises) also can play an important role in articulating what it is we are talking about. There is a...

Good question. While it has been many years since I read Tolstoy's confessions, I suggest that in the passage you cite he is struggling with the apparent void or endless, apparent meaningless of life (and a universe) without God. I recall him claiming that if one really took seriously the idea that life was utterly void of meaning, the only way to live would be to be drunk most of the time! Many philosophers today disparage Tolstoy's position --they think life itself can have meaning, whether or not God exists or they reject questions about the meaning of life as somehow confused (sentences and language have meaning, but life itself?) But I think Tolstoy raises a vital, philosophically interesting set of questions and his reported discovery of meaning in relationship to God is profoundly deep and worth taking seriously. The famous 20th century Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein was very impressed by Tolstoy's thinking about life's meaning and values. I might add that while Tolstoy's outlook evolved...

Great question! Your point about any explanation of rationality will have to presuppose (or assume) it seems right. After all, if our choice is between a rational explanation of rationality or an irrational one, the former seems to have the advantage! Moreover, I am inclined to think that there are basic, not further explainable truths about rationality: it is rational to believe in the law of identity (or A is A or everything is self-identical), but there are extant different accounts of the emergence of rational reflection among humans (and maybe some non-humans) and different theories of rationality. As for accounting for the emergence of rational creatures, some think this can be handled in accord with a thoroughgoing evolutionary account that shuns any reference to theism or Platonism or some other teleological (purposive account). For some of the difficulties facing this approach, see Thomas Nagel's fascinating new book Mind and Cosmos. In terms of the nature of rationality, there are two...

I am inclined to agree with you that arguments and evidence need to be evaluated on their own terms and not dismissed out of hand on the grounds that the "expert" is affiliated with an institution that has a worldview that is thought to be biased or somehow discredited. So, a biologist working in a conservative Christian institute who has generated a case for intelligent design, needs to have her or his work taken seriously by journals or peer groups and given a fair evaluation, even if the majority of practicing biologists reject intelligent design. Still, there are boundaries that most disciplines have over what can count as sound arguments and evidence. Presumably a Christian biologist would not gain in credibility if she appealed to Biblical revelation as part of her evidence base for the journal Nature (though she might have credibility if she was writing for fellow Christian biologists or for a debate in philosophical theology that sought to balance revelation and scientific claims), any more...

Great question! At first blush, "self-plagiarism" seems absurd, like forging one's own signature or stealing from oneself. But just as we can imagine odd circumstances when even these other seemingly absurd cases might be attempted (imagine I have amnesia and forgotten I am Charles Taliaferro, and think, instead, my real name is John Doe; I go to a bank and pretend to be Charles Taliaferro and sign a check with that name, I then break into Charles Taliaferro's apartment, take everything and sell it on the black market using the name John Doe). On inspection,though, self-plagiarism is actually less odd than the strange adventures of John Doe. It usually consists in re-using work you have published elsewhere and raises copy-right concerns. Self-plagiarism occurs when, say, you have an essay published in The Journal of Philosophy but then use 90% of the article to form a new essay with a new title in a book, say, published by Princeton University Press without crediting the original publisher or...