Frequently, one finds the following statment: "You cannot prove a negative." My question is, in this context, what is meant by the word "negative?" I understand how the word is used in mathematics and I "think" I know the meaning when used in logic. I just cannot seem to get a handle on how it is used here. Moreover, does it, perhaps, refer to a total position in the debate over the existence of God? Any comments you would make would be greatly appreciate. I enjoy your application very much and, moreso, since I am so old. Thanks. JH

The notion of something being a "fake" seems linguistically odd. Normally, if you have an adjective and a noun, the noun notes what the thing being talked about is, and the adjective describes some quality of the thing in question. A "fake plant", however, doesn't seem to fit that pattern at all, because a fake plant isn't a plant to begin with; the noun seems to be violating its intended function. Is "fake" something other than an adjective, then, perhaps analogous to "not a"? Or is a "fake plant" actually a "fakeplant", i.e. the fake is a part of the noun rather than an adjective, despite its apparent form? Doesn't the adjective "fake" somehow undermine the purpose of nouns?

There is a classic dilemma about a careening streetcar threatening to kill five people, but where you by operating a switch can force the streetcar onto a different track, saving the five, but killing one other person. The dilemma intends to illustrate the different positions taken by a consequentialist and a cathegorical kantian. How would a virtue ethicist act in this situation? It seems like utilitarians and deonthologists neatly split the moral world in true dichotomies, leaving little room for virtue ethics. But put in a situation like the dilemma, even the virtue ethicist has to act either way, and how does he argue then? Relying on a set of ever so noble virtues wouldn't help very much.

About a year and a half ago I read Henri Bergson's work Matter and Memory for one of my philosophy classes. I have begun to reread the his work and can not help but wonder: what is M. Bergson's place in the history of philosophy? I find many of his arguments to be convincing, but where do he, and his arguments, stand after the philosophical works that the analytic tradition produced? I have tried to learn more about M. Bergson as a person and thinker, but I have been unsuccessful in finding anything relevant after the advent of the analytic tradition. I do know that he won the Nobel Prize for literature for his work, Creative Evolution, but then it would seem as though his work became unimportant. So, I guess my general question is: does M. Bergson have any importance to philosophy today, and where does he stand in relation to present-day philosophy and the analytic tradition? Would a philosopher of the analytic tradition today think that M. Bergson's work is not useful to philosophy?

The responses to questions on this site regarding the ethics of eating animals seem to indicate that many of you endorse vegetarianism (in some form or another) but have not made a commitment to actually becoming a vegetarian. Though I understand the difficulty of truly living in accordance with certain philosophies that one might, in theory, endorse, the only major challenge faced by vegetarians in today's America is self control. If philosophers themselves find it so difficult to simply not put a piece of flesh in their mouths, how can we hope for considerable progress on this issue? One would think that the people who think so much about the minutiae of the arguments for and against eating meat would be the most likely to make a shift in their behavior. I can't help but worry.

Does the word 'being' have a meaning?

When discussing kinds of terms, there are certain kinds that come up often. Singular entities such as Queen Elizabeth II are one kind, categories such as cats are another, and properties such as blue are a third. However, what about substances like "gold"? Is a gold watch an instance of the property of being gold, or being made of gold? Or does the watch simply contain trillions of elements in the category "gold (atoms)"? Or is "gold" a singular entity that exists scattered throughout the Universe? Or are substances an entire category to themselves?

Is logic "universal"? For example, when we say that X is logically impossible, we mean to say that in no possible world is X actually possible. But doesn't this mean that we have to prove that in all possible worlds logic actually applies? In other words, don't we have to demonstrate that no world can exist in which the laws of logic don't apply or in which some other logic applies? If logic is not "universal" in this sense, that it applies in all possible words, and we've not shown that it absolutely does apply in all worlds, how can we justify saying that what is logically impossible means the not possible in any possible world, including our actual world?

Is it possible for there to be a world that logic does not apply? That is, can't a "married bachelor" actually exist in some world that there is no logic or that there is a different logic that applies? And if so, then isn't it the case that we merely assume the first principles of logic (noncontradiction, identity, excluded middle, etc...) because we observe them in our actual world, which is 1 of many possible worlds? And if it is mere assumption, then can't we be wrong about them when we say they can/should apply to other possible worlds?

If under possible world semantics one was to assert 'it is possible that there be an orange elephant'. Is one to be understood as saying that there is an object which does not exist in this world but does in another that is an orange elephant. Or is one to be understood as saying that an object in this world (presumably an elephant) is orange in another?