Let me be clear before making my further comments: I think our killing bin Laden was justified and a good outcome, so I certainly disagree with the suggestion in your last question. Furthermore, I think the Taliban's killing a U.S. soldier is not a good outcome and 9/11 was a tragedy and morally abominable. Having said that, consider how we (Americans) feel when pictures of dead U.S. soldiers are publicized by our enemies (remember Mogadishu) or how we felt when we saw people (e.g., in Pakistan) celebrating after 9/11. So, privately celebrating (and feeling happy about) bin Laden's death may be an appropriate reaction for a variety of reasons (e.g., he deserved punishment for his crimes, it may reduce terrorism, etc.). But there are better and worse ways to celebrate. And doing so in large numbers in public seems inappropriate to me, both because it is likely to foment anger against us (and perhaps inspire terrorism) and because it does not seem the most dignified response. Regardless of who...

There are two ways to read your questions: 1. Would we be better off never feeling negative emotions because they were never called for--i.e., because we never experienced the sorts of events that make grief or anger an appropriate reaction? Or... 2. Would we be better off never feeling negative emotions regardless of what happens to us? I am inclined to answer 'no' to the second question. While some (e.g., Stoics and Buddhists, at least on an oversimplified reading) suggest that we should approach negative events with a level of detachment that make grief, anger, or despair inappropriate, and the wise or enlightened person will reach a point where she can avoid feeling such emotions, I find that approach inappropriate. I think it would be both mistaken and almost inhuman not to feel grief at the death of one's child or not to feel some level of anger at the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 (whether despair is ever appropriate is trickier). So, I do not think we would be...

Yes. Of course, I only think that because I think personal identity depends on continuity of memory and character traits, and I think memory and character traits are constituted by brain states. So, if you could somehow alter my brain enough to wipe out my memories (perhaps replacing them with some artificial set of memories) and change my character traits, you will have killed me. And if you did it knowingly and purposely, you have committed murder (i.e., the intentional killing of a person). But... 1. I'm not sure how our legal system would deal with it. I suspect there's something in our murder statutes that requires a dead body for a murder charge. We'd have to get our laws up to date with our science (and philosophy!). 2. Now, I've opened the door to some slippery slopes (or sorites arguments). How much of my identity does an evil neuroscientist have to mess up before he kills me. If he deletes 50% of my memories and changes half my character traits, has he killed me (killed half of...

I think the principle of charity is useful for at least two reasons. First, if you are objecting to an argument and you present it as strongly as possible, no one (including the author of the target argument) can complain that you have attacked a straw man. If you defeat the strongest version of the argument, presumably you've wiped out any weaker versions with it. Second, if you're able to develop an even stronger version of the argument than the author herself, you have made progress, especially if you are then able to raise objections to that stronger version. I tell my students that their goal in writing philosophy papers is to take the debate up the staircase towards Truth (or towards the best " normative " answer to a difficult question), and the way to do that is start with some position in the debate and the argument for it, present it as strongly as possible (using principle of charity), develop an objection to it, and then develop a response to the objection (principle of charity...

I think you have to be pretty smart. But then again, I may be biased!

This is a great question and one that is becoming increasingly important as neuroscientists and psychologists increasingly suggest that their research is showing that free will is an illusion, a claim I call 'willusionism', and as increasing evidence comes in that shows that these willusionist claims, which the media loves to report and exaggerate, can have (at least short-term) negative effects on people's behavior. I have lots to say on this topic, some of which I say in papers on my website if you want to hear more, but here's a brief take on the issues. Suppose you believe that free will requires the abilities to make choices based on conscious deliberation and reasoning and to control your actions in light of these choices (against internal desires to do otherwise and without external contraints preventing your action). Free will requires that your conscious self can make a difference in what happens. You may also happen to believe that the only way to have such free will is to have a non...

Great question. I use a similar question on my first day of my Intro to Philosophy class to help my students see that not all questions have either objective answers or subjective answers. (I use "What is the greatest rock band of all time?" to make the point.) Objectively answerable questions are ones for which we have agreed-upon methods for finding a single correct answer: Is earth bigger than mars? How many humans are in this room? What is the capital of Nigeria? ... even if we don't yet know the answer: How many planets in the Milky Way have water on them? What will I weigh at noon on Jan 21, 2012? Subjectively answerable questions are ones that depend only on the opinion of the person answering the question: What's your favorite color? What is your favorite rock band? What is your favorite soccer team? But what about: What is the best rock band of all time? What is the best national soccer team in the world right now? (or: Why does Hamlet wait so long to avenge his father...

Good question, one that has been debated by philosophers (perhaps even psychologists?), and one that is answered nicely in Owen Flanagan's Dreaming Souls . You can get a glimpse of the problem on p. 19 found here but he gives the full answer later in the book (e.g., pp. 174-5). Basically, this question offers a nice case where we have to go beyond the evidence offered by our first-person experiences. We can't be sure, upon waking up, whether we had a dream a while ago during sleep or whether our minds are very quickly making up false memories that we experience as dreams. (We also can't be sure from our experiences how long our dreams last--Kant and others have thought they occur 'in a flash'. And we can't be sure whether our reports of our dreams accurately convey what we actually dreamed, assuming the dream experiences occurred during sleep.) If one assumes that our experiences are the only evidence relevant to answering such questions, then one may not be able to answer them. But...

Perhaps Martin Luther King, Jr. did not mean this quotation quite as literally as you seem to be taking it. He seems to mean that we should take a more encompassing vision of what counts as justice and what our obligations are. So, it is unlikely that oppression in Turkmenistan has "a substantial impact" on the rights of people in Canada. But that does not mean that people in Canada shouldn't care about what is happening in Turkmenistan or vice versa, and if they are able to do anything about it, they should. And until justice is achieved everywhere, complete justice is not achieved. King was responding in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail to Southern ministers and others he called 'moderates' because they argued that he should not be in Birmingham trying to change the segregation laws there (in what they thought were 'radical' ways). He argued that his view of justice, inspired by people like Jesus, demands that he do what he can to prevent injustice outside of his city or state (or...

Yes. As far as I know, there is not a live debate in philosophy of biology (or philosophy more generally) regarding the viability of neo-Darwinian theories of evolution. There are lots of interesting debates about the details of the theories (e.g., levels of selection, how to understand the mechanism of natural selection, etc.), but no respectable philosophers I know of defend Intelligent Design as an alternative biological theory to evolution by natural selection. There are debates about how to treat the debate itself (e.g., whether ID should be taught--I like to teach Darwin vs. ID in my intro to philosophy class to teach abduction or argument to the best explanation), and philosophers still teach the teleological argument or Design argument for the existence of God (the new versions of these arguments that invoke the probabilities regarding the laws and constants being 'ripe' for a stable, evolution-friendly universe are interesting to discuss). But philosophers often teach such arguments as...