A great many philosophers today think that, yes, philosophy or a philosophical approach to life need not involve any religious beliefs or practices and yet it can be deeply satisfying in what may be called a spiritual manner. Among the panelists on this site, Louse Antony is in that position or that is what seems to emerge in the book Professor Antony edited: Philosophers Without God. Owen Flanagen and the late Robert Solomon have published books arguing for an explicitly spiritual approach to life on atheistic or non-theistic grounds (there is also the UK philosopher Grayling who has published in this area). For these thinkers "spirituality" does not suggest the transcendent, but it has more to do with living life with reverence, respect, love / compassion, and more. You might check out Solomon's book Spirituality for the Skeptic or Flanagen's The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World. There is also Wesley Wildman's Science and Religious Anthropology: A Spiritually evocative naturalist...

Great question! The answer will depende on the type of philosophical claim. So, in philosophy of science, presumably a philosopher will employ the history of science, appeal to current scientific practices and discoveries, and consider a host of issues and arguments that may be relevant --these may include appeals to moral experience and ethical theories, appeals to ordinary experience or phenomenology and so on. Concerning the latter, if a philosopher is considering a claim about human nature that denies the existence of consciousness (as some have), then the philosopher may seek to reply by appealing to what it appears that we all know in our first-person experience. Galen Strawson has done (in my mind) an excellent job in exposing the difficulties of denying consciousness (as has John Searle, Thomas Nagel, and others). The point I am trying to make with regard to philosophy of science will also be true to philosophy of art (evidence for claims may involve appeals to the history of art, etc) and...

Great questions! As for your main point or the point behind the questions, it does seem a great pity to think that adulthood must be defined in terms of a seriousness which frowns on fun, though I have some hesitancy about the way you are setting up childishness versus adulthood. I am not sure you are 100% right "that most of the things we call childish are things we do for fun." You may be spot on, but I suspect that we also call persons or actions childish when we believe they are immature, reckless, selfish, not thought through or naive. And in my experience children are sometimes just as serious, if not more so, than many adults I know. Also, the term "adult" has a pretty stable use in English for describing (perhaps inappropriate?) fun --as in "adult" films, bookstores, products. Stepping back from the above observations, however, it is interesting to note that in the old days (e.g. industrial revolution) childhood was often not associated with fun and education, but labor, viz. child labor. ...

What a wonderful question! You are right about there being a long tradition of sage advise on moderating desire. There is an excellent review of this tradition in the west along with some very insightful observations in the book Emotion and Peace of Mind by Richard Sorabji (Oxford University Press, 2002). He considers philosophical projects of moderating desires and the more radical projects of seeking the complete eradication of passion/desire. Not all philosophers have cautioned us about acting on passion; Pascal, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and others seem rather immoderate in their advice and lives. But in any case, I suggest that the case for moderation goes hand in glove with the case for the virtue of integrity and freedom. Having sufficient self-mastery and self-understanding to know when one's anger is way out of proportion to the event at hand seems essential for personal integrity. Similarly, one may lose one's ability to think freely and deliberately about one's action if one is consumed...

Fascinating line of reasoning! One thing to question is premise two. Granted if you are angry at someone, it follows that you are judging that the person has done something wrong (wether to you or to someone or something you identify with or value). But it does not follow that you would like to see the person punished or seek to "get back at this person." Imagine you love the person you are angry with and all you really want is an apology or a request for your forgiveness or perhaps you desire a material compensation (the person smashed your car and you want compensation plus replacement of the car). Also, the link between 2 and 4 may need some re-considering. We typically distinguish between revenge and retributive justice. The latter is measured and impersonal: so, in retributive justice when someone wrongfully causes a given harm, there is a proportional penalty (so, assault may call for one year of incarceration and lots of communiity time afterward). But revenge is often personal and without...

Great question! In some ethical frameworks (such as utilitarianism) there are principles of maximazation principles according to which we are morally obligated to do the most good possible (and the least evil or bad). If you adopt such a framework and have reason to believe that the dental / facial surgery non-profit would result in less than optimal results, then you should not start the alternative non-profit. Many philosophers resist an unqualified maximization principle, however, as it would seem to require virtually constant heroism and self-sacrifice that seems (intuitively anyway) to be "above and beyond the call of duty." Without directly trying to answer your question, I suggest you might consider more categories than moral - immoral. I believe few of us (philosophers or non-philosophers) would ever deem founding the dental non-profit would be immoral. One would be addressing a foundational need and correcting a serious impairment. I also think it is not clear that if pesons support the...

Great question! As it happens, just this fall a new book has come out: Cannabis and Philosophy edited by Dale Jacquette with multiple articles, mostly in favor of the use of cannabis in moderation. Michel LeGall and I (under the title "The Great Escape") actually defend the permissibility of moderate cannabis use in response to some moral and religious (mostly Christian and Islamic) objections. In the world of philosophy, there has been little explicit attention given to mind-altering substances except with respect to alcohol and then mostly wine. Most philosophers who do discuss drinking wine defend it or seem to assume it is acceptable in moderation. Pascal comments somewhere that if you do not drink wine you will not find the truth, but if you drink too much you will wind up in the same state (without truth). Cicero and Erasmus both wrote against excessive drinking. Although perhaps more of a novelist and free thinker than philosopher, Aldous Huxley does offer a case for psychotropic drugs in...

Pray for them. Just kidding, though perhaps a prayer would not be uncalled for! I wonder if your friend is an extreme skeptic when it comes to empirical experience. Perhaps he is akin to Peter Unger in his book Ignorance, in which he seeks to undermine our confidence in our claims to know about ourselves and the world. Plato seemed to adopt a position not completely unlike your friend: he appers to have held that we may be more certain of the things of reason (mathematics, knowledge of the forms) than we can about the reliability of our senses. It is easy to have some sympathy with such an outlook: I am, for example, more convinced that 2+2=4 than I am convinced that I am not merely dreaming about the website AskPhilosophers. But your friend is in an usual position. Most of the philosophers who today defend the evidential role of religious (or spiritual) experience such as Richard Swinburne, William Alston, Jerome Gellman, Caroline Franks, K.M. Kwam, etc, argue for the reliability of such...

The question has been bugging a lot of people! I suggest that the case for some nonhuman animals (great apes, chimps, dolphins....) being conscious is pretty strong. Sometimes the evidence includes appeal to language or communication, memory, recognition, but also a wide set of behavior (apparent pain avoidance behavior), anatomy (brain and nervous system resembling ours), and evolution. You ask about consciousness and its relationship to language, memory, and the ability to understand that a subject has mental states. Off hand, doesn't it seem that rather than consciousness presupposing language, language-usage presupposes consciousness? After all, without consciousness (and without memory) it seems that language acquisition and development is going to be difficult. As for whether consciousness would have to involve or presuppose the ability to understand mental states, the terrain is not obvious. Some philosophers have argued that one can have different levels of awareness. On this view, my dog...

We live in a world that contains much tragedy and it is difficult to determine the scope of an individual's responsibility for these events, especially in the case of preventable deaths (death due to starvation when there is surplus agriculture). I suggest that the cause and cure for such tragic loss involves both indivudual and collective action. Often war, greed and corruption are at the roots of poverty, which can be accentuated due to drought, flooding, and other natural dissasters, especially when relief is in short supply. According to some philosophers, not to go to the aid of someone whom you could save (from starvation, for example) would be the moral equivalent of killing them. For a very throrough case that current world poverty calls for radical action (lest we turn out to be moral monsters) you might look at Peter Unger's Living High, And Letting Die. But probably most philosophers think there is a moral difference between an act (killing) and an omission (letting die) in many...