Since we all have a free will and since every sane human being prefers happiness over misery; how come we don´t choose to be good/kind/loving to each other all the time? J.T. Kumberg

It might be that every sane human being prefers their own happiness over their own misery; alas it doesn't follow from this that every sane human being always prefers other people's happiness over those people's misery. This comes to the crunch if promoting other people's happiness interferes with promoting my own happiness.

I was perusing the site, and I came up with this weird thought: Can a person think about the thought that they are thinking? Because at first I thought no... but then I thought by posing this question I was thinking about what I was thinking... but I started to doubt my thoughts... so I thought it might be a good idea to get a second opinion.

Yes, because we can think about our own mental states. Thus I may be thinking about espresso machines, and then wonder why I am doing that. The first thought is about those machines; the second thought is about the first thought. Desires may also stack up in this way. Thus I may desire a new espresso machine, but also wish that I didn't have that desire (say because its immature: I already have a perfectly good espresso machine).

I was thinking about properties of objects. We say "sugar is sweet," but is it sweet in the absence of a mind to perceive that it is sweet? Could some other perception find that it is, say, sour instead? Or is it intrinsically sweet on its own, independent of an intellect to observe that it is sweet?

There are three main options here that philosophers have developed for properties like sweetness: sweetness is a sensation, it is a disposition in some things to produce a sensation, or it is an intrinsic property of sweet things (presumably to do with their molecular structure). On the first view, the same thing may be sweet to one person and sour to another (because it isn't really the thing that is sweet or sour, only the varying sensations). On the third view, what is sweet is sweet is sweet for everyone (because it isn't determined by people's reactions). One difference between the first and the second view is that only on the second view are things sweet when they are not being tasted.

Why is the love I feel for my two daughters far stronger than any love I've felt for anybody else?

I suppose the biologically hard-headed answer is that creatures who have an inclination to care more about their own offspring than anyone else tend to do better at spreading their own genes. Fortunately, that natural selection explanation does not make the love you feel any less real. It means you didn't choose to love your daughters so much, but whom ever thought you did?

Hello. Why is it so that when it's night and my mom tells me to go to bed, I never want to. I want to stay up and not sleep. But then in the morning when my mom tells me to get out of bed, I never want to. Then I just want to remain in bed. Please, why is this so?

I'm not sure that philosophers are the best people to answer this question, but my own view is that it is more a matter of bio-rhythms than of counter-suggestibility. Even if your Mom did not nag you, you probably would want to stay up late and to sleep late.

How do people who believe science is a social construct explain why you die when you jump off a tall building?

People who believe that science is a social construct do not deny that there is a world independent of ourselves, with real causes and real effects. What they emphasise is something consistent with this, namely that the theories that scientists invent to account for the world are strongly influenced by social context.

I was loading up to go on a trip the other day and asked my Dad why he was taking a lot of extra stuff and he said: "Just in case the unexpected happens." So out of that comes my question: If you expect the unexpected, then doesn't that make the unexpected expected and the expected unexpected?

Even if you expect the unexpected, you may still be surprised. I took my Swiss Army knife along, because I expected the unexpected, but I was still surprised when I had to use it to free a hedgehog that got itself locked in the glove compartment of my car. People who believe that life is full of suprises are often right.

Am I a direct result of all the events that preceded me?

If determinism is true then you are a direct result of events that preceded you, in the sense that everything about you is entailed by the laws of nature plus the state of the universe before you were born. If determinism is not true, as the most popular interpretation of modern physics suggests, then there is no such entailment; but even here it is not as if you are the result of anything else. Either way, the causes that made you, whether deterministic or probabilistic, are all among the events that preceded you.

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