Examining and discussing the questions below, with help, is one generally interesting and efficient way of being introduced to philosophical concepts and methods. The philosophical questions in the first section below tend to be of three sorts, some of them intentionally including more than one element, with some of those additional elements being intentionally hidden from you, since in everyday life they normally appear without being obvious:

1) clarifying the meaning of ideas and trying to articulate them as clearly as possible in language,
          (This aspect of the endeavor should be relatively objective and lend itself to little disagreement once all is explained.)

2) understanding the nature of evidence and logical implications, and
           (This too should be relatively objective and lend itself to little disagreement once all is explained.)

3) examining specific ideas that have general, abstract, philosophical implications.
            (This part of the endeavor may or may not lead to agreement in trying to do this as a webpage. It tends to lead to more agreement than most people would suspect when it is done in a face-to-face group, but I am not sure how it will work out in terms of agreement doing it in written form or by correspondence. But my aim is not so much to be convincing about my answers to these questions as it is to try to make sure you understand the relevant aspects of the issues and can take them into account in some reasonable way.)

       The questions involving logic are meant to demonstrate what it means to deduce something and to show that what seem to be obviously true implications are not always either obvious or true.

       The second set of questions, in the section labeled "Facts Vs. Opinions", are meant to show that what can plausibly be called matters of fact and what can plausibly be called matters of opinion are not as obvious as they seem. It is my view that the most important thing about any questionable belief is what the evidence and logic is that makes it reasonable to believe or disbelieve, not what kind of a belief it is. Reasonableness and unreasonableness apply as much to matters of opinion as they do to factual, even scientific, beliefs. And I would think it better to hold reasonable beliefs about matters of opinions than unreasonable beliefs about matters of fact. The point here is that "That is just your opinion!" does not reasonably dismiss any belief or point out a flaw in it. The question about any belief, even if it is supposedly a belief about a matter of opinion, is whether it is reasonable or not to hold. To determine that, you have to examine the reasons and their truth and logic.

       For a general explanation of what it means to be "reasonable", see my essay about "Reasoning"

1) Can you describe exactly what it is for someone to have a headache?  In other words, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for it to be true that some person has a headache? It is easy to know what a headache is; not so easy to express it accurately in words or to accurately communicate your idea to someone else.

2) What is a brave act? What are the "ingredients" necessary for any brave act, and which will always make an act brave when they occur together? What is the difference between brave acts and daredevil or dangerous and foolhardy acts? In other words, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for an act to be a brave one?

3) For baseball fans: What can you deduce from knowing that in a baseball game in the major leagues between the Atlanta Braves and the Baltimore Orioles that the Braves turned a triple play against the Orioles in the bottom half of the ninth inning? How do you know?

4) If you know that 95% of meningitis occurs only when you have a certain kind of flu, and a vaccine is developed that totally prevents that kind of flu, is it a good idea to get that vaccination? Why or why not?

5) If a couple has three children and they are all boys, what are the odds that if they have another child it will be a girl?

6) What is more important in a song that has both words and music, the words or the music? Why?

7) In the middle of a large field there is an old oak tree with a thick trunk. A squirrel is on the trunk of the tree, about five feet from the ground. A man is on the other side of the tree about 10 feet from it. He knows the squirrel is there and he circles around the tree in order to see the squirrel. But the squirrel does not want to be seen, so it circles the trunk too (in the same direction), keeping the trunk between himself and the man. Both are going around the tree, but is the man going around the squirrel or not? Why or why not?

8) Can you tell who wrote or is playing a piece of music (or who wrote a work of literature) even if you never heard (or read) the piece before? Do writers and performers have particular characteristics or styles? If a writer or performer does have particular characteristics that are in most of his/her work, does that make her/him better or worse than someone who does not have a particular style? Or does it make no difference? Why?

9) What makes a film or tv program or series a good one? Why? Are there any similarities between good movies and good literature in general? Dissimilarities?

10) When, if ever, is it right to break a promise or a date or appointment? Why?

11) What makes a work of art (painting, music, film, sculpture, literature, or whatever) a good one? Are there conditions such that any work of art (of that kind) that meets them will be a good one, and any work of art that does not meet them is not a good one? Why or why not? If you think there are such conditions, what do you think they are? Why? Are the conditions different for each of the different kinds of art forms, or are there some criteria common to all good works of art, no matter what kind of art they are?

12) Do good people always do right acts? What is the relationship, if any, between good people and right acts? What is a good person? What is a right act?

13) Is it more important to be a good person (and/or do the right thing) or to have good things happen to you? Why? That is, are good deeds more important than good luck? Why or why not?

14) If the mind is the place that all your sensations are perceived, how can you tell they don't simply start there? In terms of our sensations and perceptions what is the difference between reality and dreams or illusions? Or is there no difference? Why or why not?

15) Would it be theoretically possible to make a robot or computer that could think? Why or why not? How could we tell whether it was thinking or not? For that matter, how can we tell whether other people are thinking or not? Have you ever been accused of being careless or mentally lazy when actually you had been thinking very hard? What is thinking?

16) If your spouse wants to go out for the evening with you, say to a particular movie, but you do not want to go, what should you do? Why? How can the two of you decide what is fair or right in way that is itself fair or right?

17) This is one of the paradoxes of Zeno, a Greek philosopher of mathematics. A paradox is a chain of reasoning that goes from obviously true statements in an obviously logical way to an equally obviously false statement. This is supposed to be impossible, so the trick is to try to find out with any paradox what is wrong with it --does it have any false premises, bad logic, or a false conclusion: A turtle and a rabbit are about to run a race, and the rabbit wants to be fair so he gives the turtle a good head start. The race begins and pretty soon the rabbit gets up to the place where the turtle has started from. But, of course, the turtle has moved ahead a bit to a new place, further down the course. So pretty soon the rabbit gets to that place, but again, by then the turtle has moved ahead to the next new place. When the rabbit gets there, the turtle will again have moved ahead. Therefore the rabbit can never beat the turtle because the rabbit can in fact never even catch up with the turtle, since every time he gets to where the turtle was just an instant ago, the turtle will have already left that place. Right?

18) Another of Zeno's paradoxes: You can never leave any room you are in, because before you can get to the door, you first have to go halfway to the door. But before you get halfway to the door you must first get halfway to that place (that is, one fourth of the way to the door). But there are an infinite number of such halfway places and you do not have time to go to an infinite number of places, so you can never get out of any room -- or move anywhere. Right?

19) If a person is irresponsible and does something that hurts someone else, should he be punished? If you are not responsible for your behavior, how can you be legitimately blamed and therefore justifiably punished for what you do?

20) Is it reasonable to forgive somebody who is not sorry for the wrong thing that he did? Why or why not? Is it necessary to forgive him if he is sorry? Why or why not?

21) If a college has a rule that no more than 25 students should be in a classroom, and a working adult student needs to take a particular class at a particular time in order to finish her/his degree, but that classroom already has 25 students enrolled in it, should he/she be allowed to take it too? Why or why not?

22) Scientists and others often confirm their theories or beliefs by deducing consequences of them, and then by experiment finding out that those consequences actually happen. For example, Einstein's theory of relativity implied that light from a star would be bent a certain amount by the sun's gravity. Experimentation showed that to actually happen, so it gave great credibility to the theory of relativity. However, that kind of reasoning is a known fallacious kind of reasoning that is never accurate. For example, a theory that someone was murdered implies that he must be dead. But finding out he really is dead, does not give any credibility at all to the statement he must have been murdered. Most dead people were in fact not murdered.

Is bad logic the foundation of scientific confirmation?

23) If you want your children to grow up to be happy, should you not raise them in ways that (1) make them insensitive to other people's sorrows and problems so that they do not feel bad just because someone else is suffering, and so that they don't have to be concerned with other people any more than is simply politic, and (2) make sure they have only limited goals and aspirations because those will be much easier to be successful at and therefore bring happiness? Wouldn't you be giving your child the ideal happy life if you helped him learn to enjoy merely drinking beer and watching tv every night, and if you helped him become skillful enough to be a janitor so that he could fairly easily earn enough money to buy a tv, a couch, and beer? If you can help your children be happy with such a life, why not go for it? It would be easier for you as parents this way too.

24) There are people on the streets without shelter; the government owns many vacant houses no one wants to buy. Should the government let these people live in these houses? Why or why not? There is a book in the library that I think is a neat book. The publisher owns the copyright but will not print any more copies of the book to sell. Do I have the moral right to photocopy the book then? Why or why not?

25) Do I have the moral right to secretly hook up to the cable tv company, even though it is illegal? I can run my own wire right to their open cable connectors, and it is not stealing since I won't be disconnecting anyone else or weakening anyone's signal; I am not taking something away from someone else (which is what happens when one steals a physical object). I am not harming the cable company since I am not going to buy their service anyway. If I cannot watch it for free, I simply won't watch it. I watched the World Series for free last year, since I did not buy any of the products the advertisers who paid for the tv production were promoting. And when I look at my neighbors' pretty yards, I get pleasure without having to pay for it, and I am not stealing from my neighbors even though they did a lot of work making their yards be beautiful.  Since connecting to a cable box is not taking away something from someone else, but just reproducing it for myself, do the cable companies and the government have the moral right to make it illegal for people to hook up to the box on their own? Why or why not?

26) Do you believe in the Divine Right of Kings? People 300 years ago did. Were they somehow more ignorant than you? As late as 1955, black people were not allowed to ride in the front of a bus in the South. Does that seem silly to you? How could it have possibly seemed right, or even important, to white people in the first half of the twentieth century? Were they somehow more ignorant than you? Do you think you have any beliefs that people 50 or 100 years from now will think you must have been really stupid to believe? Or are all the silly beliefs finally weeded out?

27) The modern definition of death is that a person must have a flat EEG for a certain amount of time. Yet George Washington in the past, and lots of people today who are badly mangled in automobile accidents, did not have EEG's hooked up to them at all. Is Washington, or are those people, really dead? And if it was obvious when George Washington died that he was dead, why is when people are dead not so obvious today? Why are medical/legal definitions of death so problematic? Is death different today from what it was 200 years ago?

28) Suppose that your spouse or your baby, like in an old movie, is tied to a railroad track with a train approaching that is carrying 100 people. You are at the switch, but if you switch the train away from your spouse or baby, it will run over a broken bridge off a high cliff with jagged rocks and a raging current hundreds of feet below. What should you do? Why?

1) If the current 100 meter sprint world champion is healthy and ran a fair 100 meter race tomorrow against Rick Garlikov, the fifty-year-old, slightly overweight, out-of-condition author of this web page, Garlikov would win by at least 3 seconds.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

2) The Iraqi soldiers who reportedly impaled a pregnant Kuwait woman against the wall of a maternity hospital by driving a bayonet through her abdomen and who then killed all the other babies in the nursery, by dumping them out of their incubators and letting them die on the floor, did the right thing.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

3) If you drop a raw egg from the grocery store out of a second or third story window onto the lawn below, it will break.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

4) If Jeff L. is a typical New Jersey resident (he was a really nice student from New Jersey in the class at Central Alabama Community College in Childersburg, Alabama, but he said he would not stop to help anyone with a flat tire or any kind of car trouble, whereas all the Childersburg, Alabama students said they would), then the ethical principles practiced in New Jersey are very different from the ethical principles practiced in Childersburg.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

5) Who actually won a past college football game is a matter of opinion, not fact.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

6) Every angle inscribed in a semi-circle is a right angle.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

7) People don't figure out what is morally right; they just make up whatever moral principles or moral laws they want to.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

8) God doesn't figure out what is morally right; He just makes up whatever moral principles or moral laws He wants to.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

9) Man's and God's mathematical laws and principles are different.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

10) Man's football rules are different from God's football rules.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

11) If God's and people both have to figure out what is mathematically or morally correct, people cannot figure out any of the same principles or answers God can without looking at God's answer sheet.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

12) In order to figure out a math problem, you need to know whether you are doing it in Greek math, French math, God's math, or American math.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

13) If one twin gets in a rocket ship and takes a 50 year space trip at very near the speed of light, when he returns to earth, he will be much younger than the twin who stayed here on earth.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

14) For something to be a matter of fact, it must be something everybody in the world believes or would believe. Otherwise it is just opinion.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

15) For something to be a matter of fact, it must be about something you can hear, see, touch, taste, or smell. Anything else is just opinion.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

16) Opinions are not either true or false?

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

17) Suppose that the earth was perfectly smooth all the way around, with no hills or valleys or bumps of any sort, and suppose you tie a ribbon around the equator after pulling it tight so that it fits snugly to the surface all the way around. Now imagine splicing in an extra piece of ribbon --exactly one yard (that is, 36 inches) long-- and then smoothing out the entire ribbon all the way around the globe, pulling out all the slack so that the ribbon is now everywhere the same height above the earth's surface, if it comes above the earth's surface at all. True or false: the ribbon will still be so close to the ground all the way around the earth that the extra thirty six inches you have added to its length will be virtually unnoticeable?
 

Are you sure or are you guessing? Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

18) You are trying to qualify for a car race on a 1 mile long oval track. In order to qualify for the race you only have to run two laps around the track at an average rate of 60 mph. On your first lap, however, you encounter some sort of carburetor problem that slows you down so badly you can only average 30 mph for that lap. But by the end of that lap it has cleared up so you start your second lap going as fast as your car can. True or false: you will need to do the second lap at an average of 90 mph in order to qualify for the race?

Are you sure or are you guessing? Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 

19) In the above question, even an Indianapolis 500 champion couldn't run his best Indy car fast enough in the second lap to qualify for this race. Even if he added rocket boosters.

True or false? Are you sure or are you guessing?

Is this a question of fact or one of opinion?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Reset June 21, 2000