We are designed to have explanations. When something happens, we say why. And when we do have an explanation, we say why we have that one. This can go on ad infinitum. Philosophers call this the problem of infinite regress, the idea that all explanation seems to need...
Suppose there is a hungry donkey with two stacks of hay in front of it. Both stacks have the same height, same distance, and same nutritional value. The donkey, being a rational animal, will attempt to make the best choice. But since the two choices are equal, the...
Let's consider the case: you are on the side of a railroad switch. A trolley is coming down the tracks and will kill five tied-up individuals who cannot move and whom you can save by doing nothing. But there is a switch, it is a switch that can divert the trolley onto...
The "grandfather paradox" of time travel is reassuring in its simplicity: go back through time and ensure that your grandfather never met your grandmother, and you would never have been born. But if you were not born, who is going to go back in time and ensure that...
Robert Nozick's "experience machine" offers a disarmingly straightforward challenge. Imagine a machine that allows you to plug in and experience any life you desire, love, success, adventure, or peace of mind. You would not know it was simulated from the inside; the...
We assume it for granted. You walk from one corner of the room into another, cars pass along the street, the Earth turns upon its axis. In ancient Greece there existed the philosopher Zeno of Elea who created a sequence of puzzles (known as Zeno's paradoxes) that call...
Take the ancient wooden ship sailing on the seas. The planks of it do eventually rot and so the sailors replace them one by one. Eventually, they replace every piece of wood. Is the ship the same ship then? And if another person gathered the old planks taken off this...
Forgiveness is that kind of word that comes so effortlessly off the lips but is agonizingly difficult to perform. We forgive because it will improve us, because it will liberate us from wrath, because we should. But what forgiveness can occur if the pain of...
Loneliness is generally misunderstood. We feel solitude as loneliness, as hollowness, as something to be cured by distraction. But solitude is not a lack. It is presence, the presence of oneself alone, uncluttered, unobstructed, without the mirrors society holds out...