Philosophical Questions
Opening Questions
- Is there anything you would willingly die for? What?
- If you had only a few minutes to live, what would you do with
them? What if you had only a few days? Twenty years?
- A famous philosopher once said that human life is no more
significant than the life of a cow or an insect. We eat, sleep, stay
alive for a while, and reproduce so that others like us can eat, sleep,
stay alive for a while, and reproduce, but without any ultimate
purpose at all. How would you answer him? What purpose does
human life have, if any, that is not to be found in the life of a cow
or an insect? What is the purpose of your life?
- Do you believe in God? If so, for what reason(s)? What is God
like? (That is, what is it that you believe in?) How would you
prove to someone who does not believe in God that God does
indeed exist and that your belief is true? (What would change
your mind about this?)
If you do not believe in God, why not? Describe the Being in
whom you do not believe. (Are there other conceptions of God
that you would be willing to accept? What would change your
mind about this?)
- Which is most “real”—the chair you are sitting on, the molecules
that make up the chair, or the sensations and images you have of
the chair as you are sitting on it?
- Suppose you were an animal in a psychologist’s laboratory but
that you had all the mental capacities for thought and feeling,
the same “mind,” that you have now. You overhear the scientist
talking to an assistant, saying, “Don’t worry about that; it’s just
a dumb animal, without feelings or thoughts, just behaving
according to its instincts.” What could you do to prove that you
do indeed have thoughts and feelings, a “mind”?
Now suppose a psychological theorist (for example, the late
- F. Skinner of Harvard University) were to write that, in general,
there are no such things as “minds,” that people do nothing
more than “behave” (that is, move their bodies and make sounds
according to certain stimulations from the environment). How
would you argue that you do indeed have a mind, that you are
not just an automaton or a robot, but a thinking, feeling being?
- Suppose that you live in a society in which everyone believes that
the earth stands still, with the sun, the moon, and the stars revolving
around it in predictable, if sometimes complex, orbits. You object,
“You’re all wrong: The earth revolves around the sun.” No one
