Is There Really Someone Who, Searching For

Our Principles Fix What Our Life Stands For, Our Aims Create The Light Our Life Is Bathed In, And Our Rationality, Both Individual And Coordinate, Defines And Symbolizes The Distance We Have Come From Mere Animality. It Is By These Means That Our Lives Come To More Than What They Instrumentally Yield. And By Meaning More, Our Lives Yield More.

You Can't Satisfy Everybody; Especially If There Are Those Who Will Be Dissatisfied Unless Not Everybody Is Satisfied.

Suppose There Were An Experience Machine That Would Give You Any Experience You Desired. Superduper Neuropsychologists Could Stimulate Your Brain So That You Would Think And Feel You Were Writing A Great Novel, Or Making A Friend, Or Reading An Interesting Book. All The Time You Would Be Floating In A Tank, With Electrodes Attached To Your Brain. Should You Plug Into This Machine For Life, Preprogramming Your Life Experiences?...of Course, While In The Tank You Won't Know That You're There; You'll Think That It's All Actually Happening...would You Plug In?

Individuals Have Rights And There Are Things No Person Or Group May Do To Them (without Violating Their Rights). So Strong And Far-reaching Are These Rights That They Raise The Question Of What, If Anything, The State And Its Officials May Do. How Much Room Do Individual Rights Leave For The State?

Philosophical Argument, Trying To Get Someone To Believe Something Whether He Wants To Believe It Or Not, Is Not, I Have Held, A Nice Way To Behave Towards Someone; Also It Does Not Fit The Original Motivation For Studying Or Entering Philosophy. That Motivation Is Puzzlement, Curiousity, A Desire To Understand, Not A Desire To Produce Uniformity Of Belief. Most People Do Not Want To Become Thought-police. The Philosophical Goal Of Explanation Rather Than Proof Not Only Is Morally Better, It Is More In Accord With One's Philosophical Motivation.