Thought these 21 questions had substance.

  • What aspect of a person defines their personal identity?
  • You wake up one day and realise that the previous year has been only a dream, to what extent are you still yourself?
  • If you fell in love with someone, and they you, but you then realised this person was actually an android, what would your reaction be?
  • You've fallen in love with someone despite some obvious flaws and made a life together, then one day, for no reason, all their flaws disappear completely; are you still in love with the same person?
  • Fatalism is the theory of fate – that all our actions are predetermined, either by causality, by God or by something like fate. It is incompatible with freewill. If fatalism is true, there is nothing we can do to change the future and we are not culpable for our actions. If freewill is true, every outcome to every situation, favourable or unfavourable, is the result of our own choices and the choices of other people. Which theory are you more comfortable with?
  • What is more real, the colour red, or you experience of seeing the colour red?
  • Humans are considered rational animals, however human behaviour cannot be predicted by reason and is considered irrational. In order for the universe to be rational, human behaviour must be excluded. Human existence is not required for the existence of reason, but without human minds to reason, reason does not exist. Is reason rational?
  • In what situation would you resort to cannibalism? What about if it was a family member's dead body?
  • A member of your family has murdered someone and you must choose between executing an innocent black person and your family member; if no one would ever be the wiser, who dies?
  • You are the commander of a Western nation's army and your country is at war with a third-world country. Technology has become available that would allow you to send robots into battle instead of human soldiers, but the robots could not capture enemy combatants, only kill; do you use robots or human soldiers?
  • You come across a town that has been completely isolated from the outside world, and the inhabitants believe in a religion that allows the rape of females no matter what age, something they practise regularly. What do you do?
  • You are transported back in time to find a baby drowning in a bathtub, but you are aware that this is the infant Adolf Hitler. Knowing that if you allow his death no one will ever know your reasons, what do you do?
  • How many lives would you sacrifice to preserve the Louvre if it were to be destroyed? (yes, including the art)
  • How many lives would you sacrifice to preserve the Louvre, the Hermitage Museum, the New York Museum of Modern Art, the London National Gallery and TATE Modern?
  • How many lives would you sacrifice to preserve the above art museums and all the work of Beethoven, Bach and Mozart?
  • A man is dying of cancer, would you capture his last moments on video? What if he requested it? What if he could not indicate his desire?
  • Your own father is dying of cancer, would you capture his last moments on video?
  • A snuff film (a film showing the rape and murder of someone) is discovered but it cannot be proven whether it is real or fake. You are tasked with deciding whether this film can be seen by the general public; do you allow this? Why or why not?
  • You travel back in time and manage to prevent your future time travel journey, what is the result of this?
  • If the only criteria for God's existence is that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, and energy is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, does God exist?
  • There's a bomb on a bus, if the bus' speed drops below 50mph the bomb explodes, what do you do? What do you do!?
  • from Paul Kellys? page
sep 3 2007 ∞
jul 7 2008 +