Kant states that "hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated with hostility when he arrives on someone else's territory"(PP).However, at the beginning of the part on the Three Definitive Principles of a Perpetual Peace, Kant argues that any one who is not under a civil constitution can be treated as a stranger, because his/her unlawful status is a "permanent threat" to me (PP). These two claims seem to contradict each other.

According to me there are two possibilities:

1) The right of a stranger only applies to strangers who are under a civil constitution, i.e. citizens of a state. This, however, already qualifies the stranger, and the stranger ceases to be a total stranger. In the treatment of the third article, Kant however does q ... (read more)

However, the science of the matter actually supports a much stronger hypothesis than Kitcher's "morality evolved to overcome altruism failures".That stronger hypothesis may have different meta-ethical implications.

Relevant criteria for scientific truth regarding morality as an evolutionary adaptation Include explanatory power for descriptive facts and puzzles, no contradiction with known facts, simplicity, and integration with the rest of science. By these criteria, a superior hypothesis can be stated as "morality overcomes a universal cooperation-exploitation dilemma by motivating or advocating altruistic cooperation strategies". That is, morality is composed of assemblies of biolog ... (read more)

The issue is simply this: how do we explain the capacity of certain works of art to ‘live on’ (to use the colloquial phrase) centuries or millennia after their creation while large numbers fall into oblivion?

The question is not about this or that work. It’s about a general capacity of (great) art – a capacity to transcend time – to remain vital and alive despite the passage of long periods of time. And it is also about the way works endure – but that’s a question for later on.

This is a vitally important issue for the philosophy of art (aesthetics). Why? Put simply: everything else in human life – from fads, to social customs, to religious beliefs etc – falls prey to the passing of time and ends up in what Malraux aptly calls “the charnel house of dead values”. Only ... (read more)

Suppose that I am sentenced to death in three years' time and presently held in solitary confinement. One day the jailor makes me an offer. On the day of the execution, he will see that my sentence is commuted to exile to Siberia. For the rest of my life, I will work twelve hours a day on hard benches in a chilly sweatshop. I have no relatives or dependents, and nobody else's well-being will be significantly affected by whether I live or die.

It seems to me that, given this choice, I might marginally prefer the sweatshop to death, but only marginally. At first it seems there are no strings attached to the offer, but now the jailor demands to torture me for fifteen minutes each day for the next three years (he is a sadist and gets his kicks from it). Since my preference for the sweatshop over death is only marginal, I refuse the deal. The jailor, disappointed by my refusal, decides to sweeten the deal. He offers to ensure that the sweatshop has heating, padded chairs and a radio. I do no ... (read more)

I believe that that equality can be demonstrated, at least in the specific case of the equality of person's interests.

We begin with a technical restriction.  We can distinguish "other-regarding" interests as interests in someone's interests; e.g., a lover can be interested in a partner's well-being, a sympathetic nurse might be interested in reducing a patient's suffering, a sadist could be interested in causing or increasing somebody's pain, etc.  The equality to be demonstrated only concerns non-other-regarding interests, or what can be called "self-restricted" interests.  This is bec ... (read more)