The "Big 5"

What are the top five unanswered philosophical questions?

Here are five that I think represent the "Big 5" from a non-philosopher's point of view..

1. Do we have free-will?

Our religious brothers and sisters would like to argue that we do have it (it certainly feels that way to us), in fact free-will is they only way they can rationalize the problem of evil. But, neuro-scientists are leaning toward the idea that we don't have it, the fMRI brain scans seem to suggest that we decide to do things before we're aware of the decision, i.e. free-will is an illusion created by that fuzzy thing called consciousness. In bets between the laws of physics and the wishes of men, I always tend toward the former.

2. Can we know anything?

If we only ever "know" things through our 5 senses, directly and indirectly, and it's accepted that these can easily be fooled then can we ever really "know" anything? Once again science, particularly quantum-mechanics provides a possible solution to this conundrum, strictly speaking the answer is no, but we can know things to such a high degree of probability that we might as well say we do. Some people are happy with that, some are not.

3. Who am I?

This one is all about the relationship between mind and body, what are "ideas" made of? Is it reasonable to hold a dualistic view, i.e. that the mind is somehow separate from the body or is "self" simply the assemblage of all our squishy bits and pieces. It's certainly true that if you damage the brain (i.e. the body) then the mind is also affected, for me that's enough to suggest they are the same thing but for others the ideal of a "spirit" or "soul" is too hard to let go of because it "feels" like duality is true, then again our sense of intuition is almost always wrong.

4. What is death?

We all die and we all know it (deep down!), but is it possible to cheat death? This age old Human concern (and the avoidance of it) is the basis of many religions and cults but could it really be possible? I think the answer probably lies more within the scientific realm than the theological one. I doubt that we'll understand how to make cells reproduce successfully for ever, it seems as though errors and flaws in the replication systems will always show through in the end (as cancer) but there maybe a more tantalizing possibility in information technology. If you could record the state of every living cell in your body at a point in time (and re-constitute it later) would that be the same as creating a snapshot of you, are we just stateful information at the end of the day?

5. Is there such a thing as "global justice"?

Is morality subjective or objective? Are there things which are good or bad universally no matter  what the situation. It seems difficult to make such sweeping judgments without a suitable yardstick to measure against. Sometimes killing someone might be the best thing to do (i.e. Hitler) even though technically we'd probably all agree that murder is wrong. Sometimes people die prolonged and unnecessarily painful deaths because our society has rules that say doctors cannot help people kill themselves, even though they may wish it. It seems that, for now, ethics remain subjective and dependent on Human beings to develop them.