Of all the big questions philosophers attempt to answer, which are most controversial or difficult?

Question

Of all the big questions philosophers attempt to answer, which are most controversial or difficult?

Answer 1

I think it comes down to the 180 degrees of difference between Plato and Aristotle, the two men most responsible for Western culture when added to the religion of Christ, because they were both inextricably joined to Christianity at the hip, by Augustine and by Aquinas.

This brings us to the more recent dichotomy of Empiricism vs. Rationalism, each of which is only approximately half right. Take the correct half of one and add it to the correct half of the other and you'd have an objective philosophy.

These difference can be broken down between two axiomatic principles of epistemology: the Primacy of Consciousness, and the Primacy of Existence. The P of C is a fallacy, which unfortunately many people believe, and it is abstracted from the Primacy of Perception, which is also a fallacy.

Answer 2

I think this question is subjective in that different people will have varying opinions.

That being said I find the question of flowing time to be particularly interesting because there is no evidence that time is fluid but the perception of one moment flowing to the next is very ingrained into human consciousness.

Answer 3

Blue light is precisely correct . . . . which is why most of the questions here are completely useless. Yours is a good one though because, hopefully you might inquire further about the nature of philosophy . .  we can always use someone with an open mind here.

thanks,

Answer 4

Religion, Ethics and Politics always gets the heated and passionate debate because it's so important to people.

Issues of Knowledge, Truth, Logic, Metaphysics etc... are very controversial and difficult for philosophers to wrestle with but are, essentially, hung up at the door when they clock off.

Answer 5

Jimbeau is right.

How did mind arise out of matter, or out of pre-mental organisms, and how does the interaction of mind and not-mind work moment-to-moment. That's the real puzzler.

Or perhaps the premises of such a question are faulty. Still, replacing them with alternative less puzzling premises always raises its own difficulties.  

Answer 6

Every subject stays in the area of the Philosophy while it is controversial and without answer. In the moment in that she is answered, she stops being a philosophical subject. Example: during centuries the philosophers discussed because the objects drop in direction to the soil. When Newton discovered the gravity, and it expressed this in a mathematical formula, that stopped being a philosophical subject and it became a subject of the Physics.

Answer 7

They don't.  The nature of philosophy is in the question, not the answer.

Answer 8

i will say all questions!

Answer 9

What is our purpose on this Earth?

Answer 10

The question that philosopher's refer to as the 'difficult question' is: How has consciousness developed from the physical laws of physics, chemistry, and biology?