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David Wong on two ancient Chinese philosophers with very different approaches to moral reasoning. How we develop good judgment about what to do in a particular situation? In the modern Western tradition, the dominant answer to this question comes in the form of a ‘top-down’ model of moral reasoning that derives concrete judgment from general principle […]

Nicola Webber asks you (and you). When we think of a person, we usually think of someone with a brain and a single unified consciousness. This view has come under fire from some philosophers who argue it’s possible for more than one person to inhabit a body – a possibility hinted at through ‘split brain’ patients,

Norman Bacrac lets his brain do all the thinking. “Conscious will is a symptom, not a cause; its roots… are invisible to it… material”George Santayana, The Realm of Matter (1930) “A disgrace… more awful than dualism” (Ted Honderich, Philosopher – A Kind of Life, 2001, pp.247, 278); “a dreaded relic” (Daniel C. Dennett, Brainchildren, 1998,

Toni Vogel Carey wonders whether nature loves simplicity. Webster’s Ninth gives this definition of ‘parsimony’: 1) The quality of being careful with money or resources; the quality or state of being niggardly: stinginess. 2) Economy in the use of means to an end; economy of explanation in conformity with Occam’s razor. It is the ‘explanatory’

Myles King contends that physics helps us understand ethics. Criticising one of history’s most important-ever scientists can sound like a sketch from Monty Python: “OK, but apart from breakthroughs in optics, mathematics, mechanics, explaining gravity, inventing calculus, something about trigonometry, predicting how planets move, and other stuff that we don’t understand, what has Isaac Newton

Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth. Socrates famously got himself into trouble by persistently questioning authority. He irritated his fellow citizens so much that he ended up on trial. Eventually he accepted his sentence of execution by drinking hemlock rather than evading the law by fleeing to an easy

Chad Trainer on Leonardo da Vinci as a philosopher. Francis I, King of France and patron of Leonardo da Vinci, once proclaimed in a conversation with the King of Navarre and the Cardinals of Ferrara and Lorraine that nobody in the world knew more than Leonardo. As much reverence as Francis I had for Leonardo’s

In which Mark Goldblatt starts off by discussing Thomas Aquinas and ends up by killing theology. What does it mean to say “God is just” or “God is merciful” or “God is loving”? Do such statements mean anything, rationally? In this essay, I’m going to argue that they don’t – not if we follow the

What would the medieval philosophers who developed the theory of a Just War have thought about the invasion of Iraq? Ian Dungate imagines their response. In America and Australia, the voters have retrospectively endorsed their leaders’ decision to invade Iraq and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. In Britain, the arguments continue, and some opposition

Imadaldin Al-Jubouri on the medieval Islamic philosopher who pioneered the scientific understanding of history. Some consider the Italian philosopher Vico (1668-1744) to have been the founder of philosophy of history; others give the credit to the French philosopher Montesquieu (1689-1755). In fact, the Arabic philosopher and historian ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) was the first pioneer to