Yoav Tenembaum asks when a policy of non-violence is feasible. Non-violence as a policy is based on the moral postulate that the use of force is inherently abhorrent, and further, seeks to link ...

Steve Stewart-Williams on the implications of evolutionary theory for ethics. “Morality is a collective illusion of the genes. We need to believe in morality, and so, thanks to our biology, we do ...

Alan Haworth on Karl Popper, his vision of a pragmatic, liberal society, and his assessment of its philosophical enemies. It is now one hundred years since the birth of Karl Popper, and almost sixty ...

In the twentieth century “the plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is of English origin, erupted once again on its native soil…” (Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, I, 4). We stubborn Anglophones long ...

Charles Fethe on the Wisdom of Repugnance. I am not sure whether two thousand years of philosophical discussion about ethics has contributed much to the moral improvement of civilization, but I ...

Raymond Tallis takes us from A to Zzzzz. The column you’re reading is at least in part the result of an accident – a happy one, I hasten to add. A few weeks ago, I was sitting on a panel with the ...

Van Harvey reflects on Huxley’s and Clifford’s reasons for not believing. In the struggle against obscurantism and the appeal to blind faith that was rampant in Victorian culture, it would be ...

Alan Kirby says postmodernism is dead and buried. In its place comes a new paradigm of authority and knowledge formed under the pressure of new technologies and contemporary social forces. I have in ...

Jainism as a philosophical movement appeared in India before or around the same time as Daoism, Mohism (Mo Tzu) and Mencius in China: about the sixth century BC. Jainism and other Indian philosophical ...

The first example Gettier comes up with has to do with Jones and Smith applying for a job. If Smith had strong evidence that Jones will get the job (for example if the boss said Jones will get the job ...

Why do some physicists now believe that there are many parallel universes very like our own? And if there are, how will this help us build faster computers? Quantum mechanics was developed in the ...

Does free will exist? Michael Hauskeller reasons about reasons. Imagine you go to a restaurant. Looking at the menu, you discover that they serve your two favourite meals – say asparagus and spinach ...