March 2023

James Sirois gives us a strong warning about overusing the net. The internet has become so all-pervading that even the word seems a little old-fashioned now. No-one really uses it much anymore. We ask each other for wifi, or talk of going online, or complain about a lack of data, but rarely do we talk […]

Brett Wilson judges the case for laws for robots. Some time in the near future your cat Tybalt, while sunning himself on the lawn, suffers a hair-raising experience which scars him for life. The first you know about it are the cat calls that alert you to a standoff between feline and machine, just before

Seán Moran asks amiable Aquinas about amity. It’s not Friar Tuck I’m talking about. The jovial gourmand of the Robin Hood stories was apparently a good friend of the Merry Men and Maid Marian in Sherwood Forest. But the religious order of Friars, the Dominicans, was founded in 1216, so it is hard to see

Tim Delaney and Anastasia Malakhova categorize and analyze the different kinds of modern-day friendships. What is friendship? It links people who share dispositions, a sense of intimacy or feelings of affection, and have an attachment or association with one another. As such, friends are bonded by expressions of harmony, accord, understanding, and rapport. There are

Steve Taylor says of determinism: “I refute it thus!” One of the main trends of recent academic culture has been to take freedom and autonomy away from human beings. I don’t mean that professors armed with guns have been locking up their intellectual opponents; I mean that from sociology to philosophy, from psychology to neuroscience,

Gerald Jones discusses how we judge the past, how we will one day be judged, and what we can do about it. We do not know how the future will judge us – but judge us it will. Just as we look back at the past and find it wanting, so our descendants will find

Tim Madigan considers the core philosophical themes of the long-lived novel. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has remained in print ever since it was published two hundred years ago this year, and has been the basis for innumerable adaptations. While most novels from so long ago have been forgotten, Shelley’s lives on. Why has it remained so

Ray Boisvert describes the disdain which many philosophers down the ages have had for food, and the dire consequences this has had for their philosophy. Richard Watson was a trailblazer of sorts. In 1985, the Washington University professor published a book which combined dieting tips with ruminations on the big questions of life. The combination

Some feminists say women should forget old-fashioned ethical rules and focus on developing positive aspects of their characters. Not so, says Sarah Conly. Feminism is naturally ethical and political in nature, in that feminists want change, want improvement, and want, specifically, the liberation of the individual from ways of thinking which confine and pervert human

Feminist theory has recently faced accusations of trendiness, but Marianne Janack and Michelle LaRocque leap to its defence. As with any political movement, feminism has had a fraught relationship with theory. On the one hand, feminists have recognized the value of a sound theoretical basis for the effectiveness of political action; on the other, they