An introduction to our special section by this issue’s editor, Charles Echelbarger. Almost from the earliest days of philosophy, philosophers have concerned themselves with questions directly or indirectly related to the concept of ‘mind’. Until very recent times, they didn’t think of gathering those concerns under a single heading such as metaphysics or epistemology or ethics. …
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 …
Rui Vieira thinks of a number. What exactly are the objects of mathematics, and how do they relate to our knowledge of them? Since Plato (427 BC–347 BC) such questions have been central to the philosophy of mathematics. Plato realized that mathematics seems to involve perfect circles, triangles, and so on. But as Plato also noticed, there are …
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, …
Justin Holme represents his self to you. Is the world made of one type of stuff, or at least two? We’re familiar with the physical world, but consciousness appears to be a different type of stuff altogether. The two main theories about the relationship of the physical world to consciousness are materialism (a type of monism, where …
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, …
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 tart. What will you do? You may hesitate for a while, but then you will make your choice. You have to make …
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’ …
Andrew Kemle says that evolutionary forces give us the answer. One of the major discoveries in the social sciences over the past few decades has been that people have innate other-regarding preferences. This means that we generally take other people’s interests and well-being into account when making decisions, and that although socialization can affect the …
Can You Be Both A Moral Rationalist & A Moral Sentimentalist? Read More »
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 …