Thank you, Ayli Inrovdop, for such a topical question. A single vote hardly ever breaks a tie, so what’s the point in voting? To begin, you could vote in the hope of having your own interests represented by the candidate or party that advocates for the policies most advantageous to you. After all, even though […]
Thank you, Kurt Elarcosa! A classic question, and timely too! If ever there was a year that prompted a question like this, it’s 2020. Let’s get to it. First, we need to distinguish between evil and suffering, as they are actually mutually exclusive. Physical suffering, pain, can come from growth or healing, as in growing
Why does an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God allow evil and suffering? Read More
Thank you, Aditya Pandey, for an important and enduring question. We have here two distinct but intimately related questions. The first question really concerns whether we know when life begins, while the second pits life against body autonomy. Both require a substantial answer to the question of what constitutes life. I will therefore briefly explore
Thank you, Eoin O’Sullivan, for an important question. A common understanding of justice – namely, “distributive justice” – is that we distribute certain goods fairly across a certain population. Goods represent the fundamental interests of citizens. Some political philosophers have argued that there are certain “primary goods” that are universal across any given political community
Does Walzer’s pluralism about political “goods” make sense? Read More
Thank you for this intriguing question, Sagar Samant! Let me start by clarifying the question. There are different ways in which you can do a bad thing and ‘don’t let it show’. In some cases, it is obvious that someone has done wrong, but nobody suspects you. For example, you rob a bank and never
Is it wrong to be selfish if you don’t let it show? Read More
Thank you, Daniele Grosso, for such a heavy question. The answer to this question partly depends on what we mean by “meaning” and whether the pursuit of meaning is a morally permissible motivation to have a child. Perhaps we mean something like “life satisfaction”, which is (roughly) an overall evaluation of the quality of our
Is it moral to have a child to give meaning to your life? Read More
The premise here being that emotional people are not mentally able to concentrate deeply on complex problems after a point of time when faced with personal or social turmoil. Maybe that’s why most scientists remain disconnected with the world. Thank you Bipul Verma for an intriguing question. The point is that some people have a
Thank you Jong Camallere for such a candid question. I am going to start by saying something that many philosophers will consider ridiculous: philosophers do not seek truth, but clarity. The philosophically minded individual must not seek truth, and must even be willing to accept that truth may be unattainable. There are several behaviours that
What behaviour is characteristic of a philosophically minded individual? Read More
Thanks to Mojahid Gauraki for the question. This is an interesting question, because while on the surface it seems to be about a single individual and whether they are ‘smart’, it is in fact about what it means for someone to be smart or stupid, and the different ways either might be recognised, or even
Is Jordan Peterson a ‘stupid person’s smart person’? Read More
Thank you, Will McMahon, for a timeless question. It was Harry Truman who famously demanded someone find him an economist with only one hand. The problem: Truman was fed up with wishy-washy inconclusive answers; he didn’t want an economist to represent both sides of the argument with equal weight. No. He wanted clear-cut, practical advice
Is permanence an illusion? Read More
