Peace (Forum for Philosophy)
Peace is highly valued, but how is it achieved? Why are some periods in world history relatively peaceful compared to others? What, if anything, can be done to ensure peace now? Are there limits to what we are justified in doing to ensure peace? Is pacifism a justified response to war? We discuss the […]
The Ethical Human (Forum for Philosophy)
Where do our ideas of right and wrong come from? Can the evolutionary processes that produced human beings explain the moral frameworks adopted by human societies? And what can developmental biology tell us about the emergence of ethical behaviour in children? From anthropology to cognitive science, philosophy to evolutionary biology, we shed some […]
Replication Crisis? (Forum for Philosophy)
The hallmark of good science is often supposed to be experiments that produce the same results when repeated. But over the last number of years, scientists have replicated a number of established, high-profile experiments and produced different results. Does it point to serious flaws and biases in the sciences? Or it is evidence of […]
Brave New World (Forum for Philosophy)
In this age of utopian technologies, we can design mechanical limbs for amputees and chemically engineer happiness for depressives. From the fluoride in our water to genetically modified babies, scientific advances pose complex new ethical questions. We explore the major bioethical issues of our time. Is philosophy braced for this brave new world? Are scientists […]
Doping (Forum for Philosophy)
World-class athletes push themselves beyond normal limits and transform their bodies through training and diet. But in the wake of various scandals across the world of sport, we know pharmaceuticals can also play a role. Doping is considered a form of cheating, but should it be? And with the arrival of ‘smart drugs’, this is […]
W E B Du Bois (Forum for Philosophy)
W. E. B. Du Bois is usually remembered as a sociologist and civil rights campaigner, and his analysis of race and racism continues to shape the way social scientists think about these issues today. But a genuine polymath, he was also a skilled philosopher and in this event we […]
War (Forum for Philosophy)
War scars human history and continues to mar lives across the globe. Is war part of human nature? Is it ever morally justified? And with the development of advanced weapon technologies, will future wars be more destructive than ever before? We bring together philosophers, a historian, and a cultural evolutionist to discuss the […]
Imagination in Science (Forum for Philosophy)
Science is often mistakenly thought to involved nothing but cold reason. In reality, very human acts of creativity appear everywhere. We explore the role of imaginative thinking in science. Are thought experiments sources of knowledge or just hypotheses? Can a story or narrative also be a scientific explanation? And how should a scientist balance creative […]
The Evolution of Altruism (Forum for Philosophy))
If evolution is a ‘struggle for existence’, why do we witness so much altruism in nature? From bacteria to baboons, the natural world is full of spectacular examples of organisms cooperating with one another. In the early 1960s, W. D. Hamilton changed the way we think about how such behaviour […]
What Is It Really Like to Be a Bat? (Forum for Philosophy)
Are bats conscious, and how can we tell? What is it like to use sound to navigate? In a classic paper called “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, Thomas Nagel used the bat’s capacity for echolocation to introduce philosophical problems concerning conscious experience. […]
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