Campbell Brown is one of the most recent additions to our faculty. We thought we’d welcome him to the Department with some questions.

What does justice demand of individuals in an unjust society? Chris Marshall considers the personal implications of distributive justice.

Most sports ban certain performance-enhancing drugs and penalise those who use them. But is the use of these drugs morally wrong? Heather Dyke looks at the ethics of doping.

Can the concept of “temporal selves” help us understand temptation and restraint? Johanna Thoma on self-negotiation.

Richard Bradley’s written a new book about decision theory. We decided to ask him some questions about it.

With the current refugee crisis showing no sign of abating, a fair and efficient method for distributing people to different countries is urgently needed. In this post, Philippe van Basshuysen looks at matching systems.

With essay deadlines looming for many of our students, Matt Parker relives some of the angst involved in writing philosophy. You’re not alone.

What separates human beings from their animal ancestors? Andrew Buskell examines the concept of “cumulative culture”.

Susanne Burri explores some of the moral complexities of the WWII bombings.

What’s so bad about the placebo effect? John Worrall examines the recent Nurofen labelling “scandal”.

With the UK government considering a ban on the prescription of homeopathic remedies on the NHS, John Worrall examines the rationale for such a proposal and suggests that the decision is not as simple as it might initially seem.

In this talk from ETH Zurich’s Workshop on Time in Physics, Bryan Roberts introduces weak interactions and argues that the laws of nature are directed in time.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of The Forum’s new blog.

With the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference coming up, Eric Brandstedt asks what we should expect from the talks and considers the relationship between ethical and political perspectives on the climate change debate.

In our latest video, Dr Alex Voorhoeve discusses utilitarianism, egalitarianism and the path to Universal Health Coverage.

What can microbiology teach us about cultural evolution? Philosopher of Biology, Jonathan Birch, discusses “horizontal transmission”.

The US presidential campaign is under way and to help voters see past the rhetoric, Stefan Schubert has used a tool developed by ClearerThinking.org to highlight fallacious reasoning and factual inaccuracies in the debates.

In this brand new LSE Philosophy Video, Professor J. McKenzie Alexander discusses game theory, evolutionary game theory and the evolution of morality.

A proposal to help British breweries and pubs promote responsible drinking, by Luc Bovens.

Listen to Dr Jonathan Birch’s recent talk at The University of Oxford.

In the latest issue of Scientific American, Professor Christian List discusses the philosophical foundations of Einstein’s view of quantum mechanics.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, LSE philosopher of science Bryan W. Roberts argues that humans are what make AI weapons so scary.

LSE Philosophy hosted The Eighth Workshop in Decisions, Games and Logic (DGL) 17-19 June 2015. The DGL workshop series aims to bring together graduate students, post-docs and researchers from philosophy, economics and logic working on formal approaches to rational individual and interactive decision making.

Countries around the world are setting out on the path to Universal Health Coverage but there are difficult choices to face along the way. Philosophy can help.

Can altruism be reconciled with evolutionary theory? Philosopher of biology, Jonathan Birch, discusses “Hamilton’s Rule”.

For those of you unable to attend the recent meetings of the Sigma Club, you can now view photos from our regular philosophy of physics lectures on Flickr.

The 3rd LSE–Bayreuth Student Philosophy Conference took place 7-8 May at LSE. As you’ll be able to see from the photos, this year’s conference was a huge success!

We make countless judgements each day based on our perceptions. But can we really trust our senses? In a recent paper, Peter Dennis considers this question and poses a new challenge to one attempt to answer it.

Jonathan Birch specialises in the philosophy of biology and in this interview – “Darwinian conundrums” – he discusses topics such as natural selection, the origins of human cooperation and the role of philosophy in science.

The latest issue of the British Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy (BJUP) features this interview with LSE philosopher Professor John Worrall.

Check out the latest additions to our “Meet the Faculty” video series, featuring three of our newest faculty members: Dr Jonathan Birch, Dr Anna Mahtani and Dr Bryan Roberts. Enjoy!

Some people believe that when facing difficult decisions we should give priority to those who are worst-off. In ‘Prioritarianism and the Measure of Utility’, Michael Otsuka argues that this is only true in some situations.

With LSE widely recognised as the world’s leading specialist social science university, the MSc in Philosophy of Social Sciences is the ideal degree with which to pursue questions about human societies, and to apply philosophical reasoning to understand the nature of the social sciences themselves.

The LSE Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method is a historic and world-class centre for philosophy of science. Having been home to the influential philosophers of science Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos and still bustling with cutting edge research, the LSE is an incredible place to do an MSc in Philosophy of Science.

Can free will exist in a deterministic universe? In “Free Will, Determinism, and the Possibility of Doing Otherwise”, Christian List argues that it can.

It’s often been thought that Curie’s principle says something that’s just obviously true about the world. However, Bryan Roberts has discovered a simple way in which Curie’s principle fails.

How many hairs must a person lose before they become bald? There doesn’t seem to be an easy way of answering this. This is because “bald”, along with a large number of other words, is vague. This vagueness causes problems and Anna Mahtani specialises in thinking very precisely about these problems…

The democratic process aims to make convincing collective decisions on the basis of individual preferences. There are a number of different democratic decision procedures via which such decisions may be reached. In this talk at the Visions in Science Conference in Berlin, Christian List outlines three plausible requirements of democracy before going on to show that no democratic decision procedure […]

LSE has a long tradition of leading work in the philosophy and foundations of physics. You may notice the flurry of physics-related activity bustling around the department. If you’re an MSc student with a physics course or two under your belt, or are just interested in seeing what the philosophy of physics is, why not check it out?

Philosophy at LSE is particularly well-known for its social relevance.  Here are three MSc courses that will allow you to participate in this aspect of LSE-style philosophy. New MSc students are welcome to sit in on the first lecture before deciding if they’d like to take a course.