Misinformation
Information may be power, but misinformation appears to be usurping the throne. From COVID-19 to QAnon, misinformation is more ubiquitous and more dangerous than ever. But why is it so much more attractive to so many? Are there factors that make misinformation more (or less) likely to be believed? What draws people into the world of conspiracy […]
Michael Diamond-Hunter (LSE): “The limits of accuracy for retrospective descriptions of racial groups”
In this paper, I will provide a discussion and solution for a phenomenon that has been left untouched by contemporary philosophical accounts of race: the understanding of groups in history. This paper is centrally concerned with retrospective description: the usage of contemporary racial terms as […]
Anti-vaxxers & Other Sceptics (Forum for Philosophy)
Will a future COVID vaccine be undermined by anti-vaxxers? What are the causes of declining vaccination rates? Why does this medical scepticism persist, and how might it be tackled? Or might there be times when scepticism is justified? And if so, how are we to determine when we should and when […]
Richard Bradley (LSE): “Social Ethics Under Ambiguity”
In his two famous papers of 1953 and 1955 defending Utilitarianism, Harsanyi draws on the same simple idea: that to determine what is morally best we should put ourselves in the shoes of an impartial, but sympathetic, rational evaluator of states of affairs that differ in terms of the wellbeing of […]
On Time (Forum for Philosophy)
‘Time is a big invisible thing that will kill you’, wrote philosopher Craig Callender. It also affects all aspects of our lives, from the political to the very nature of our experience. As lockdown made clear, it can be agonizing to be in a state of limbo, to have routines disrupted, unable to […]
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 […]
Lewis Ross (LSE): “Statistics, Epistemic Gaps, and Legal Risk”
Many philosophers suggest that using statistics to attribute legal liability is deeply problematic. A primary worry is that it would be unfair to hold the defending party responsible on the basis of probability alone. My previous work, focusing on criminal law, suggests that this refusal […]
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 […]
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 […]
Paul Menzel (Pacific Lutheran): “The Subjective Value of Life: What Is It?”
One kind of value that a person’s life has is subjective – the value of life to the person whose life it is. This value plays an important role in certain moral philosophies, in health economics and health policy, and in a wide range of normative […]
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