Philosophy
“It’s in our DNA”: the clichés that confuse the public about genetics and essentialism
Clichés about a quality being "in our DNA" use the terminology of genetics to depict ideas of essentialism - and in doing so, they reinforce a spurious link
The Tao of Magical Thinking: pseudoscience in Jeremy Lent’s ‘The Web of Meaning’
In The Web of Meaning, Jeremy Lent favours convenient ideas over accurate, and in doing so repeatedly presents speculative and even disproven theories as facts
Professor Christopher Essex: denialism meets philosophy of science
Professor Christopher Essex, chair of a climate change denial charity, argues we shouldn't trust science, but presents a deeply unworkable alternative.
We can understand the effect of privilege better when we consider it in terms of moral luck
Terms like 'privilege' have, rightly or wrongly, become divisive - a simpler, and perhaps more fitting, question to ask is how lucky we've been
What is ‘value’? Reconciling ethics with scientific materialism
Skeptics can be uncomfortable reconciling ethics with a materialist worldview, but one solution is to accept that 'value' can be an objective concept
“Who decides?”: how fair questions can derail meaningful action
The question of who gets to decide how boundaries are set in society can often be a way to distract from efforts to change the status quo
Are you skeptical about free will? Prove it!
Letting go of a belief in free will isn't easy, but proving to people that no trace of the belief persists? That's where things get really tricky.
Real in what sense? Consensually torturing skeptics over the nature of ‘realness’
Even a skeptic's sense of what is real can be less black and white than we think - and can lead to some surprisingly uncomfortable analysis
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