Category Archives: Ethics

Ethics

Rights Gone Wrong

Posted on December 15, 2012 by

Rights are all well and good, but sometimes they lead you to the wrong places. Generally I’m with John Stuart Mill: “Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each … Continue reading →

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I am a Scientist

Posted on December 8, 2012 by

Like most people I guess, I get irritated by folk who are wrong. But unlike most people, I actually don’t mind so much when I am. Perhaps that’s because I believe in a ‘Bayesian brain’. Mash up all the facts, … Continue reading →

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Take me to your Leader

Posted on August 10, 2012 by

As the Curiosity rover pulled off an improbably complex landing on Mars, I was having a laugh with a friend in the US. I pointed out that it’s the US President’s duty to welcome any extraterrestrial when and if he/she … Continue reading →

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Noble Purpose

Posted on August 4, 2012 by

The Olympics bring out my mixed feelings about competition. Winning at all costs, grinding someone else in the dust, the distortion of personality that comes with going ‘all out’. Sometimes, in my sporting past, I’ve avoided finishing people off. Sometimes … Continue reading →

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Relevant Complexity 5) Age

Posted on July 7, 2012 by

Talking to someone at work, she said she’d been surprised that a very experienced chap in his late 50s had come on a training course. We concluded that age shouldn’t matter in deciding who gets training. I know plenty of … Continue reading →

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Narcissi

Posted on May 26, 2012 by

The path to self-knowledge is long and hard. And who is to say whether apparent progress is more than illusion or self-delusion. But I do become increasingly irritated by narcissism. Forgivable, indeed to some extent inevitable in children, why does … Continue reading →

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Death Becomes Us

Posted on April 19, 2012 by

I’m reading the ‘Death’ edition of the redoubtable Philosophy Now magazine. And a bone-rattlingly good read it is too. Death dissected through metaphor, thought experiments, cool logic and rational argument. The core issue, this issue: as medical technology advances should … Continue reading →

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Montaigne on Virtue

Posted on April 10, 2012 by

Three hundred and one dailylit.com episodes of Essays in and Michel de Montaigne serves up another view I 100% agree with, five centuries on. When it comes to ethics the the answer is staring you in the face – in … Continue reading →

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The Ploughman

Posted on December 11, 2011 by

There’s a good piece in The Guardian today, likening our response to recession, Global economic crisis and a troubled Euro, to the indifference of the ploughman in Brueghel’s ‘The fall of Icarus’. Nick Cohen writes: All Brueghel shows of Icarus … Continue reading →

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Of Angels

Posted on November 5, 2011 by

Smarting from the accusation I seldom read the source, I’m wading through Aquinas at present. Corblimey he’s obsessed with some things well beyond my interest. But that’s because I’m reading him for his ethics, and he’s writing a science book … Continue reading →

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