by Carl Howard | Jun 8, 2010 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Ethics, Evolution and Biology, Philosophy
The 5 min challenge that I would like everyone to take is to watch this video in its entirety and note your reactions. It’s only about 3.5 mins long so not a burden. But, do not switch tabs or open any windows, just give it your full attention: YouTube link...
by Carl Howard | Apr 22, 2010 | Blog Topics, Ethics, Evolution and Biology, Philosophy, Society
This past Saturday I was in lovely Kiama and decided to go for a wander through the cliffs past the Kiama blowhole. Just before the path to the cliffs, the council put up a sign to the effect of: “Warning! This is risky business. Going past this sign places in you in...
by Carl Howard | Mar 2, 2010 | Blog Topics, Ethics, Philosophy
In the last 2 posts about morality, I looked at moral statements being: based on empathy not provable from non-moral statements being non-arbitrary because of their evolutionary history Today I’ll look at what this means for actual morality talk. The first point is...
by Carl Howard | Feb 23, 2010 | Blog Topics, Ethics, Philosophy
In the previous post, I argued that morality is made up of basic atomic statements (eg. “causing another being to suffer for its own sake is wrong”) that cannot be proved or further broken down into non-moral statements. In a way, I’ve actually argued that metaethics...
by Carl Howard | Jan 9, 2009 | Blog Topics, Ethics, Philosophy, Resources, Food and Environment, Society
’ve seen plenty of opinions that Israel’s strikes in Gaza have been excessive in terms of civilian casualties. This leads to a very natural question: how many civilian casualties would be ok? This isn’t to give an opinion on the current war, but if public debate...
by Carl Howard | Nov 21, 2008 | Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Ethics, Race, Society
Racism is often attributed solely to the political right. Sure, there’s a lot of right-wing racists. But there’s a lot of racism on the left too. Yes it’s usually more subtle. But I wouldn’t assume that the left has a much lower percentage of racists than the right....
