Clarifying what creativity is the first step towards answering the question: could a computer be creative?

Humans will not always be the most intelligent agents on Earth, the ones steering the future. What will happen to us when we no longer play that role, and how can we prepare for this transition?

Richard Ryder recounts the birth of the term ‘speciesism’

This article addresses the question of whether certain experiences that originate in causes other than bereavement are properly termed ‘grief’. To do so, we focus on widespread experiences of grief that have been reported during the Covid-19 pandemic. We consider two potential objections to a more permissive use of the term: (i) grief is, by definition, a response to a death; (ii) grief is subject to certain norms that apply only to the case of bereavement. Having shown that these objections are unconvincing, we sketch a positive case for a conception of grief that is not specific to bereavement, by noting some features that grief following bereavement shares with other experiences of loss.

‘Neuroreductionism’ is the tendency to reduce complex mental phenomena to brain states, confusing correlation for physical causation. In this paper, we illustrate the dangers of this popular neuro-fallacy, by looking at an example drawn from the media: a story about ‘hypoactive sexual desire disorder’ in women. We discuss the role of folk dualism in perpetuating such a confusion, and draw some conclusions about the role of ‘brain scans’ in our understanding of romantic love.

William Hare defends ‘open-mindedness’ against a number of popular attacks.

Achievements are clearly something that we care about. We want a life rich in achievements, and we value the achievements of others. To be appointed to the job of one's dreams as a result of one's hard work and raw talent, such that it constitutes an achievement on one's part, is far more satisfying and worthy than getting it through other means where no achievement is involved (e.g. as a result of nepotism). Similarly, the Olympic goal medal winner who gets her award by being the best in a strong field exhibits an achievement and is lauded for it, but her counterpart who attains the same result through, say, mere good luck (e.g. none of her competitors is able to compete due to injury), and who thus does not exhibit an achievement, is not gifted nearly as much praise. But what is an achievement, and what is it about achievements that makes us care about them so much?

In ‘Do Souls Exist’, I suggested that, while the non-existence of the soul does threaten free will, the threat it possess is inconsequential. Free will faces so many other hurdles that, if those were overcome, the soul's non-existence would be a non-threat. In this paper, I establish this; and to do so, I define the common libertarian notion of free will, and show how neuroscience, determinism, indeterminism, theological belief, axioms in logic, and even Einstein's theory of relativity each entail that libertarian free will does not exist. I conclude by demonstrating why some philosophers reject alternate (compatibilist) understandings of free will, and so believe that the notion we are free is an illusion.

Most people take it for granted that it's morally permissible to have children. They may raise questions about the number of children it's responsible to have or whether it's permissible to reproduce when there's a strong risk of serious disability. But in general, having children is considered a good thing to do, something that's morally permissible in most cases (perhaps even obligatory).

‘The soul hypothesis’ (the belief that souls exist and humans have them) enjoys near unanimous support in the general population. Among philosophers and scientists, however, belief in the soul is far less common. The purpose of this essay to explain why many philosophers and scientists reject the soul hypothesis and to consider what the non-existence of the soul would entail.

The following is a transcript of a discussion about the question ‘What is Pragmatism?’ between Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and James Conant. The discussion was part of a series of discussions on more or less philosophical subjects broadcast on Chicago Public Radio. This discussion is anchored by Gretchen Helfrich. Two listeners (Chris and Edwin) also took part.

I thank the participants for making the material available for a wider audience. I have deleted some passages in order to fit the space available for this subject (a nearly complete version appears in the next volume of The Wittgenstein Studies). I have tried to keep the character of a discussion. However, a transcript can hardly display the fine nuances of spoken words—and there are indeed some such nice nuances. However, the most important points were, of course, kept. How to think about them — that is up to the reader.

Richard Raatzsch, University of Leipzig, July 2004

Further note from Stephen Law: readers should be aware that this transcript has been edited. Some material — words, phrases, and passages — has been removed. Italicizations are my own.

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces tips and pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously.

In this paper I will put forward a brief argument against abortion rights. The argument concerns itself with the two main ways in which defenders of abortion rights develop their position. The first strategy through which they tend to do this is by arguing against the personhood of the fetus. The second strategy, made famous by Judith Jarvis Thomson, is to argue that, even if the fetus were a person, its right to life would not entail the right to draw upon the resources of the woman in pregnancy, and so the pregnancy can be terminated (even if the fetus loses its life in the process). My argument will provide reasons to suspect that attacks on fetal personhood are based on a questionable notion of personhood, and that the most common attempts to show that the fetus does not have the right to draw on the resources of the woman in pregnancy also have considerable problems. This will buttress the case for the view that the fetus is a person and that it has the right to draw on the resources of the woman in pregnancy.

The idea that all the entities in the world may be, for legal and moral purposes, divided into the two categories of ‘persons’ and ‘things’ comes down to us from the tradition of Roman law. In the law, a ‘person’ is essentially the subject of rights and obligations, while a thing may be owned as property. In ethics, a person is an object of respect, to be valued for her own sake, and never to be used as a mere means to an end, while a thing has only a derivative value, and may be used as a means to some person's ends. This bifurcation is unfortunate because it seems to leave us with no alternative but to categorize everything as either a person or a thing. Yet some of the entities that give rise to the most vexing ethical problems are exactly the ones that do not seem to fit comfortably into either category. For various, different, kinds of reasons, it seems inappropriate to categorize a fetus, a non-human animal, the environment, or an object of great beauty, as a person, but neither does it seem right to say of such things that they are to be valued only as means.

Imagine that you are struggling to finish a project, with the deadline fast approaching. Nearly done, you are about to print out what you have finished when a dialog box appears on your computer screen telling you that you must download and install an update for some piece of software. Frustrated, you try to make it go away, but it keeps reappearing. So you relent and click on ‘Install’, and your screen is filled with small print listing ‘Terms and Conditions’. You do not have time to scroll through the whole thing. So you click ‘Agree’. The installation begins, and you are relieved that it takes only a few minutes. Soon you are back at work and have finished your project.

Issues concerning the ultimate origins of the universe have generated huge public interest recently. It began with the publication of The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, in which the authors claim that, because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing, and thus there is no role for God. This has prompted heated responses from scientists, philosophers, and religious leaders in the media, many of them asking, in effect, ‘where that law came from’. Subsequently, Roger Penrose released his new book Cycles of Time, arguing that what came before the Big Bang was the end of another universe, prompting the question whether there is an infinite temporal regress of universes or not. These discussions make it very timely to examine afresh whether an infinite temporal regress of events is possible.

In this article, I propose that, in addition to the multiverse hypothesis, which is commonly taken to be an alternative explanation for fine-tuning, other than the design hypothesis, the simulation hypothesis is another explanation for fine-tuning. I then argue that the simulation hypothesis undercuts the alleged evidential connection between ‘designer’ and ‘supernatural designer of immense power and knowledge’ in much the same way that the multiverse hypothesis undercuts the alleged evidential connection between ‘fine-tuning’ and ‘fine-tuner’ (or ‘designer’). If this is correct, then the fine-tuning argument is a weak argument for the existence of God.

By ‘applying ethics’, do philosophers actually succeed in corrupting philosophy?

Craig's second philosophical argument for a beginning of the universe presupposes a dynamic theory of time, a limitation which makes the argument unacceptable for those who do not hold this theory. I argue that the argument can be modified thus: If time is beginning-less, then it would be the case that a person existing and counting as long as time exists would count an actual infinite by counting one element after another successively, but the consequent is metaphysically impossible, hence the antecedent is metaphysically impossible. I defend the premises and show that this argument does not presuppose the dynamic theory.

Theism is a cluster of views. The first of which is that God exists. Others are that God has all the relevant omni-attributes, that He created the world, and that He communicates with and performs miracles on behalf of humans. There is one additional view that is often overlooked. It is that humans are obligated to worship God. Importantly, this issue of worship is of central importance to traditional theism. And it extends into pagan thought that predates Christianity. Take, for example Epicurus' deployment of the argument from evil: