By David Johnson from Psychology Today. "Every wave of public scandal seems to bring in its wake calls for more ethics classes at out top schools. As a former philosophy professor who has taught “Moral Philosophy 101” to undergraduates, I’m actually rather dismissive about the whole idea. I don...

By Willian Grassie from The Global Spiral. "In 1927, British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead was asked to give the prestigious Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology at the University of Edinburgh. His talks were published two years later as Process and Realit y, the book that...

by Daniel Mendelsohn for The New Yorker "Unseemly self-exposures, unpalatable betrayals, unavoidable mendacity, a soupçon of meretriciousness: memoir, for much of its modern history, has been the black sheep of the literary family. Like a drunken guest at a wedding, it is constantly mortifying its...

by Evan Lerner from Seed Magazine "Today, down in the descriptively named Research Triangle in North Carolina, more than 250 scientists, journalists, bloggers, programmers, and multi-hyphenated combinations thereof are planning the future of science communication on the web. (Practicing what it...

Interview by Nathan Gardels for New Perspectives Quarterly Czeslaw Milosz, the great Polish poet and essayist who died in 2004, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. Just after the publication of A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry and his memoir, Road-side Dog...

by Gary Browning for Contemporary Political Theory Bonnie, the editors of Contemporary Political Theory were very enthusiastic to secure an interview with you and to enable readers to find out about your intellectual development and current thinking, so many thanks for agreeing to this interview. Your...

by Christof Koch from Scientific American "Surely there must have been times in high school or college when you laid in bed, late at night, and wondered where your “free will” came from? What part of the brain—if it is the brain—is responsible for deciding to act one way or another? One traditional...

By Jerome Groopman "Born in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, Maja Matarić originally wanted to study languages and art. After she and her mother moved to the United States, in 1981, her uncle, who had immigrated some years earlier, pressed her to concentrate on computers. As a graduate student...

By Elizabeth Pennisi | Science Mag "Cooperation has created a conundrum for generations of evolutionary scientists. If natural selection among individuals favors the survival of the fittest, why would one individual help another at a cost to itself? Charles Darwin himself noted the difficulty of...

By Mark van Vugt | New Scientist "DO YOU ever get the impression that civilisation has degenerated into an unedifying free-for-all? Like pigs gobbling at their troughs, we all seem to be out to get as much as possible of whatever is on offer. Everyone is at it, from loggers felling the Amazonian...

By Ragnar Francén "Motivational externalists and internalists of various sorts disagree about the circumstances under which it is conceptually possible to have moral opinions but lack moral motivation. Typically, the evidence referred to are intuitions about whether people in certain scenarios who...

By Gregory R. Peterson, Michael Spezio, James Van Slyke, Kevin Reimer and Warren Brown This paper argues that consideration of moral exemplars may provide a means for integrating insights across philosophical ethics, theological ethics, and the scientific study of moral cognition. Key to this endeavor...

By Alan Goldman Huckleberry Finn is not irrational in being unmotivated to follow his explicit judgments of rightness and wrongness. Philosophers have previously judged Huck to be irrational, subject to weakness of will, in being unable to act on his moral judgment. But their interpretation rests on...

By Francesco Fronterotta Plato's Republic continues to arouse intense controversy among commentators, both for its ethical and political project and for its psychological, epistemological, and ontological implications for the knowledge of philosophers, who, says Plato, should be set as guides for...

Maui Hudson Ethical review is an integral part of the process of developing research and considering issues associated with the production of knowledge. It is part of a system that primarily legitimises western traditions of inquiry and reinforces western assumptions about knowledge and its benefit to...

This paper argues that Anscombe and Foot were correctly skeptical of the concept of moral rightness. Two senses of morally right action are distinguished, a strong notion that has deontic implications and a weaker notion that does not. It is argued that unless contemporary virtue ethicists are embracing...

By Philip Goodchild The work of Pierre Hadot has re-established an approach to philosophy as a way of life, a set of spiritual exercises (Hadot 1995, 2002). As Socrates explained his task, "I tried to persuade each of one of you to concern himself less with what he has than with what he is, so as...

By Nicholas Maxwell "This book will enthral anyone concerned about ultimate questions – the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, the fate of humanity. It is written in a lively, accessible style, and has original things to say about a number of fundamental issues. It argues that we need...

By James M. Jacobs That the essence of human nature is to be free is a common theme of many otherwise disparate philosophical traditions. From Augustine to Sartre, the fact of human freedom has been the point of departure for the consideration of humanity’s essence. If philosophers are correct about...

Jessica M. Salerno, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Margaret C. Stevenson, Tisha R. A. Wiley, Bette L. Bottoms, Roberto Vaca Jr., Pamela S. Pimentel In three studies, we investigated support for applying sex offender registry laws to juveniles. Family law attorneys supported registry laws less for juveniles than...