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Pacifism and Ukraine

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Introduction and context

This article is written in response to a recent JustHuman meeting (February 2023), I attended but didn’t really contribute much to the conversation at the time - apart from my opening statemen

Human Nature

I believe that human beings are essentially good and rational, but we are pulled in two different directions because we are both social and selfish. Everything else, pretty much, comes from this basic starting point.

Three Kinds of Sex

One of the basic problems we face in talking about sex, is that we may be trying to talk about vastly different things. At the very least, we can distinguish between these three kinds: physical mechanism (the process of reproduction); social roles a

Science and Magic

Everyone seems to be familiar with the quote, "Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic," but I sometimes talk with people who appear to think that our inability to distinguish between the two implies that there is no real differ

Consent

In the messy details of human relationships, questions of consent are rarely clear-cut. We have pressures, preferences and obligations, we make assumptions about other people, their actions, beliefs and motives. We don't even understand what we do

Reality

This is an attempt to pull together the topics we have addressed from time to time which come under the general heading of 'understanding reality'.

Unrestricted Growth

Traditional economics relies on continual growth, an assumption which made little sense in the 1960s and makes even less sense now. Any plan which requires unrestricted (in effect, infinite) growth on a finite planet is unlikely to succeed. 

Am I Free?

You are not perfectly free - nobody is - but you are sufficiently free. You are sufficiently free to be able to choose how to act and the impact you want your actions to have on others, and you are sufficiently free to take responsibility for your c

Reasonable Misdirection

Stage magicians commonly use misdirection to fool their audience: when they tell you to concentrate on this object or activity, you can be reasonably sure that the real action is taking place elsewhere.  In a similar way, it seems to me that people w

Freedom and Free Will

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Introduction

I know that Philosophers do things properly (sometimes, at least...) but, in casual conversations about Free Will, my experience is that most people talk about whether our will is free while assuming we all know what fr

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Electoral Reform

Many people feel there is no point in voting, because 'nothing changes' - nothing important. Which is not surprising, because the system we have is designed to resist change. By definition, the current system works for the groups which get, and exp

Freedom and Society

When considering society, you can't usefully talk about freedom purely in the abstract - you need to talk about more specific freedoms: who should be free to do what, and when?

Ukraine: How to End the War

I am suggesting that we should negotiate to give Russia the territory it is demanding, not because I believe Russia should be rewarded for starting this war, but because allowing them to succeed would be the greatest punishment we can inflict on them

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