We continuously form perceptual beliefs about the world based on how things appear to us in our perceptual experiences. I see that the ripe tomato in front of me is red and I form the belief that this tomato is red based on my seeing it, i.e. based on my veridical perceptual experience of this red tomato. Perceptual experiences and beliefs are representational mental states. Both are defined not by what they are, i.e. their physical properties, but by what they are about, what they represent, by their content. The content of both perceptual experiences and beliefs is specified by how the world must be for them to represent things correctly; it is specified by stating the conditions under which they would be true.

This article responds to Tibor Machan's criticisms of government provision for needy citizens. It argues that although charity may be morally worthy, private charity is inadequate to the task of providing our fellow citizens with the security they deserve; the tremendous social good of secure access to a life of dignity can only be produced by a public social safety net. Moreover, individual rights to property do not stand in the way of providing a public social safety net. Since there are social inputs in wealth creation, reasonable levels of taxation do not violate people's rights to their wealth.

Matthew Flannagan explains why Christians can consistently both oppose abortion and support the death penalty.

In the first of our three pieces responding to Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, David Benatar suggests that Dawkins is preaching ‘the gospel of secular optimism’.

This piece considers the role of memory in personal identity, but specifically how we can choose and manipulate individual memories in order to take control of self-identity. The ideas of Locke and Ricoeur are briefly included, along with some questions about the implications of memory on identity in the age of social media.

Hempel's famous Raven Paradox derives from Nicod's criteria for confirmation and the Equivalence Condition, the unintuitive conclusion that things like white roses, green T-shirts and ice cubes confirm the raven hypothesis ‘All ravens are black.’ By a small rearrangement of the Equivalence Condition, I show that we can also derive the conclusion, which sounds even more intuitively intolerable, that observation of black ravens fails to confirm the raven hypothesis. We are left with the contradictory result that black ravens both confirm and do not confirm the raven hypothesis.

In the second of our two articles focusing on the war in Iraq, Richard Ryder looks at a range of possible justifications, and finds them all wanting.

Mark Piper introduces the best-known and perhaps most powerful of all the arguments against the existence of God.

Several lines of argument are presented to support the notion that hooved animal rescue is justified, however expensive and controversial. The work of Singer and McNamee is discussed. The article concludes that various breeds have distinct arguments in their favour when it comes to rescue.

In his fairly recent article in this journal, ‘The Evil-god Challenge – A Response’ (Think 40), Keith Ward attempts to nullify Stephen Law's evil-god challenge by presenting several arguments intended to demonstrate that an omniscient, omnipotent being cannot conceivably be evil. In this article, I critically respond to each of Ward's arguments to reach the conclusion that an omnipotent, omniscient being could indeed be evil. To achieve this, I claim that neither perfect empathy nor rationality entails benevolence, that the desire for suffering is not necessarily pathological, and that human desire for a good god does not entail that god is actually benevolent.

It is my contention that what is generally construed as the Euthyphro Dilemma as a reason to deny that moral facts are based on theological facts is one of the worst arguments proposed in philosophy of religion or ethical theory, and that Socrates, the character of the dialogue who poses the dilemma, was both morally bankrupt in his challenge to Euthyphro, but more importantly here, ought to have lost the argument hands down. But in any dialogue, the author controls what people say. Plato was able to easily give Socrates the victory by writing the ending of the story himself, where Euthyphro, believing that piety is what the gods approve of, loses the argument abysmally. The version of events presented here is different. This time, Euthyphro is permitted to offer a reasonable defence of his position, and he has the benefit of having been able to read all that has been said on the Euthyphro dilemma over the last couple of millennia, and especially the last fifty years. Under such circumstances, Socrates does not stand a chance. We arrive at our scene, the steps of the Dunedin High Court, in Dunedin, New Zealand, on a cool mid-winter July morning.

Around 1998, internet postings began appearing under the alias ‘Timetravel_0’. This alias was later replaced by ‘John Titor’, and it's as such I'll designate the posts' author(s). Remarkably, Titor claimed to have time-travelled from 2036 on a mission to retrieve an IBM 5100 in 1975. Titor refrained from public appearances and any evidence for his story remains web-bound but before closing shop c. March 24th 2001, he described various future events, e.g.:

In society, power and responsibility are often linked, supporting the idea that with great power comes great responsibility. I assert that this link between power and responsibility is a form of the Act–Omission Distinction, a principle in ethics that there is a morally relevant distinction between doing something and omitting to do something, e.g. a difference between killing someone and letting someone be killed. As such, using trolleys, elected spider-men, and real-life cases such as R v Stone & Dobinson, I contest this casual relationship between power and responsibility and argue the relationship to be correlative as both power and responsibility are often simultaneously caused by consent.

In Harrison and Tanner's (2011) ‘Better Not to Have Children’, it's argued that having children is immoral as well as detrimental to one's well-being. In this article, I argue against those claims and defend the position that, for most people, having children is morally permissible and greatly enhances their well-being.

Is democracy a good thing? Most of us think so. And yet, as Jonathan Wolff here explains, Plato thought democracy was a very bad idea. If you favour democracy (and I'm guessing you do), then your challenge is to explain what, if anything, is wrong with Plato's argument. So can you?

Many claim that belief in God is like belief in Santa Claus – it's an irrational belief that people justify with irrational arguments because they cherish it and because it comforts them. In this dialogue, true believers ‘have it out’ regarding whether either of their beliefs – belief in God, or belief in Santa – is rational, and a direct parallel between the reasoning of the two sides is demonstrated. Many important arguments regarding theistic belief are discussed in some form. The article is intended for use in an introduction to philosophy, or an introductory philosophy of religion course, as a humorous way to foster discussion and expose students to criticisms of theistic arguments, and to consider the possibility that theistic belief is no better than belief in the existence of Santa Claus. Act One.

It is often thought that the first question of morality is ‘Why be moral?’, but since it is often thought that morality opposes our happiness, it is best to start with the question, ‘Why not be immoral?’. An answer is given: being immoral is self-disrespecting, and self-respect is necessary for happiness.

James Warren responds to Sandis's preceding article.