Monarchy is a form of government that, roughly, dictates that the right to rule is inherited by birth by a single ruler. But monarchy (absolute or constitutional) breaches fundamental moral principles that undergird representative democracy, such as basic moral equality, dignity and desert. Simply put, the monarchs (and their family) are treated as morally superior to ordinary citizens and as a result ordinary citizens are treated in an unfair and undignified manner. For example, monarchs are respected, enjoy dignity, income, opportunity, public office and exalted social status just because of their inherited office, which is due to the mere historical accident of family lineage. Hence, we have good moral reason to abolish monarchy. Finally, I briefly reply to the pragmatic argument for constitutional monarchy, namely, the argument that monarchy can be allowed to play a largely ceremonial role in the context of democracy because it is beneficial for the function of society. As I argue, societies run by presidential democracies can function equally well and, what is more, no matter what the pragmatic reasons for constitutional monarchy are, we still have stronger moral reasons against it. Therefore, it should be abolished.

Do we have free will? In this interview, Helen Steward explains part of her very distinctive approach to the philosophical puzzle concerning free will vs determinism. Steward rejects determinism, but not because she denies that we are not material beings (because, for example, we have Cartesian, immaterial souls that have physical effects). Her reasons for rejecting determinism are very different.

What should we do about climate change? This article examines the ethical problems that arise from climate change, and considers our obligations and responsibilities to one another, other species and the planet because of global warming.

Mary Midgley challenges the dominant conceptions of human nature, ethics, community and ecology taught at A-Level. This article considers some of the key themes of her thinking.

How can and does science – and especially neuroscience – inform the philosophical puzzle of mind and body?

Could you survive your bodily death by uploading your mind?

Here's an overview of one of the more ingenious attempts to criticize religious belief. Antony Flew argues that if the religious won't allow anything to count as evidence against what they believe, then they don't actually believe anything. The religious aren't making false claims; rather, they're not making any claims at all.

When, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York more than two decades ago, the late Queen Elizabeth II expressed her sentiments with the words: ‘Grief is the price we pay for love’, she was making a reference to British psychiatrist Dr Colin Murray Parkes's book Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life. In the book, Dr Parkes states an obvious, albeit often ignored, fact that the pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love. Following the death of the Queen in September 2022, Joe Biden, the current president of the US, used the same quote as an opportunity to express his own personal sadness about her passing. It was also an opportunity to participate in public grief about the loss of a popular leader, and of innocent lives. It is not uncommon for leaders, religious ones including, to speak of love, especially during such poignant moments. But it is somewhat less common for public figures to bring to our attention the close connection between grief and love. Even when they do, grief is commonly seen in a negative light. Philosophers provide another example of what is, I shall argue, a mischaracterization of grief.

Since Plato philosophers have struggled to understand the nature of ethics. It seems different from understanding the world around us, which we do by means of our senses and our sciences. Like mathematics ethics seems different. My brief dialogue seeks to unravel its mystery, and may tell you all you need to know about it.

Plato is often regarded as a founding figure for Western philosophy, and specifically as the inventor of a way of doing philosophy grounded in critical, argumentative reason. This article asks whether Plato's practice of writing myths in his dialogues comes into tension with his canonical reputation. I suggest that resolving this tension may require us to revise our standing ideas about the nature of philosophy and its relationship to myth. Against interpretations that minimize the significance of Plato's myths to his philosophy, I argue that he may have constructed them deliberately as a form of philosophical discourse in their own right.

Our conventional wisdom about animal ethics, as embodied in the animal welfare position, is that animals are not things to whom we can have no moral obligations. Animals who are sentient, or subjectively aware, have a morally significant interest in not suffering. But, because they are not self-aware, they do not as an empirical matter have an interest in continuing to live. So we may use and kill animals as long as we do so ‘humanely’ and do not impose ‘unnecessary’ suffering on them. There are at least two serious problems with our conventional wisdom in this regard. First, because animals are chattel property, we undervalue or ignore their interests in not suffering. Second, we cannot justify the view that animals who are sentient do not have a morally significant interest in continuing to live. If animals are not things and matter morally, our institutionalized exploitation of them cannot be justified, and veganism is a moral imperative.

Some people have engaged in acts of civil disobedience to protest against the climate policies of their governments and corporations. This article argues that these disobedient actions are justified at present since governments fail to do all they reasonably can to respond to this pressing issue.

In this article I challenge the standard view that clarity and coherence in moral philosophy and ethics are always good and obscurity necessarily bad. The appraisal of clarity, I argue, entails a risk of reducing and misrepresenting the complex and multifaceted nature of good, productive and true thinking and communication. Uncertainty and obscurity do not necessarily lead to vagueness, imprecision or meaning-obstruction. There are productive forms of uncertainty and there are unproductive forms. Indeed, to be precise, lucid and truthful sometimes requires respecting and linguistically and conceptually reproducing the incoherence, obscurity and uncertainty of reality.

This article is about nothing. Does that mean it is about something, namely, ‘nothing’? Or is there quite literally no thing that this article is about? Follow the dialogue between characters discussing the nature of non-existence and absences to find out! Along the way there will be tongue twisters, contradictions, paradoxes and riddles, ready to challenge our preconceptions of reality as we embark into the mysterious realm of nothingness.

This piece explores the origins of science fiction in philosophical speculation about the size of the universe, the existence of other solar systems and other galaxies, and the possibility of alien life. Science fiction helps us to grapple with the dizzying possibilities that a vast universe affords, by allowing our imagination to fill in the details.

Descartes's arguments in support of his claim that the mind is an immaterial substance are examined and found wanting. But despite the flaws in his dualistic view of the mind, Descartes has fascinating and important things to say about how much of human experience involves an ‘intermingling’ of mind and body. There are still philosophical lessons to be learnt from Descartes's legacy.

An exploration of the risks and benefits of AI, particular regarding privacy.

Narcissistic personality disorder describes people who demonstrate an exaggerated sense of entitlement, lack empathy and crave admiration. But philosopher Simone de Beauvoir argued that, even if a person isn't a pathological narcissist, narcissism can be a strategy that some people use to help them cope with being undervalued. Through examples such as singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, I show how Beauvoir's philosophy gives us a framework to understand some narcissistic behaviour and possibilities for more authentic ways of being in the world.

Is ethics all about rights and duties, or is it about living a happy, flourishing life? For millennia in the West, ethics was about the way to flourish as an individual and a community. The qualities that enable people to live that way are the virtues, and that style of ethics is called Virtue Ethics. In the early modern period, Virtue Ethics went out of fashion and ethics began to focus on right and duties, where rights and duties are demands made against others. In this article I argue that the language of rights and duties has made it almost impossible for people on opposing sides of public policy issues to come to agreement. I defend the return of Virtue Ethics in philosophy, and propose that if it can be adopted by ordinary people, we will have a better chance at overcoming our deep divisions.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, many states in the United States issued stay-at-home orders that prohibited people from leaving their homes except to access essential services. Upon reopening, a number of those states passed mask mandates requiring people to wear face coverings while in public, but as I write this, in October of 2020, there remain a substantial number of states that have not outlawed what I'll call ‘mask-less shopping’. This is a mistake. After describing the standard, public health argument for outlawing mask-less shopping and explaining why it fails, I give a better argument for outlawing mask-less shopping that depends on the claim that mask-less shopping is analogous to drunk driving. It follows that every state should outlaw it.