The Platform of the U.S. Republican Party in 2012 contains a promise to overturn the landmark Supreme Court decision, Roe. v. Wade, that laws prohibiting abortion are incompatible with the constitutional right to privacy of pregnant women. The Republican vice presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan, opposes that decision as a matter of conviction. Congressman Ryan says that human life begins at conception, though he adds that abortion should be legal if a woman's pregnancy results from rape or incest, or if the life of the mother is at stake. Despite his reputation among Republicans as an astute thinker, Congressman Ryan's reasoning about abortion is faulty.

In 2012, the politician Todd Akin caused a firestorm by suggesting, in the context of an argument about the moral permissibility of abortion, that some forms of rape were ‘legitimate’ (i.e., carried out with great force or violence). This seemed to imply that other forms of rape must not be legitimate (i.e., carried out with less force or violence). In response, several commentators pointed out that rape is a ‘heinous crime’ and that there are ‘no varying degrees of rape’. While the intention of these commentators was clear, I argue that they may – inadvertently – have played into the very stereotype of rape (implicitly) endorsed by Akin. Such a response, I claim, actually obscures a range of sexual harms, including some that may not rise to the level of being a crime. I also offer some thoughts on the moral psychology behind anti-abortion arguments of the kind advanced by Akin.

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.

In discussions of racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice, two kinds of fallacious reasoning sometimes appear: the ‘appeal to subjective response’ and the ‘accusation of privilege’. The first fallacy treats someone's subjective response to a comment as sufficient evidence of prejudice or insensitivity. This fails to acknowledge that the reasonableness of the response is always an open question. The second fallacy involves dismissing what people accused of prejudice say in their defence on the grounds that the privileged always speak that way. This insultingly treats what is said as an effect of causes rather than the result of rational reflection. Both forms of specious reasoning risk bringing the worthy cause of combatting prejudice into disrepute.

Does life have meaning? Less grandly, does your life have meaning? Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of the classic Man's Search for Meaning (1959), thought that the quest for meaning is the strongest drive humans possess. Without a clear sense of meaning, he said, we drift, lose vitality, and frequently fall into apathy, neurosis, and despair. Yet for many people today, sources of meaning are hard to find.

In Act I, Faith and Klaus had it out regarding whether their deity of choice – God and Santa respectively – exists. Although Klaus was unable to convince Faith, Klaus suggested that Krampus, his ‘Santa pastor’ (the guy who owns the mall where he buys his Christmas presents), will set Faith straight. We join the dialogue, once again, as Faith is about to first meet Krampus, who promises to provide us with more sophisticated arguments in favor of Santa Claus.

Descartes believed not only that I think therefore I am but also that consciousness is not physical, unlike the brain. That makes consciousness different, which evidently it is, but also incapable of causing arm movements, which is unbelievable. Abstract functionalism is in the same boat. Disagreement between these and more ideas and theories surely has much to do with not talking about the same thing, no adequate initial clarification of the subject matter. We can get such a thing from a database. Consciousness is therefore something's being actual. What that comes to on further reflection is that it has characteristics that add up to its being subjectively physical – and partly outside a brain and partly inside. This theory of consciousness, Actualism, also passes other tests, including individuality and freedom.

Some religious believers have defended themselves from philosophical criticism by arguing that religion, properly understood, makes no ontological claims: they are referred to here, for short, as ‘NOC-believers’. In order to make sense of the position of NOC-believers, the article discusses the different senses in which children and adults might plausibly claim to believe in Santa Claus. An adult might believe in Santa, in the sense of choosing to engage in a particular social practice; likewise, the NOC-believer chooses to take part in the social practices of prayer and worship. The comparison is used as a basis for illustrating some of the difficulties with the NOC-believer's position.

I argue that the co-existence of omnipotence, omniscience, and total evil forms an inconsistent triad. An omniscient being will know what it is like for anyone to feel pain, and since pain is undesirable, will not freely create pains which it would have to share. An omnipotent being would choose to be rational, and a purely rational being would choose what it believes to be good. It would in fact choose to be of supreme value, and thus would necessarily contain all compossible values, including those of friendship and love. Therefore an omnipotent omniscient being cannot be evil.

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.

In a previous essay (in THINK 21), Richard Ryder argued against Utilitarianism's aggregation of pains across individuals. He continues this argument and rebuts several criticisms of his moral theory of painism. Painism not only rejects the aggregation of pains across individuals, it also questions the trade-off of pains against pleasures.

The conception of knowledge that human beings have – what knowledge is, how we get it, and how we can be sure it is knowledge – is something that has always been changing. It changes historically, and it changes in the personal life of each one of us. It is changing even as I write, and will continue to change.

In this paper, I outline a toy argument for metaphysical fatalism – i.e. there is no sense in which the world could have been different than it is. First, I explain a couple of assumptions that I make about the nature of time. These assumptions appear to be plausible and widely held – or, at least, they are reasonable positions to hold. Second, I outline and explain a thought experiment designed to bring our fatalist-friendly intuitions to the forefront.

It's no surprise that one shouldn't pray for bad things to happen, for it's always wicked to attempt to bring about evil. But perhaps surprisingly one shouldn't pray for good things either. For if there is an Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omni-Benevolent Deity who intervenes at all in the workings of the world, then He will do whatever is best anyway, and if you pray for what He wouldn't otherwise have done then it must, perhaps unknown to you, be wrong. If there is no God then He will not answer your prayers, although they might be efficacious in other ways.

William Lane Craig is a prolific Christian apologist who has written many articles and popular books on the mainly philosophical arguments for God's existence, and is famed for his debating, and his engaging with the public. His work with philosophical arguments is significant, as there is no confirmed empirical evidence for the existence of God, nor can there be any good historical evidence; sound historical methodology necessarily being dismissive of supernatural claims. Craig has formulated a number of arguments that he presents in a clear and accessible cumulative case.

Some people think that numbers and other mathematical entities exist. They believe in a platonic heaven of ideal mathematical objects, as some (other) people like to put it. This may seem a very strange thing to believe in: after all, we cannot see numbers, nor touch them, nor smell them. So why should one believe that they exist? Because, as Putnam and Quine used to say, numbers are indispensable to science: it seems almost impossible to state our best scientific theories without mentioning numbers or other mathematical objects.

For some time now, the topics of introspection, inner experience and so-called first-person approaches to the mental, have been the subject of attention in philosophy, psychology and consciousness studies. Indeed, some philosophers (such as David Chalmers) think that a central task of the latter field is to systematically relate and integrate data about subjective experience (first-person data) and data about behavior and brain processes (third-person data).