This is an interview with Elizabeth Anderson about her classic paper ‘What is The Point of Equality?’ (published in Ethics in 1999) In this interview, Elizabeth outlines and clarifies the argument of that paper, and goes on to explain how her views have since changed.

This article introduces the work of Gisele Halimi, advocate and co-author with Simone de Beauvoir. Halimi’s work is examined for its philosophical content and its relation to the cultures of North Africa. This active woman exemplifies certain conceptual trends then at work in France and other areas, and her writings show the influence of the overall European and colonial milieus on a number of ethnicities.

In this brief article, I argue that the computer machines at our disposal cannot compute what the mind-brain system can process in everyday life. Algorithms cannot replicate the associations between mental events in our experience, nor can logical conjunctions do so. This gap arises from the difficulty – or even the impossibility – of representing activities that involve a significant degree of freedom using an algorithm.

What is euthanasia? Basically, killing someone for their own good. The aim here is first to clarify this and second to explore the relationship between this killing and that envisaged under the proposed assisted dying scheme. There are important differences. With euthanasia the focus is on the patient’s best interests, doing what is good for her, while with assisted dying the emphasis is on autonomy, and doing what she wants. A suggestion is that the former concern is the one to prioritize.

The article argues, using Aristotle’s ethics, that Donald Trump lacks the virtues essential for human flourishing while highlighting the moral responsibility to judge character in politics.

When your phone asks you to choose between helping a flooded village across the world or fixing your local school’s playground, philosophy suddenly becomes personal. This article explores that everyday moral tension: should we care more for those close to us or for strangers in greater need? Moving beyond the cold logic of moral calculus, it shows how the ethics of care reframes this question not as a choice between near and far, but as a recognition of our interdependence. In a world already bound together, caring may be our deepest moral challenge.

What we do with the dead remains a universal issue because, as the major premise of that classic syllogism reminds us, all humans are mortal (even Socrates!). Since our bodies age, wither and expire, corpse disposal is a grave matter (excuse the pun) for many worldviews. From aquamation to human space junk, the creative options for disposing of bodies continue to expand. This article explores body disposal choices and describes spiritually appropriate burial methods for the pantheist, who believes that the world is God.

We are repeatedly told that living well is more than finding harmless satisfactions because instances fitting that definition may not be examples of well-being: a man who lives only to pick up leaves; a woman whose husband is secretly cheating on her; the widespread unwillingness to find contentment using a virtual reality machine; an individual whose life goes steadily downhill; or a person who fails to develop talents. We find that these cases do not have the implications commonly ascribed to them and defend the thesis that gaining satisfaction is the essence of living well.

In this article, I invite readers to think about what it really means to taste life. I intend this to be an opening to a broader conversation about what it means to be virtuous, to flourish collectively, and even to experience transcendence. Guiding the reader through various existential views and scenarios, I explore the potential to transform both our lives and the fabric of our shared reality. Living such a life entails far more than a mundane and restrained biological, functional existence. In short, we need not ‘merely exist’; we can exist more.

In a recent Think piece, Jonathan Spelman argues that while the potential for drunk driving ‘to cause harm shouldn’t be understated, mask-less shopping’s potential for harm is even greater’. From there, he argues that just as states outlaw drunk driving, they should adopt mask mandates for shoppers in order to save lives. Unfortunately, this argument assumes that (untrained) people use masks properly, are sufficiently compliant with the mandate, and that the Peltzman effect doesn’t apply to mask mandates, that is, people engage in riskier behaviour when they feel safer. However, there are good reasons to doubt each assumption, theoretical and empirical. The article concludes that we should be sceptical that the life-saving potential of masks justifies mask mandates.

Could our universe be infinitely big? Could it be infinitely old? Could there be infinitely many separate universes? Although arguments against the existence of such physical infinities have been made throughout history, it is only in recent years that substantial arguments against their existence have been made. This article adds to the case against physical infinities and lists some of the astounding implications if no types of physical infinities exist.

The evil-god challenge brings to scrutiny a belief taken for granted by many traditional theists: God’s goodness. Evil-god challengers claim that evil-god parodies of theistic arguments are as reasonable as the originals, calling into question the assumption of God’s goodness. I take a new approach to this challenge by considering how great good and great evil are best promoted in conjunction with evil-god’s character and evidential arguments regarding lost or absent goods and evils. I conclude that the world has lost far too many great evils for the evil-god hypothesis to be a serious challenge to traditional theistic belief in God’s perfect goodness.