As I write this column, I am struggling to make ethical sense of current events. How can politicians like Donald Trump shamelessly tell lie after lie, and still have a significant number of people willing to support them? How can men who make or act in sensitive and enlightened filmsRead...

One of the most interesting features of philosophy is that it forces practitioners to notice the extraordinary in the ordinary. Part of its charm lies in its power to make what we might be tempted to take for granted look strange and intriguing. For the philosopher, everything and anything isRead More

In the last two columns, I have been exploring Cartesian dualism and some of its consequences. This month, I want to consider an intriguing technological development that may emerge out of the marriage of Cartesian thinking and advances in computer technology. This is the claim made by some so-called “immortalists”Read More

Last month, I discussed Descartes’ thought experiment and its sharp separation between mind and body. This month, I want to look at a bizarre and ethically troubling proposal that arises as a consequence of this way of understanding ourselves: the head transplant operation that Italian physician Dr. Sergio Canavero claims thatRead More

There is a common type of case study presented in many bioethics textbooks. It concerns a person (usually a woman, for some reason) who is suffering from somewhat advanced dementia. She is often described as having been someone who was highly intelligent, who had a professional career in which sheRead More

Last month, I asked readers to consider the case of carnivorous Cleo, and her beloved feline friend, Hector, who ended up as her supper. I concluded by asking why it seems so wrong to eat Hector, especially if we are willing to eat other kinds of meat? This month, IRead More

I recently explored an intriguing thought experiment with my students. As we saw several columns ago, thought experiments are employed by philosophers because they offer us a way of making difficult philosophical concepts both accessible and concrete, changing them, in the process, from abstract ideas into ones that we canRead More

My cat recently died. Although his life was relatively long (for a cat, anyway) and, I would like to believe, very happy, his death was sudden and unexpected and has left me feeling deeply bereft. I keep expecting to hear his meow at the door or see his intelligent faceRead More

I recently attended an ethics conference which addressed the question of how healthcare organizations and other social institutions should respond to cultural, religious, and sexual diversity in their patients, students and staff. One of the speakers was particularly interesting for me, because her talk was focused on ways in whichRead More

It often feels hard to do the right thing, easy to do the wrong one. But what if there were a way in which we could learn to be ethical in just the same way that we learn other practical skills, like driving and reading? Happily, there may be. InRead More