Christopher Chew Monash University In the strange, upside-down world of the Southern Hemisphere, cold and gloomy Winter is quietly slinking away, and raucous Spring in all his glory begins to stir. Ah, Spring! The season of buds and blooms …

Joseph Bowen (@joe_bowen_1) Lets begin with a pair of cases: Pub Swap. Suppose Ann endorses Political Party A and Ben endorses Political Party B. Both would place Party C as their last choice. Ann lives in constituency 1 and Ben lives in co…

Julian Savulescu @juliansavulescu The 90s was a terrifying decade. Boris Yeltsin with his finger on the button. Fortunately he was too drunk some of the time to move. The Spice Girls. And Y2K. I bought plenty of water. Civilisation came to …

Over the last four decades or so, philosophers have spent a good deal of time on this somewhat peculiar question. Why? After all, it’s not a question that people ordinarily ask, like ‘Do animals have rights?’ or ‘Is abortion permissible?’.

Nick Shackel Cardiff University Suppose you are born with valuable talents or to wealthy parents. What is added if we say that your talents or wealth are a fortune of birth? I say, nothing! This is merely a misleading way of repeating that …

Julian Savulescu @juliansavulescu In Roald Dahl’s short story, William and Mary, William dies of cancer. But a novel procedure allows his brain, with one eye attached, to be kept functioning in a clear plastic vat. His wife convinces …

There has been a lot of concern expressed about the role that social media might play in political polarization. The worry is that social media users might only expose themselves to news stories with which they agree and have friends that r…

Julian Savulescu and William Isdale An editorial in the Lancet earlier this month report on the first fall in UK organ transplants in a decade. Key statistics included that “the number of people who chose or were able to donate their organs…

Anke Snoek Macquarie University If you break a leg or have a cold, it probably wouldn’t affect your identity at all. But when you have an invasive, chronic illness, it will probably change your way of being in the world, and the way you per…

Pedro Jesus Perez Zafrilla. (University of Valencia) In a previous post on this blog, David Aldridge questions the social convention of ending arguments by “agreeing to disagree.”, arguing that doing so “ends the dialogue at precisely the p…