175. SUING MADONNA - The Ethics of Honouring Stage Times
Read More“is Madonna’s late start really “unconscionable, unfair, and/or deceptive”? In philosophical terms: are such late start times, different from those advertised, genuinely immoral?“
170. ON HEELS - Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?
Read More“When things are so awful everywhere all the time, they lose their impact as being awful. Exploiting children to bring us cheap consumer goods is no longer an outrage, it’s just good business. Taking a home away from someone is just what happens. Another bomb is dropped on Gaza, we hit another year in the Russian invasion of Ukraine - this is just life for those people. We glaze over. We don’t think too much about it. We share some more funny memes and watch videos of people injuring themselves online.“
165. JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS - Why I Wouldn't Want My Killer Jailed
Read More“One student was obviously unconvinced, and remained incredulous that I was advocating a world without punishment. The last question of the night saw them ask: “what would you want to happen then if someone right now, god forbid, ran to the stage and shot you dead? What would you want to happen to them?“
163. THE CLIMATE CRISIS CRISIS - Why The UK Government Is Failing Us
Read More“This week’s Philosophy Unleashed presents a very simple argument…“
162. PRACTICAL ETHICS - When Do Economies Become Unethical?
Read More“I am interested in the question of whether the practical compromises economies necessarily demand on our actions are, in fact, immoral, and whether such immorality makes these economies not only unfit for purpose, but unfit to such a capacity that we actually have a moral duty to replace them?“
161. THE GREAT CONSPIRACY - On Philosophy Classes and Dangerous Thought
Read More“conspiracy thinking - the initial pathway that leads to conspiracy answers - trades on many of the motivating assumptions of philosophy as an activity: a desire to get to some underlying hidden truth beyond the superficial understanding of everyday life.“
145. IT'S NICE TO HAVE OPTIONS - Existentialism and UCAS.
Read More“Deciding not to bore the student with Donald Rumsfeld’s treatise on known knowns and known unknowns, I instead decided to offer guidance from the existentialists. That is to say: no real guidance at all. What my student was facing, I suggested, was a living example of the sort of anxiety and despair existentialist philosophers suggested comes from our absolute freedom.“
144. CHALLENGING PERCEPTIONS - Why Top Tier Football Clubs Continue To Do Women's Football A Disservice
Read More“Why complain about this in a philosophy blog? Because a perpetual area of philosophical inquiry concerns perception versus reality, and sometimes this coming apart of perception from reality (or reality from perception) often leads to questions in ethics too. I believe this problem - of the women’s teams of football clubs not sharing the same home ground as their male counterparts - touches on both.“
143. ARTIFICIALLY PRODUCED - Is using ChatGPT To Do Your Work Cheating?
Read More“The following essay for Philosophy Unleashed was produced by AI. ChatGPT to be precise. I asked it to attempt to write a Philosophy Unleashed post on the topic of the ethics of using ChatGPT to cheat in school work, and do it in the style of me as author. I will present the essay to you first, then show you how it came to be. As you read, ask yourself the question: if I hadn’t told you it was artificially generated, would you know that a human being didn’t write this? And if you know my work specifically, would you know that I hadn’t written it?“
141. THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA - Does It Have Any?
Read More“I was struck by the idea that social media gives us a living example of what emotivism really would be like sufficient enough to demonstrate why Ayer is wrong about normal moral discourse. Places like Twitter or Facebook really are just expressing ‘boo’ or ‘hurrah’ about certain issues and moral discourse is rendered meaningless there.“
138. BANNED BANDS - On the Cowardice of the England Football Team
Read More“Last week it seemed clear to me that the England men’s football team showed a deficiency when it came to courage, and failed to act with virtue when told by Fifa not to wear their OneLove armbands in Qatar.“
131. UNWELCOME VISITORS - When Jordan Peterson Came to Michaela
Read More“We should have more unwelcome visitors to our schools, not fewer. More opportunities for students to ask questions and poke holes. More academic freedom to develop an enduring culture of critique and scrutiny so that ideas are never accepted without a fight. If we are worried about the young and impressionable minds of our students, it’s time that we stopped them being so impressionable.“
122. DUPLICATING SUFFERING - Economics and Ethics When Experimenting With Animals
Read More“a possible case could be made for accepting certain, limited, forms of animal experimentation but not within the current economic system because it is structurally set up to maximise, rather than minimise, the possible duplication of unnecessary suffering due to prioritising intellectual property rights over the rights of non-human (and human) animals.“
121. CONFIDENCE MAN - What Exactly Do The Conservative Party Have Confidence In?
Read More“According to last week's confidence vote, the majority of Conservative members of Parliament have confidence in the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. 211 out of 359 MPs, or 59%. But what does this actually tell us? And why do we care about their levels of confidence? Should confidence have anything to do with governing in a democracy? And, if it does, ought the question of confidence be put to the demos - the whole population - rather than merely the MPs of the current ruling party, many of whom are frontbenchers dependent on the very Prime Minister whose confidence is in question for their current political and financial success?“
117. ROE VS WADE VS PHILOSOPHY - Abortion and the Illusion of Law
Read More“one of the founding principles of Philosophy Unleashed is that it is a place to go “beyond the curriculum” and discuss things not covered by GCSE and A-level courses in Philosophy. Abortion ethics, as every student knows, is central to any current examination specification in either Religious Studies or Philosophy, and most undergraduate courses in Ethics will also cover it. So I will be careful here not to simply rehash the standard arguments most people will have already covered.“
113. SIMULATED HORROR - Is It OK To Spend Your Free Time Plotting Imaginary Violence?
Read More“A student asked me my thoughts on children playing violent video games. My first response was to ask him why he thought it mattered that the players were children. Why not adults playing violent video games too?“
111. THE FOG OF WAR - Student Questions Arising From The Situation In Ukraine
Read More“This week, understandably, I have been asked a lot of questions about the ongoing situation in Ukraine.“
110. THERE IS NO JUST WAR - There Is Just...War
Read More“It is the concept of nations that lies at the root of the problem of war. It is the global economic systems of manipulated scarcity, inequality and hoarding that motivates taking by violence what can’t be gained legitimately. When we ignore the underlying motivations of invasion and speak only of the good and the bad, we sweep under the rug the tricky truth that we are all culpable for maintaining a global political system that nurtures the conditions for war far more than it inculcates the conditions for peace.“
108. THOUGHT POLICE - Why Thoughts Might Matter As Much As Deeds
Read More“Imagine the police-force where you live offer you the choice of one of two officers to be your local law enforcement from now on:
1) An officer who holds prejudiced thoughts against people like you (taken to mean whatever characteristic you want it to that identifies you specifically - i.e. ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, hair colour, accent - whatever).
2) An officer who holds no prejudice against people like you.
Both officers have taken a pledge not to discriminate against certain groups of people and have received training to support this pledge. There will be sanctions in place if such discrimination happens and Officer #1 is fully aware that their prejudiced thoughts would not be condoned if turned into discriminatory action.
Which officer would you choose?“
100. UNVACCINATED NEED NOT APPLY - Ethics, Healthcare Jobs and Mandatory Vaccination
Read More“The anarchist in me naturally balks at any enforcement of mandatory rules from on high. But the ethicist in me can see the moral reasons why those people either looking after the most at risk of dying from Covid-19, or most likely to come into intimate contact with large numbers of members of the public, specifically for health-related reasons, should want to do what they can to protect both themselves and others.“