Well, I say “Ockham’s Beard”, but the referent is really just me, Tim Dean. Yep, I’ll be giving a paper at the AAP Conference entitled “Evolution and Moral Diversity” on some of my more crackpot ideas about evolution and, well, moral diversity. The abstract ought to give some hints as Read more…
It’s been stated many times before that there might or might not be a gender (or racial) difference when it comes to some kinds of intelligence or aptitude, and this difference might be partially accounted for by biology. I’m not looking to weigh in on this debate. It’s an empirical Read more…
Are there any terms less well defined, less well understood, than “moral”? I’ve already tried to tease out a few different uses of moral terms, but there’s a further critical distinction that I think it’s worth stressing, particularly in light of my recent riff on why morality doesn’t need God Read more…
For a few months now there has been a trial underway in select primary schools around New South Wales offering an ethics course as an alternative to scripture – or Special Religious Education, as it’s called. It’s a wonderful initiative, and I wholeheartedly support it. In fact, I’m on the Read more…
There are lots of ways to answer the question, ‘what is the meaning of life’, but I’ll cut to the chase: there isn’t one. At least, that’s if you take the question from the perspective of ‘what life means’. Unsurprisingly, I found the answer to that not in a philosophy Read more…
In 1893, Thomas Henry Huxley gave the second ever Romanes Lecture at Oxford University. It was entitled ‘Evolution & Ethics’. In this lecture, delivered in some of the finest of 19th century prose, Huxley presented one of the most clear rebukes given then and since against the coarse injection of Read more…
Eugenics has a bad rap. All that talk of selective breeding (or sterilising) of people in order to improve the human stock or purify races is terribly distasteful today – and for good reason. However, I wonder if we’re already bringing a kind of eugenics back with modern day genetic Read more…
“We are all players in the game of life, with divergent aims and aspirations that make conflict inevitable. In a healthy society, a balance between all these differing aims and aspirations is achieved so that the benefits of cooperation are not entirely lost in internecine strife. Game theorists call such Read more…
It might seem a facetious question to ask: what’s so special about morality? But it’s a question I think worth asking in a serious way before embarking on any in-depth discussion of the nature of morality. And one that I don’t think is asked seriously often enough. Plenty of discussions Read more…
It’s a popular notion: that morality is somehow universal. If murder is wrong, then it’s wrong for everyone. Or more pointedly, if murder is wrong, then regardless of what I might think on the matter, it’s wrong for me. There certainly seems to be something about morality that sets it Read more…