There is the most extraordinary thing in the air at present whereby we simultaneously seek to understand the brain as a computer, and the computer as a brain. Though no one actually seeks directly to equate the two items in question the very attempt seems self-defeating, since the metaphor by which we try to deepen […]

A current exhibition at Tate Britain brings together major works from across the career of Edward Burne-Jones. The exhibition includes stained glass, tapestries, sketches and some of his widely-admired paintings. Firmly in the tradition of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Burne-Jones sought inspiration from medieval and classical ideals and forms. In this project, Burne-Jones was committed to […]

Can evolution explain human behaviour? This question has recurred among commentators since the publication of the book Supercooperators: Evolution, Altruism and Human Behaviour or, Why We Need Each Other to Succeed by the Harvard professor, Michael Nowak. The basic idea, as he explains here, is that ‘to succeed in life, you need to work together […]

Historian David Starkey has opined in a speech to a Headmasters’ Conference that the moribund state of British education is our ‘greatest national crisis’. The ‘missing ingredient’, he argued, ‘is simply what we call discipline’, which is all too often substituted by an ‘indulgence of individual misbehaviour’. But why this indulgence? Could it be because […]

SERIES ON HUMAN FREEDOM: PART TWO The second blog in our series on human freedom examines the claim that we cannot be free, because our higher faculties of knowing and willing are determined by our brain states. Many scientists today operate not only with a healthy methodological naturalism, but with an overtly philosophical naturalism. That […]

Doddering old academics in philosophy departments all over the world may very well be preparing to pack the contents of their offices into cardboard boxes now that Professor Stephen Hawking has told us, in his latest book, that ‘philosophy is dead’. Yet such nonsensical arguments as those offered by Hawking highlight why we are so […]

We occasionally link to articles on our website we think might be of interest to our readers. The three most recent ones are: Morality, Rationality, and Natural Law — Robert P. George This article seeks to identify the rational basis of our moral norms, such as prohibiting murder, rape, torture, etc. To this end, it […]

Science Versus Religion? The Insights and Oversights of the ‘New Atheists’ — Brad S. Gregory The assertion of the ‘New Atheists’ that the natural sciences somehow oppose all religious truth claims about the natural world is false. These atheists mistakenly treat all religion as one. In fact, some teachings are far superior to other blatantly […]