Philosophy Now Forum

Unholy Alliance: What is ‘right and wrong’ in the ethical sense, as against matters of material fact, has to be related to the fundamental form of society we believe in, contrasted with the alternatives. It is foolish to define a society in isolation. It may be suspected that the current populist et...

Migration: As with most ethical questions people heatedly debate this from quite opposing sides that cannot be reconciled. Ethics is decided by the ethical class of society in which we live - or which we espouse. There is the national society and the global society. For the national society, Britain...

Pragmatics and Farming Ethics signifies little or nothing except in the presence or absence of pragmatism. It is a value that is to be employed together with all other basic values, in order to indicate the nature of those activities and things that fit alternative societies and the ways in which th...

Environmental Externalities: If any individual has consideration for his children and future generations then he is not an outright individualist believing in personal autonomy and nothing more. Future generations effectively signifies all future humanity and the world, and that is all but altruism....

Should Climate Activists Break the Law: There is a dimension of duty and responsibility that links Altruism and Tyranny – or mere Authoritarianism – and which is largely absent for anarchistic society or Autonomy. The plain answer is that ‘anarchists’ will indeed break the law with some impunity. Ho...

Racism; This another term that arouses irrational passion. With our present reductionist ethic, it is yet another value that is defined according to the prejudices that prevail. As with all matters of morality the first thing to be clear is what form of society we are judging it within. What is broa...

Modern and Social Engineering A BBC documentary on LGB teaching at schools raised several questions. Quite apart from what is ‘right or wrong’. Firstly the terms old and modern are not ethical values, and can justify nothing ethically. To be modern and more effective for a morally ‘good’ purpose is ...

Public Benefit, Social Benefit, Government Benefit: There are a vast number of naive or tendentious people in the world, asking for absolute or ‘right’ answers to moral conundrums, while yet we live in a world that is and will be far from perfect. An imperfect world has the greatest quantity of conu...

Freedom – Pragmatism – Reductionism Reductionists tend to take particular values that they happen to like and extol them in isolation or with respect to particular things or objects that are favoured. As Social values freedom and pragmatism stand in conjunction with other values. It is the ethical p...

Empower – Empowering: A term which is very popular today and would appear to be a positive emphasis on freedom. People are given the power to do things. As such it is the opposite of slavery or being forbidden anything. It is therefore subject to the same comments as is freedom. It is other values t...

Democracy: Until recently democracy in this country has been on the basis of representative government and not delegates, and not opinion polls. This has at least placed legislation in the hands of people who are probably concerned with social stability and play of opinion in parliament. There is no...

Catch 22: Politics in Action: On the assumption that politicians accepted a fundamental three way split in social-ethics, as against a break down in society and conflict, or chaos. It is unlikely that they would employ names for their parties and philosophies quite the same as I have used. They need...

What are ethical values? On no basis is it a species of animal out there that can be examined and described. Therefore it is not a human being that can be dissected as a material body. It would be a mistake to simply take our own existing prejudices and build on them. The starting point is the whole...

It is evident enough that moral rules need to be made applicable to classes of subjects. Men, women, children, antelopes and zebras – or broadly nature other than humanity. But the core values, such as equality, freedom, diversity, are all universals. However they have their antonyms or opposites as...

Chicken and Egg Ethics Which came first? Society or ethical values. Man or ethical values. The answer is neither. Society does not have ethical values. Values are what describes a particular society. Society must therefore be determined by end values that encompass values holistically. It is absurd ...