By Martin Butler. (From 3 Quarks Daily; reprinted with permission.) In the UK and USA the gap between the richest and poorest ten percent continues to grow. Few would argue that inequality resulting from racism, sexism, disablism or any other sort of prejudice is morally acceptable. Wealth inequality, however, being a matter of degree, is ..read more

Thomas Moynihan, a research affiliate at the University of Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, recently penned a thoughtful essay in Aeon magazine, “The bookends of time: Nothing lasts forever: not humanity, not Earth, not the Universe. But finitude confers an indelible meaning to our lives.” Moynihan argues that our death, the death ..read more

If these times endure, I shall become a hermit, For I see nothing here but grief and torment; Evils reign, good folk are held in scorn, And the wicked seize the seats of government. Eustache Deschamps (14th century French poet) Human life may destroy itself. With so many existential risks confronting the species it seems ..read more

Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Roman emperor. I watched a fine Youtube video on Stoicism (see below) the other day titled “How To Stay Sane In An Insane World (12 Stoic Practices That Actually Work)” It’s a bit long so I thought I’d summarize its main points. Intro – It’s hard not to be infected by ..read more

Sean Carroll (1966-) is an American theoretical physicist who specializes in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and the philosophy of science. He is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He was formerly a research professor at the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology department of physics. He also is currently an external professor at the Santa Fe ..read more

Daedalus and Icarus, c. 1645, by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690) This essay by Katalin Balog first appeared at 3 Quarks Daily. Reprinted with permission. In the past, when I asked students if they would want to enter the Experience Machine – a fictional contraption thought up by the philosopher Robert Nozick – they would generally say no. In the ..read more

Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) was the foremost logician of the twentieth-century. He is best known for his incompleteness theorems and contributions to set theory, changing the course of mathematics, logic and computer science. In addition he advanced an argument for personal immortality which I reconstruct—in order to give it the best chance of success—as follows: 1 ..read more

A friend’s wife has been suffering from dementia for a long time. He recently shared the following post: Robin Williams took his own life because he was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia. Bruce Willis learned that his illness is Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) and Lewy Body Dementia. One of the hardest things to process is the ..read more

William Lane Craig (1949 – ) is an American Evangelical Christian apologist known primarily for his work in the philosophy of religion. He is a critic of evolution, atheism, metaphysical naturalism, logical positivism, postmodernism, moral relativism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Islam, homosexuality, and non-fundamentalist Christian theology. (What does he like?) He is a fellow of the Discovery ..read more

The two most important books that influenced my writing are Strunk & White’s classic, The Elements of Style, and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. I have also been influenced by reading wonderful prose stylists like Bertrand Russell and Will Durant, as well as by a graduate school mentor William ..read more