When people seek to encourage philosophical reflection, they often trot out the old Socratic hoare, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” What they don’t tell their would-be converts, however, is that the examined life often ends up looking like one filled with things not worth doing. Consider, for example, the sponsored walk I did last week, a marathon in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support. Most people would think this is a Good Thing. But a significant minority believe that if you look at it rationally, it makes no sense for me to do it or for anyone to sponsor me.  Objection one is t ..read more

Nimbyism is too often reduced to its negative sides: metathesiophobia (fear of change) and xenophobia (fear of strangers). But these fears are arguably the flipsides of what the late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton called “oikophilia”: the love of home. If you love where you live then you will tend to be very wary of anything that will change what you love about it. Article for the FT Weekend ..read more

I used to play five-a-side football with Keir Starmer. Although this might sound like a pathetic attempt to show that I am better connected than I am, I’ll risk the ridicule because I can’t help feeling that my past acquaintance with the favourite to be the UK’s next prime minister gives me some insight into his character, and that should be of interest to anyone unsure of how to vote.  But could these feelings be misplaced? Does character really matter and can playing football with someone give you any genuine knowledge of theirs? Philosophers such as Aristotle and Kongzi (Confucius) hav ..read more

Eric Schwitzgebel is like a kid eager for the grown-ups to join his frolics, only his “toys” are theories about the nature of the world, mind and causation that shatter certainties and open up possibilities. He argues that in the domain of philosophy there are many “theoretical wildernesses” where “every viable theory is wild”. Review of The Weirdness of the World for the TLS (paywall ..read more

In the scientific health world, you can do cutting-edge research or you can offer well established advice, but it’s challenging to do both. Personalised nutrition companies like Zoe try to ride both horses at the same time. On the one hand, Zoe is a research project, in the constant process of analysing its users’ data and looking for new insights. On the other, it is already giving users advice based on its work in progress. Article for the Observer ..read more

Asked about the enduring appeal of his hardware store, Roberts says: “It’s a community as much as anything. People like coming in and having a relationship they feel they can trust.” Perhaps one reason why this social factor is so valued is that we have so little else to hold our neighbourhoods together.  It is as though the burden of creating a sense of community and cohesion has fallen disproportionately on the shoulders of local businesses. We need them more than ever to fill a hole that has been created by decades of creeping social atomisation. Article for the FT Weekend ..read more

Mr Chopra interprets everything though the lens of anxiety and as a result either magnifies its true significance or sees it where it is not. To invert and adapt an old proverb, to an anxious nail, everything looks like a hammer. (Review for the Wall Street Journal) This content is for supporters only. Visit the site and log in/register to read ..read more

Attaching a price to a human life is the height of poor taste. It obscures the distinction between two very different kinds of value – the monetary and the existential. However, there are situations in which one can, should or even must set aside any thought of the sanctity of human life and make cold, hard calculations. Review of Jenny Kleeman’s the Price of Life for the Literary Review ..read more

In her very readable book Time Warped, science writer and broadcaster Claudia Hammond explained why we almost invariably overestimate how much time we will have to do things in the future. The tasks of the present loom overwhelmingly large in our minds, but when we look ahead, we can see fewer commitments and so we assume we won’t have as many then. But, of course, jobs accumulate and if we are busy now and have been for as long as we can remember, we should assume we will be continue to have as little free time as we do now. From memory (disclaimer: it’s unreliable) Hammond advised that if yo ..read more

Ironically this is based on my September 2023 newsletter and I have only just added it to my website… Time management used to be something only over-ambitious executives and wannabe-executives worried about. Now, I think almost everyone is at least a little bit interested in it, even if they don’t call it by its name. It’s related to FOMO – Fear of Missing Out. There always seems to be more to do than we have time to do it in, and what’s more, social media is full of people who appear to be cramming more into one day than we can manage in a month. I find myself taunted by the people who manage ..read more