The title of this issue’s special theme, ‘Thoughts On Thought’, is partly a tribute to our onetime contributor Antony Flew, who wrote a well-known book called Thinking About Thinking. Flew’s book ...

Susan Andrews parallels Taylor Swift with Aristotle and Socrates. Is Taylor Swift a philosopher for our times? Could she help us understand ourselves and the world we live in? In her song ‘So High ...

John Shand explains why free will is basic to humanity. Much has been written about whether or not we have free will. That is not my topic here, but it has a connection to it, in that I want to ask ...

Peter Worley tells us how to be right, righter, rightest. We enjoy being right. There are many ways to delight in this pleasure, some more noble than others. We might feel good when we’ve made a good ...

It started when I was a teenager, reading people like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus – all the usual existentialist types. I decided to study philosophy at the University of Essex, but not ...

Jonathan Moens considers whether emergence can explain minds from brains. One September in Rome, as I waited for the 700 bus, I looked up and noticed a black tide of birds hanging over Il Vittoriano ...

‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about ...

Peter Graarup Westergaard explains why love is never just physical, with the aid of Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism. Most people have felt the gap between the consciousness of love and the physical ...

Nigel Hems asks, does Mary see colours differently outside her room? The ‘Mary’s Room’ thought experiment devised by Frank Jackson goes something like this. Mary is raised from birth in a black and ...

who I suppose are also her examiners.

Roger Haines contemplates how we consciously manage our minds. A Martian, I’m told, recently visited a terrestrial garment factory. He was surprised to see that the boss never touched a sewing machine ...

Rogério Severo looks at the brain to see the world anew. It seems there was a time when metaphysicians were all of a single species. Now they appear to make up at least two. Of the newer kind is the ...