Everyday Philosophy An important distinction in political philosophy is that between substantive and procedural questions. If I have a substantive problem with an action, it’s because of the moral rights or wrongs of the action itself or its results. Imagine the government raised the top rate of income tax. If I were to criticise that…

Everyday philosophy As we celebrate the feast of Christmas, it’s time for this column to tackle the question of faith. This is a philosophy column, and so I’m not going to get into the precise nature of supernatural faith, or anything else that specifically depends on God’s revelation to us. But there’s a widespread idea…

Everyday Philosophy Analogies are a powerful aid to the truth-seeker. By comparing two relevantly similar situations, you can move from conclusions about one to conclusions about the other. Analogies can help expose inconsistencies: (‘how would you react if these accusations were being made against Bill Clinton rather than Donald Trump?’) or to help make a…

Everyday Philosophy Tribalism in politics and ethics is an easy thing to criticise. By ‘tribalism’ I’m specifically talking here about tribalism about opinions: changing your beliefs in order to better conform with a group that you identify with in some way. This criticism is mostly right: I think this sort of tribalism is usually bad.…

Everyday Philosophy   What’s the proper role of common sense in philosophy? In good thinking? The answer isn’t as straightforward as we might hope. I’ll begin as I often do by asking “what do we mean by common sense?” This time I’ll try to characterise it by examining its absence. We’re all familiar with cases…

Everyday Philosophy   What’s the opposite of good, clear thinking? An obvious answer is ‘biased thinking’. The truth is that we’re all biased. None of us are gods or angels, and the brains with which we do our thinking often go wrong, the whirls and eddies of our thoughts pushing us away from the truth…

Everyday Philosophy   Your humble columnist has encountered quite a few people who claim to be moral relativists. All of these people are wrong: not wrong to be moral relativists, but wrong in claiming that they actually are moral relativists. My contention – I know it’s a bold claim – is that no-one except a…