It's only natural to wonder about the higher purposes in one's life. Religious people sometimes argue that because they discover and enjoy a higher purpose to life, then religious beliefs appear quite natural and reasonable. This argument can be turned around, to make humanism look unnatural and unreasonable, if humanism denies any higher purpose to life. Either way, humanism seems inhumanly cold towards the very notion of ‘higher purpose’, but is this matter really so clear-cut and simple? Religious humanists stand as counter examples to the notion that a religious life is incompatible with a humanistic philosophy. Secular humanists might be said to enjoy a spiritual aspect to their lives as well, if that aspect simply means devoted pursuit of higher purposes in this life. The confusions in these sorts of arguments probably originate in the ambiguous phrase, ‘a higher purpose to life’, which can be understood in several ways. If we discriminate between the more common meanings, and consider them separately, then any real disagreement between religion and humanism should begin to emerge. People can be heard to talk about ‘having a higher purpose in life’. Some say that they seek a ‘purpose higher than life’. Others talk about wanting a ‘higher purpose for life’. In which ways can humanism endorse such talk of a ‘higher purpose’?

A position that appears to be growing in popularity in atheist and rationalist circles is known as ‘mythicism’. According to this position we have no adequate reason to believe that the gospels refer to a historical figure called Jesus at all. This position of strong scepticism holds that the gospels are entirely mythological texts and that we are mistaken in reading them as embellished accounts of a man who lived and preached in the Middle East around 2000 years ago. I disagree with this position for a number of reasons. In particular, I contend that the apocalyptic material found on Jesus' lips and the hopes for a very real earthly historical transformation strongly suggest that there is an underlying historical basis to the claims that a man named Jesus made ‘prophetic’ statements about events that were expected to happen within his lifetime, and that this historical figure was considered by his band of followers to be the long awaited Messiah. The fact that hopes for eschatological transformation and claims of the coming of a Messiah are nothing more than religious mythological notions does not preclude there having been a historical figure to which these hopes were attached.

With the publication of The God Delusion (Bantam, 2006) Richard Dawkins became enthroned as the unofficial ‘Emperor’ for a cadre of writers advancing a rhetorically robust form of anti-theism dubbed ‘The New Atheism’ by Wired Magazine contributing editor Gary Wolf. Many have cheered Dawkins and his court, seeing in their writings just what they long to see. For, after the fashion of the fairy-tale Emperor's fabled new clothes, the ‘new atheism’ has seen naturalism wrapping itself in a fake finery of counterfeit meaning and purpose.

Anyone taking a class in Modern Philosophy will learn that one of the most important issues in 17th and 18th Century philosophy was the debate between rationalists and empiricists. In 2005, Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa edited a book entitled Contemporary Debates In Epistemology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2007), which includes a chapter entitled ‘Is There A Priori Knowledge?’ (pp. 98–122). In this chapter, Laurence BonJour defends rationalism and Michael Devitt defends empiricism. So, this philosophical debate has been going on for four centuries, and it still has not been settled. This is the kind of thing that gets philosophy a bad reputation. If a dispute can continue for four centuries without resolution, that is surely an indication that nobody knows how to tell a good answer from a bad one. In this article I want to consider why the debate is unresolved after so much time.

Among business ethics teachers, as reflected in their books and papers, advertising is deemed anything but honorable. Quite the opposite.  This is mainly because so many business ethicists are convinced that altruism is the proper ethics for people to practice and, of course, advertising is far from altruistic. The following will be a presentation of a position that finds advertising ethical but also rejects altruism as the proper ethics by which human beings should live.

As good a place to begin as any is the meaning of the term ‘phenomenology’ itself. It is indeed a reasoned inquiry which discovers the inherent essences of appearances. But what is an appearance? The answer to this question leads to one of the major themes of phenomenology: an appearance is anything of which one is conscious. Anything at all which appears to consciousness is a legitimate area of philosophical investigation. Moreover, an appearance is a manifestation of the essence of that of which it is the appearance. Surprising as it may sound, other philosophic points of view have refused to make this move. One can characterize phenomenological philosophy as centering on the following basic themes: a return to the traditional tasks of philosophy, the search for a philosophy without presuppositions, the intentionality of consciousness, and the rejection of the subject–object dichotomy.

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The seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke, transported to the twenty-first century, has been discussing with Terence Moore, a twenty-first century student of language, questions concerning words, meanings and understanding. In this conversation Moore tackles Locke on the role he assigns to happiness in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

If recent reports in the media are anything to go by, we now know why some people crave chocolate, why teenagers tend to be moody and – most impressively of all, perhaps – which parties voters will opt for in elections. Findings like these, we are assured, have the backing of science. We owe them to advances in brain-scanning technology that have enabled researchers to pinpoint the brain's ‘pleasure centre’ or ‘thinking area’, and so to achieve mind-reading powers that have hitherto been the stuff of fantasy. There is even some site in the brain that might be called a ‘God spot’.

Many who write on race consider it an ‘illusion’. Others argue that race is real, even if socially constructed, because the notion of race, and the categorizing of people in terms of race, has greatly affected their lives. This paper criticizes a reason that is often given for thinking that race is an illusion: the fact that there is no biological basis of race. I defend two primary claims. First, while there is no biological basis for membership in a socio-economic class, by which I mean one's being relatively affluent or poor in a particular society, no one takes socio-economic class to be an illusion. Second, race is arguably a more fundamental reality than is socio-economic class. For one's racial identity can causally contribute to, and account at least partly for, one's membership in a socio-economic class. But membership in a socio-economic class does not thus contribute to, or account for, people's racial identities.

Parents concerned with what goes on when they leave their children at home under the care of someone else might wonder whether or not they should invest in video surveillance equipment. Such technology has become readily available and is relatively inexpensive, but is it morally permissible to use this sort of technology to monitor the care of one's children?

How can people live together peacefully, especially in a multicultural, multi-religious society? We should find a minimum level of consensus which is needed to live peacefully together in an open (world) society and a moral language to communicate with each other. Dutch philosopher Paul Cliteur published his book Moral Esperanto (this book is in Dutch and has not yet been translated) in 2007 in which he argues that it is important that people can communicate with each other in a moral and political language which is in principle understandable to everybody; in contrast with religious discourse which only makes sense to believers. Cliteur makes the analogy of Esperanto, the artificial language proposed to be the lingua franca, and emphasizes the need for a universal moral language.