A common answer to the title question is: being highly competent in a wide range of academic disciplines, as shown by having a large number of good exam results. Is this acceptable?

Most advice for sharpening our thinking skills concerns how to avoid bad arguments. But argument is only one of the two basic forms of reasoning. The other is explanation, and it is equally susceptible to abuse. You may already be familiar with certain forms of explanatory malfeasance. One of the best known is circular explanation, in which the stated cause is just a different way of describing the effect. (Why did we lose the match? Because our opponents scored more goals.) Here I'd like to introduce you to a less appreciated error of explanation. To my knowledge it has no widely accepted name, but I call it ‘the convincing explanation’.

People prefer certainty. There's a psychological need to explain events or phenomena rather than accept one's ignorance, to say ‘I don't know’ when faced with insufficient evidence.

Osama bin Laden means well. This is evident from his declarations, juridical decrees, lectures, epistles, and written reminders, which Bruce Lawrence has made available in Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (2005; hereafter referred to by the page numbers in parentheses) a single volume. Duty, Osama claims, compels Muslims' support for jihad against the ‘Crusader–Jewish Alliance’ (7, 23). But many attack his goals and behavior as immoral. Initiatives he has supported or directed represent his strategy for fulfilling his duty and demonstrate its apparent immorality at the same time: notably, attacks on U.S. embassies, the 9/11 attacks, and more recently an alleged plot to detonate hydrogen peroxide bombs in public transportation venues. Moreover, his willingness to kill innocents generally is self-evidently wrong, as is his blanket hatred of Jews, Americans, and Christians (56, 87); although on one occasion he has declared that ‘many in the West are polite and good people’ (142).

In this essay, I want to provide an introduction to Aristotle's theory of the Greek Tragedy, which he outlines in his book, the Poetics. Many philosophers since Aristotle, including Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin, have analysed tragic art and developed their own theories of how it works and what it is for. What makes Aristotle's theory interesting is that it is as relevant to art today as it was in Ancient Greece because it explains the features of not just tragic art, but of the films and stories that we enjoy today. I will explain the features that Aristotle says make a good tragic play and give examples of them from popular culture. The examples I give will be from tragedy, but also from romance, crime and fantasy to demonstrate how he has outlined, not just the features of Greek Tragedy, but also the internal workings of the drama that we enjoy today. The contemporary relevance of Aristotle's theory is in the fact that the features he outlines are basic features of great stories, which I think is best illustrated by applying Aristotle's analysis to popular Hollywood movies.

In a recent article in this journal (‘Some Contrarian Reflections On Advertising’, Think, Spring 2010, 47–50.) Professor Tibor Machan defends advertising from those who find that it is ‘anything but honorable’. According to Machan advertising is not merely honorable, but also natural, a virtual paradigm of cooperative behavior, and an essential component of human well-being. ‘If human life is a value, advertising is a value. It is a positive good.’ Machan concedes that sometimes people exposed to advertising make foolish choices, but that is explained by their lack of prudence, not any fault of advertisers. He also appeals to our sense of fair play: advertisers are like us – people trying to earn a living, and even issues a veritable cri de coeur: Who among us hasn't tried to promote a book we've written?

Some claims seem so clearly right that we don't think to question them. Steven Luper-Foy's remark is like that. It borders on the ‘trivially true’ (i.e. so obviously true as to be uninteresting). If I have a reason to live, surely I likewise have a reason not to die. It may then be surprising to learn that so many philosophers disagree with this claim – either directly or by implication. I will look at some of the things people say that stand in opposition to Luper-Foy's claim. I will also consider what is needed in order to agree with it. The views canvassed cover broad issues concerning life and death, and what matters to us with respect to both.

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke makes an extravagant claim: Morality is as capable of demonstration as Mathematics. In the sixth Conversation between the seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke and the student of language Terence Moore, Moore points out that Locke's own arguments on the nature of language demonstrate that morality in a strong sense is not demonstrable. The Conversation then turns to Locke's real concern – ways in which words used in moral judgements might be made less ‘uncertain, vague, ambivalent’.

Anton Bruckner (1824–1896), the Austrian composer famous for his monumental and sophisticated symphonies, has never been among the most popular composers in the English-speaking world. However, the fact that his works became the favourites of the Nazis before and during WWII has been the subject of an ongoing scholarly debate since the 1990's. Not only did Hitler show personal approval of the symphonist (see figures 1 and 2), the National Socialist Party used the orchestral music of Bruckner to accompany a number of important party events. For example, in the 1939 video footage of Hitler's 50th birthday celebration, we hear the final climax of the Fifth Symphony accompanying images of the Führer. After the German radio announced the death of Hitler on 1st May 1945, the Adagio of the Seventh Symphony was played, perhaps as a kind of funeral music for the Nazi dictator.