Simon Critchley, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex, investigates humour. And tells some pretty good jokes.

Most people believe that happiness is the supreme good; that it is achievable by everyone and that everyone has a right to it. It is usually identified with the passive possession of some other material or non-material good or goods and the state of being these confer. Aristotle was one of the first thinkers to attempt an analysis of happiness. For him it consists of the active exercise of characteristic human excellence as manifested in intellectual activity and moral action. This article sets out to explain Aristotle's views and to suggest what is wrong with them.

Some people hope to die in their sleep. Not me. I don't regret having been oblivious at my birth, but I don't want death to catch me napping.

In a footnote to Chapter 7 of ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’ Karl Popper describes what he calls the ‘Paradox of Democracy’: the possibility that a majority decides for a tyrant to rule. This is the lesser known paradox of the three to which he pays attention, the other two being the ‘paradox of freedom’ – total freedom leads to suppression of the weak by the strong – and the ‘paradox of tolerance’ – unlimited tolerance leads to the disappearance of tolerance.

Most theorists agree that the ability to think critically is distinct from the disposition to do so. Many of us may have the ability to be critical thinkers, but unless we are consistently and internally motivated to think and reason this way, these abilities are effectively redundant. Such dispositions are both intellectual character traits, and dispositions to behave in certain ways. As such, the first step to understanding critical thinking requires us to develop an operationalized taxonomy of critical thinking dispositions. To avoid explicating these dispositions in abstracto, this article draws upon a murder trial in order to demonstrate the central role dispositions play in critical thinking.

Dean Radin, laboratory director at The Institute of Noetic Sciences (California, USA), argues that telepathy is real, and suggests that quantum mechanics may ultimately provide an explanation of how it works.

Artists often emphasize the importance of risk to their work. But this raises a puzzle, as on a standard probabilistic account of risk we are obliged to treat some of these cases as not involving genuine risk at all. It is argued that the way to resolve this puzzle is to recognize a crucial shortcoming in the probabilistic account of risk. With this shortcoming rectified, and hence with a revised modal account of risk in place, we are able to treat the relevant cases of putative aesthetic risk as entirely genuine.

Many people hold that procreation is morally obligatory; one ought to bring children into existence because they benefit by being brought into existence. Often this line of thinking stems from the notion that procreation is intrinsically valuable; procreation should be pursued for its own sake. Other philosophers hold procreation is immoral because of the great harm it causes as a result of climate change, overpopulation, mental illness, and so forth. If current population growth continues, there will be an ever-shrinking supply of fresh water and food, leading to the suffering of future generations.

The word ‘naturalism’ has a bewildering array of uses in philosophy. Roughly speaking, it connotes pro-scientific attitudes and approaches. This article introduces the subject of naturalism by sketching a history of pro-scientific attitudes and approaches in philosophy, from their origins in the early modern period through to the present day. It then distinguishes a number of distinct families of naturalism: metaphysical, logico-linguistic, epistemological, and methodological. The resulting taxonomy encompasses a plurality of loosely related views rather than a number of variations on a single clear and unified theme.

In this paper it is argued that we should not give money to beggars. Rather than spending our welfare budget on the people whom we happen to pass by on the street, we should spend it on those who are genuinely poor and who can be helped the most with each pound that we give. A pound given to a beggar in a Western country, it is argued, is a pound spent on someone who – in a global perspective – is relatively well off. That pound, if spent better, could have rescued the life of a starving child in another part of the world.

Ted Schick submits the ‘God hypothesis’ to close scientific and logical scrutiny and finds it seriously lacking.

If we are going to treat other species so very differently from our own — killing, eating and experimenting on pigs and sheep, for example, but never human beings — then it seems we need to come up with some morally relevant difference between us and them that justifies this difference in treatment. Otherwise it appears we are guilty of bigotry (in just the same way that someone who discriminates on the basis of race or sex is guilty of bigotry). But what is this morally relevant difference? Julia Tanner's article examines, and rejects, some of the most popular answers to this question.

Simon Glendinning explains the mysteries of phenomenology.

An essay on trust.

Opponents of spanking rest their arguments on the implicit assumption that punishment can only be justified by its corrective or deterrent effects. But this is a questionable assumption. Punishment is fundamentally about retribution: it seeks to give a wrongdoer what he deserves. It is for this reason that corporal punishment is morally permissible, irrespective of whether it corrects or deters future misbehaviour.

Elinor Mason explains and contrasts consequentialist and duty-based theories of ethics.

In ‘Do Souls Exist?’ and ‘Does Free Will Exist?’ I laid out the reasons most philosophers doubt the existence of souls and free will. Here, in ‘Does God Exist?’, to complete the trilogy, I will lay out the reasons most philosophers doubt the existence of God: the best arguments for God fail, the most well-known argument against God succeeds, and philosophers are not keen to take things on faith.

Is time travel possible? Does it even make sense? Heather Dyke explores one of the sci-fi film buff's favourite philosophical conundrums.

It is impolite to discuss matters of religion or politics in mixed company. So goes the popular adage which all of us were supposed to have learned as children from our mothers. Let's call it Mom's Maxim. We tend to accept Mom's Maxim. But is it philosophically sound? In this short essay, we raise some objections to Mom's Maxim and make a case for an alternative which we call Mill's Principle.