Television, like other forms of art and media, functions as a moral educator. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle places great emphasis on the role of the moral tutor for guiding children in their moral development, and in his Politics and Poetics, he (as did his mentor Plato) argued that the arts importantly functioned as moral tutors. In this paper, I will present an Aristotelian analysis of the effects exposure to highly sexualized media (with an emphasis on television) can have on the character of children and adolescents, who are in vitally formative years when it comes to their sexuality. Particularly, I am concerned that our youth is being habituated into a kind of sexual ethic that is based on treating their sexual partners as mere means and objects to sexual pleasure, rather than as intrinsically valuable persons with whom one can uniquely share sexual experiences.

Your philosophy consists of your beliefs and your reasons for your beliefs. Beliefs form a garden; we need to learn to weed out the dandelions and water the flowers. The readiness to weed out a previously held belief takes courage and is the sign of a true philosopher. In particular we need to avoid committing the aesthetic fallacy, the mistaken idea that what is true is necessarily pleasant, good, or beautiful.

Proponents of same-sex marriage often defend their view by appealing to the concept of justice. But a significant argument from justice against same-sex marriage can be made also, as follows. Heterosexual union has special social value because it is the indispensable means by which humans come into existence. What has special social value deserves special recognition and sanction. Civil ordinances that recognize same-sex marriage as comparable to heterosexual marriage constitute a rejection of the special social value of heterosexual unions, and to deny such special social value is unjust.

Missionaries that try to convert us can be rather annoying. Missionaries that keep trying to convert us even after we explicitly refuse to be converted are even more vexing. However, in a weird and paradoxical way, they actually deserve much more moral credit than the ‘nice’ religious people who do not try to shove their religion down our throats.

Susan Wolf famously argued that a saintly life – one totally dedicated to moral concerns – would be ‘a life strangely barren’. It would mean neglecting many activities that make human life worthwhile. But her argument assumes that our moral duties are simply duties to others, that a perfectly moral person would always act selflessly. It may be, however, that we also have duties to ourselves, which include the cultivation of so-called ‘non-moral’ virtues. On this view, morality is pervasive, relating to all features of a human life, and has architectonic status, being capable of shaping all that we do.

There is a surprising amount of philosophy (in terms of both values and logic) underlying the way we choose to measure poverty, including in the matter of the seemingly uncomplicated task of specifying an income poverty line. The present essay examines some of these issues of fact, value, and reasoning as they apply to the enterprise of assessing magnitudes of, and trends in, global money-metric poverty.

The answer to the question of why there is Something rather than Nothing is that there has to be Something and that Nothing is impossible. There cannot not be Something so there cannot be Nothing. The paper justifies this conclusion, while also explaining why we might believe there may be Nothing. In the course of this, the so-called subtraction-argument is shown to be inadequate and question-begging.

In a fable by Lincoln Steffens, he recounts the fate of a man, who, climbing to the top of a mountain, seizes hold of the Truth. Satan, suspecting mischief from this upstart, duly directs his underlings to tail him. When the demon reports with alarm the man's success – that he had indeed seized hold of the Truth – Satan remains unperturbed. ‘Don't worry’, he yawned. ‘I’ll tempt him to institutionalize it.’1

The purpose of this paper is to offer an exploratory critique of the concept of institutionalized truth, as it is postulated within the epistemic traditions of scientism and Roman Catholic theology. Drawing on examples from each of these paradigms, namely, the conclusions of scientism, and the doctrine of papal infallibility, this disquisition argues that immutable truths, as championed by both camps, are in fact, questionable constructs, open to interpretation and criticism.

In their essay ‘Living Well’, Steven M. Cahn and Christine Vitrano argue that to live a meaningful life all we must do is find personal satisfaction and enjoyment. They argue against other philosophers who claim that ‘objectively valuable’ activities are what make a life meaningful. There are two problems with what they argue in the essay. The first relates to a particular criticism they make of some of those philosophers taking the contrary view, in regards to the difficulty those philosophers have in deeming what is and is not of objective value. The second is more specifically to do with Cahn's and Vitrano's rejection of the idea that objectively valuable activities are what make a life meaningful, worthwhile. But both problems result from their introducing morality as relevant to what makes a life meaningful or not.

The work of MacKinnon, Pheterson and others is cited to examine what are commonly described as libertarian arguments for the decriminalization of sex work. Original Marxist lines of analysis are also examined, and it is concluded that the dangers of sex work outweigh the notion that there is no compelling state interest in suppressing it.

Men, it is sometimes alleged, deserve more prize money than women for winning tennis Grand Slams such as Wimbledon because they are required to play more tennis than women. Such an argument has two flaws. First, it is empirically unsound: the nature of tennis means women can and often do play more tennis than men; and second, the argument rests on a category mistake by confusing prize money with financial remuneration. Moreover, the focus on prize money neglects more fundamental issues of sexual inequality, in particular, why women do not face the same challenges as men at the Grand Slams.

Starting from support for James's critique of Clifford's dictum, the article argues for holding beliefs, whether secular or religious, firmly but provisionally, remaining open to fresh experience. This consideration prompts reflection on the debate following the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Alternative beliefs were opposing each other with seemingly equal certainty. The justification for insistence on the right to free speech itself requires scrutiny. The article finishes by noting the baleful effects of the intellectual apartheid which has tended to be practised in the West which presumes that religion and reason have nothing to do with each other.