When watching street debates with the vegan activists Earthling Ed and Joey Carbstrong, it becomes apparent to me that one of the biggest barriers that they (and other activists) face is personality differences. This is because certain personality traits shape our receptivity to veganism. There are indeed general cognitive biases that can make some people…
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In philosophy, the ‘non-identity problem’ refers to what our moral obligations to future individuals should be, that is, to those who do not yet exist. It is a problem in moral philosophy because, typically, the ethical rightness or wrongness of an action is evaluated in terms of how it affects someone (who exists). To summarise…
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A while back I was talking with a friend about a new client who asked me to use ChatGPT to write articles (which I’d then edit and improve). I mentioned how it felt strange to give prompts to the AI writing tool without the pleasantries of ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’. I would give it the…
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In Buddhism, actions that are deemed good or bad are framed as being ‘skillful’ or ‘unskillful’. In this conception of ethics, morality is distinguished from other religious traditions, such as Christianity – where we find the concept of sin – or common notions of morality where we speak of actions being morally right or wrong.…
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Blaise Pascal (1623-62) was a French mathematician, physicist, philosopher, and Catholic theologian. One of his most influential contributions to the philosophy of religion is a philosophical argument known as Pascal’s wager. This idea was published posthumously in Pascal’s Pensées (“Thoughts”). This post will describe how Pascal’s wager can be usefully applied to animal ethics, namely,…
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