What’s the Ethical Principle Guiding Thanos’ Snap?
With Avengers Endgame upon us, I decided to reflect on Thanos’ motivations in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’ll be jumping right into the ethics behind the motivation for Thanos’ snap….
Category: Ethics
The Philosophical Lens (April 2019): Meat, Morality, and the Meaning of Harm
With April 22 being Earth Day, I wanted to discuss the ethics of meat. This is a really big topic that I can’t hope to cover in one post, but…
The Ethics of Pokémon Battles: Is Pokemon Dog Fighting?
This post started out as a joke that would have been published on April 1. Originally, I was going to ironically argue that the Pokémon franchise was an allegory for…
Issues in the ethics of procreation: What is Antinatalism?
Recent news of an Indian businessman, Raphael Samuel, suing his parents for giving birth to him has brought attention to a somewhat obscure philosophical position known as antinatalism. But what is…
The Philosophical Lens (November 2018): The Philosophy of Thanksgiving
Is there a philosophy of Thanksgiving or expressing gratitude? With it being Thanksgiving in the States, I found myself applying the philosophical lens to gratitude. As it turns out, there’s…
What is Ethics? Pt 4: Theories of Virtue Ethics
While consequentialism and deontological ethics play a major role in shaping the debate around normative ethics, there is a third much older perspective regarding ethics that is enjoying contemporary resurgence….
What is Ethics? Pt 3: Normative Ethics
In the last post we covered metaethics, and in this post we’re going to cover normative ethics. Metaethics largely centered around the nature and meaning of ethics and moral content,…
What is Ethics? Pt 2: Issues in Metaethics
In this second post on ethics, we’ll be going into greater detail regarding topics in metaethics. Metaethics defined simply To outsiders and newcomers to philosophy, metaethics is likely large, abstract,…
Environmentalism and Environmental Ethics: Where Does Value Come from?
This April marked the 48th anniversary of the first Earth Day, and a lot has changed since then. Our understanding of our role in shaping ecosystems and climate systems has…
The Philosophical Lens (June 2018): Why Defining Suicide is Difficult
This month I’ve decided to try something new. Rather than do a round-up of stories from various philosophy related publications, I’ve decided to develop a new segment covering a broad…