Author: Benjamin S. Yost Category: Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy Word Count: 1000 The death penalty—executing criminals, usually murderers—is more controversial than imprisonment because it inflicts a more significant injury, perhaps the most serious injury, and its effects are irreversible.[1] Some advocates of the death penalty, or capital punishment, argue that it is justified because murder … Continue reading The Death Penalty
Author: Daniel Peterson Categories: Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, Logic and Reasoning Word count: 998 Imagine that Beauty takes part in an experiment: on Sunday night, she is put to sleep. Then, the experimenters flip a fair coin. If the coin lands heads, Beauty is awakened on Monday, then is put back to sleep until the … Continue reading The Sleeping Beauty Problem
Author: Henrique Schneider Categories: Chinese Philosophy, Historical Philosophy Word Count: 997 Wu-wei (無爲, wúwéi) is a central concept in early Chinese philosophy. However, different schools of thought conceptualized the notion differently, so it is difficult to briefly capture its multiple senses and uses. Our focus here will be on one sense of wu-wei in the … Continue reading Wu-Wei: Acting without Desire
Author: Joseph Frigault Category: Philosophy of Race, Social and Political Philosophy, Ethics Word Count: 996 History is marked by large-scale injustice. In the United States alone, Native Americans were violently displaced, Africans were enslaved and their descendants subject to lynchings and Jim Crow laws, and Japanese Americans were interned during World War II, among other … Continue reading Reparations for Historic Injustice
Author: Erik Van Aken Category: Phenomenology and Existentialism, Ethics Word Count: 1000 “There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." – Albert Camus It might seem flippant to remark that the essential question in philosophy is … Continue reading Camus on the Absurd: The Myth of Sisyphus
Author: Darren Hibbs Categories: Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics Word Count: 1000 How tall do you have to be to be tall? How much hair do you have to lose to be bald? How old do you have to be to be old? It is an unremarkable feature of language that words such as ‘tall’, ‘bald’, and … Continue reading Vagueness
Author: Nathan Nobis Category: Ethics Wordcount: 1000 Sadly, there are people in very bad medical conditions who want to die. They are in pain, they are suffering, and they no longer find their quality of life to be at an acceptable level anymore. When people like this are kept alive by machines or other medical … Continue reading Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing
