Do we need justification in order to know God exists? Must we infer God exists, if we are to know that he is there? How might religious experience ground belief in God?

If you believe in the existence of an infinitely good, all-knowing, and all-powerful deity (‘God’), how do you explain the reality of evil – including the inexpressible suffering and death of innocents? Wouldn't God be forced to vanquish such suffering due to God's very nature? Alvin Plantinga has argued, convincingly, that if the possibility of ultimate goodness somehow necessarily required that evil be allowed to exist, God, being omnibenevolent, would have to allow it. But as John Hick has noted, the mere logical possibility of such a situation might not be enough to console the doubting theist. We need a positive reason to believe that evil as we know it is compatible with God's existence. So, Hick offers a ‘soul-making’ theodicy – or vindication – of God, suggesting that the human soul cannot fully progress to spiritual maturity (a kind of ultimate good on his account) without grappling with evil. In this short piece I argue that, if we accept Hick's premises about souls and soul-making, we can indeed make sense of evil to some extent. But, I suggest, his account cannot justify the type or amount of evil we see in the world, so his theodicy does not succeed

There's heated debate around whether people who did terrible things in the past, at a time when there was widespread acceptance of such actions, are appropriately blamed by us, on the grounds they weren't really morally ignorant, or their ignorance was itself culpable. I point to puzzles that arise if we blame them. We need to explain how they could act so badly if they weren't fully ignorant. I argue that plausible answers to that question entail that they're not blameworthy, or that we lack standing to blame them.

One of Berkeley's best-known arguments for the view that there are no material objects is the so-called Master Argument. There are several good critical discussions of it. That invites the question: is there anything new to say? Well, it will be argued, there are a few things to say. First, although refutations by logical analogy have been advanced against the Master Argument, the strongest such refutation, one which demonstrates its incoherence, has not been. It is here. Second, there are few formal reconstructions of the Master Argument – the great majority of discussions treat it discursively – but a formal reconstruction, and one not found elsewhere, is offered here. Third, the formal reconstruction makes possible identification of the essential mistake of the argument. That mistake is equivocation. The common complaint that Berkeley illicitly introduces the act of conceiving into the content of the concept conceived is not quite correct; but to the extent that it is correct, it's explicable in terms of an underlying equivocation. Fourth, the article presupposes no acquaintance with Berkeley's work and is written in a conversational, easy-to-read style. Given that Berkeley himself wrote in a similar style, he could at least agree that the fourth point is a merit of the article.

Philosophy has overwhelmingly approached climate breakdown in terms of the ethical obligations to the future which it is supposed to involve. This review of a recent book by Rupert Read shows him bringing philosophy to bear on why and how it matters in the first place – as an already present disaster which could reconnect us deeply with ourselves.

Philosophers dispute whether an effect can be earlier than its cause (i.e. whether backwards causation can occur). For example, could a trainwreck cause a psychic to have earlier knowledge of it? Max Black tried to show backwards causation to be impossible but he failed to do so, or so I will argue. Nonetheless, his famous article can still teach us something important about certain cases of backwards causation.

It is commonly recognized that the modern capacity for mass online communication carries various dangers: fake news, rampant conspiracy theories, trolling, and so forth. It is less commonly realized that moral problems remain when the contents of online communications are completely innocuous. This article discusses one of the noteworthy features of modern digital technology, the fact that it is possible to precisely target specific audiences, and argues that this can make mass communications such as advertising and political campaigns morally problematic. What is more, this holds even if the communicator is using only rational persuasion. In being selective about who sees which arguments, one becomes liable to mislead the audience despite sticking to honest, evidence-based, rational argumentation.

A popular tactic for defending abortion rights is appealing to self-ownership: since I own my body, a foetus has the right to occupy it only if I allow it. One cannot be forced to bring a pregnancy to term because that would violate one's self-ownership. The same logic applies to speech: we have freedom of speech because we produce speech using the bodies that we own. To curtail that speech violates our self-ownership, or in a phrase: my body, my speech.

Kidney failure is a major killer. Many lives could be saved through organ donation if people were less reluctant to part with their spare kidney. Should we incentive donation by paying people to do it?

A brief introduction to the problem of other minds and knowledge of the world outside our own minds.

Moral and ethical agreements require sufficiently shared values, or at least some common ground. We might think of this in terms of a shared ‘form of life’, ‘lebensform’, as Wittgenstein describes it in his Philosophical Investigations. Yet it is not clear what will be sufficient, nor how to bridge gaps when disagreement occurs, for instance on whether it is ever right to lie. Ethical and moral theories offer some guidance, but there is no guide for which theory one ought to follow. Whether you favour eudaimonist (flourishing, well-being), deontological (duty), or utilitarian (consequentialist) principles, the selection of a philosophy says much about who you are (preferences, judgements, beliefs) and your context (social, political, cultural). More than this it can indicate certain psychological and personal dispositions, whether defined as brain states, mental states, or personalities. In this article I outline some arguments for why ethics might need a philosophy of mind, and why this poses problems for ethical and moral theory building.