Amia Srinivasan is interviewed about her classic paper ‘The Aptness of Anger’, which challenges a common response to those who express anger at injustice: that their anger is counterproductive.

It seems to be widely supposed that the shock-jock question ‘What is a woman?’ is an unanswerable gotcha for trans people or trans allies. Here I answer the question (my answer is ‘an adult human female’) and explain why this isn’t a transphobic answer, and why, actually, the question is a gotcha for the other side – for trans-exclusionaries. I also answer the question ‘Can a woman have a penis?’ My answer is ‘Yes, and whether you are trans-inclusionary or trans-exclusionary, it’s still yes’.

What is philosophy? Some believe it is essentially an armchair discipline – something that we can do, roughly speaking, in our heads. It should to be distinguished from other, empirical disciplines such as physics, chemistry. However, others argue that there’s much more to philosophy than just armchair reflection. This dialogue explores these issues.

Harry Frankfurt claims that the object of love can be ‘almost anything’. Using Frankfurt’s conception of love, I argue that I could still love my girlfriend even if she were a worm. This conclusion can be motivated by three philosophical considerations: conceivability, anti-essentialism and the scope of what is volitionally possible. This apologia provides an introductory sketch of how the object of one’s love can change radically over time. A cautionary note: it does not provide sufficient resources for boyfriends everywhere to escape the force of this question.

Climate anxiety is a profound psychological, and even spiritual, problem of our times. The predicted and unpredictable consequences of climate change can cast a shadow of fear and doubt over our sense of the imminent and far future. The best cure to climate anxiety is the development of courage. Courage means upholding something noble in the face of one’s fears. In this article I explore what it means to be courageous in the face of the climate crisis.

Although I am no longer religious, I do not disparage all forms of all religions nor trash all religious people. Still, I want to isolate significant deficiencies in many of those forms. I focus primarily on forms of Christianity since these are ones with which I – and many readers – are most familiar. I then show how non-religious people can achieve what religious ones do, without the baggage, by attending to what is most within our control.

Many cities have lost significant old buildings in a push for redevelopment. While there is a case for preservation, there can be, and often are, strong arguments for redevelopment. This article takes a philosophical look at the arguments found on both sides of the debate.

New technologies don’t just change how we act – they can also reshape our moral beliefs, practices, norms and values. Technological innovations like the mechanical ventilator, autonomous weapons and gene editing challenge existing concepts, such as death, responsibility and health, and create situations our conceptual frameworks can no longer fully explain. As these technologies disrupt familiar ideas and beliefs, they push us to rethink our ethical norms and values. Understanding how technology drives these shifts is necessary if we want to respond thoughtfully to the moral challenges of the future.

This article examines Georges Bataille’s thoughts on sacrifice and its connection with the sacred. Bataille sees sacrifice as a powerful act that breaks down the boundary between life and death, revealing something profound beyond everyday life. The article highlights his belief in sacrifice as a potent challenge to social norms, deepening our understanding of human existence.

Does mathematics describe something real, or merely a sort of fictional world, like Narnia, or Middle Earth?

What are wishful thinking and self-deception, and what is the difference between them? This article looks for answers to these questions with reference to a real-life case.

In this article I question a long-established, common-sense belief. Namely, that words contain meanings. This belief is the absolute presupposition underpinning the familiar question: ‘What does that word mean? Backed by John Locke, I argue that words don’t mean. Or as Locke puts it: ‘Words are an insignificant noise.’ Words become significant, meaningful, once we have each processed them through our own minds. In short, we subjectively make our own meanings. The role of words is to trigger the meanings we have made for ourselves. This is where the inescapable roots of misunderstanding lie. The words that do the triggering are public. The meanings we create for those words are unavoidably private and mobile. The bulk of the rest of the article addresses the question: ‘How far can we curb misunderstanding?’

In the preceding article, Terence Moore argues that the meanings of words are private and hidden, and that using language meaningfully involves private processes that are ‘little understood’. In this response I explain why Wittgenstein would, I believe, reject this way of thinking about meaning.