Issues
Issue 39: December 2002 / January 2003
EDITORIAL
Monkey Business
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
News: December 2002 / January 2003
Oxfam in Royalties Row • Worm Wins Nobel Prize • Lakatos Recording Put Online • Scientist Aims to Create Artificial Life
BUSINESS
Chomsky on Global Myths and Realities
We live in the era of the global free market. Or do we? And now that the Cold War is over, why are the arms manufacturers still looking so prosperous? Political theorist Noam Chomsky thinks he knows why, as Mike Fuller explains.
Corporate Crises: A Philosophical Challenge
Alan Malachowski tries to unravel the philosophical mistakes which led to America’s recent boardroom catastrophes.
Investment Sayings May Mislead You
Stephen Doty says that the accumulated folk wisdom of the investment community should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
ARTICLES
Do Computers Have Syntax?
Michael Philips on the question of whether computers can think.
Is a Philosophical Ethics Possible?
Richard Taylor explains how ethical reasoning is like travelling up an escalator, and describes the difficulties of choosing between competing systems of ethics.
Is Homosexuality ‘Bad Faith’?
Terri Murray says that Jean-Paul Sartre was simply wrong about gay people and self-deception.
Life After Death
Reincarnation? Disembodied survival? Resurection? Steve Stewart-Williams ponders the possible ways in which he could survive his own death, and decides that he doesn’t have a ghost of a chance.
Omissions & Terrorism
Ted Honderich explains why he thinks that we in the West are partly to blame for the terrorist attacks on September 11.
Philosophy & Humour
Is there a possible world in which the great philosophers became successful standup comedians instead? No, there isn’t, says Trevor Curnow – and he shows us why…
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
Les Reid on sex, freedom and literature.
The Poet’s Metaphysical Role
Rilke thought that the point of poetry was to immortalize that which is transitory. Peter Rickman explains.
Using the F-Word in Philosophy Classes
Ellen Miller on the word which can generate so much instant hostility and misunderstanding.
LETTERS
Letters
Mars Attacks? • Guns and Guardians • Faith and Certainty • Swift Response • Immoral Philosophers • Dying for One’s Country • What’s It For? • Charitable Thoughts • A Touch of Sarcasm? • Mind and Morals
COLUMNS
Dear Socrates
Having returned from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.
The Etiquette of Ethics, or Morality as an Affliction: the Feeling Fallacy
by Joel Marks
REVIEWS
Philosophy & Living by Ralph Blumenau
Roger Caldwell is provoked by Ralph Blumenau’s new history of philosophy.
The Death of Reality by Lawrence Dawson
Antony Flew scorns Lawrence Dawson’s attack on Wittgenstein.
Why Blame the Organization? by Raymond Pfeiffer
Michael Boylan enjoys Raymond Pfeiffer’s book on collective responsibility.
Lord of the Rings
This film column has been seized by Christian allegorists. Tom Wartenberg has been overthrown! (For now.) Meanwhile, here is Bill Murray’s commentary on Lord of the Rings.
FICTION
The Prime Directive
A short story about ethics and the Final Frontier, by Alister Browne.