Nothing as It Seems

A version of this article was printed in  Humanism Ireland , May-June, Vol. 146 (2014) The notion that our moral intuitions possess epistemic authority has been associated with a number of philosophers within the canon of Western thought.  Roughly speaking, these thinkers have argued that our intuitions have recourse to a unique authority of perception that yields special access to a sphere of moral legitimacy. Others, however, have claimed that our intuitions are incredibly diverse and often conflict with each other—for example, your intuition says assisted suicide is morally permissible and my intuition says it’s wrong. But it seems the two contrasting intuitions cannot both be right. At the same time, most of us think our own moral intuitions are right : they do not seem inconsistent to us, and we have a strong sense to believe them. Accordingly, they strike us as correct. Undoubtedly, moral intuitions can be shaped by our particular culture, environment or co...

Some thoughts on Ronan McGreevy’s Irish Times article After reading Ronan McGreevy’s article in the Irish Times (22nd November 2013) I imagine he was deliberately making an effort to be provocative. If it was not for the immeasurable level of non-human animal cruelty and suffering that occurs every day as a result of Ireland’s meat consumption, McGreevy’s feature might have been more amusing.   It is surprising, and indeed disappointing, that the Irish Times would consider printing a piece as uninformed, misleading and compassionless as this.    A meat-free diet is practiced for a number of reasons—ethical, health, religious and cultural—and contrary to McGreevy’s depiction of vegetarians simply having a “misplaced sentiment towards farm animals,” many have reflected on the problem of eating animal flesh on the basis of moral reasoning. Writers such as Montaigne and Erasmus criticised the abuse of animals in butchery and Leonardo da Vinci himself was ...

A version of this article was printed in  Humanism Ireland , Jan-Feb, Vol. 144 (2014) About half a century ago, homosexuality was illegal everywhere in the world, with the exception of a dozen or so countries. It wasn't until the 1960s and 1970s that the gay rights movement, supported by the principle of human rights, accelerated. Today homosexuality is legal in about 120 countries—though still banned in several places—and some have even moved towards legally recognising same-sex marriage. In 2001 the first laws enabling same-sex marriage occurred in the Netherlands; since then, fourteen other countries (including Argentina, Belgium, and South Africa) and several other regional jurisdictions have also introduced same-sex marriage. Homosexuality in the Republic of Ireland was finally decriminalised in June 1993. Despite a slow start, the trajectory of gay rights moved rather fast, with the  Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Coha...

A version of this article was printed in  Humanism Ireland , March-April, Vol. 145 (2014)   Should we legalise performance-enhancing drugs in sport? In July this year, American Tyson Gay and Jamaican Asafa Powell (the second and fourth fastest men of all time over 100 meters respectively) tested positive for banned substances.  Other athletes, such as Jamaican sprinter Sherone Simpson and 31 Turkish athletes also failed drugs tests just prior to the Moscow World Championships in August. Further recent drug scandals include the conviction of the sports-doping doctor Eufemiano Fuentes , who claims to be associated with top Spanish football league clubs, a long list of professional cyclists, tennis players, and past London marathon winners. The ruling of the Spanish court to destroy evidence from the Fuentes trial, however, means that we may never ascertain who was involved with his clinic. Over the past few decades, there have been several doping scandals i...