Nothing as It Seems

An edited version of this article was printed in Village Magazine , November 2014   In October, Dublin City Councillors voted in favour of removing fluoride from public water supplies. The motion, which was passed by 22 votes , called for the removal of fluoride and to make it a crime for anyone that attempts to add it to water supplies. Dublin is not the first city to pass such a motion: in March, Cork City Council also passed a motion requesting the Government to end treating public water supply with fluoride. Christopher O’Sullivan , the Fianna Fáil councillor who tabled the motion, said he hoped its passing will produce a “ domino effect ” with other county councils.  Anti-fluoride groups, who are actively campaigning to end water fluoridation in Ireland, will no doubt consider these events as significant victories. Many argue that fluoridation is known to cause many health problems, such as cardiovascular and neurological disease, type 1 diabetes, osteop...

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...