Morality Matters
15. August 2021
In this post I use the material and analysis from the previous series of posts to argue that agents are obliged to be vaccinated against covid and if they do not, they are worthy of blame.
15. August 2021
This is the second post on moral responsibility. This post completes the basis on which we can address the question of the moral responsibility for vaccination.
27. July 2021
A very short exposition of common morality, contrasting it with two utilitarian alternatives
27. July 2021
I review the argument in favour of vaccination and explain what vaccine effectiveness and efficacy are, and discuss herd immunity
05. February 2021
Speech is a form of action, where an action is something that a person does, something that she causes to come about. What I will call a social action is an action that affects others. Some of the things that we bring about do not affect others at all, so not all action is social action. If speech included talking to oneself or talking in the presence of others in such a way that nothing coherent is conveyed or communicated, then that is not social action, nor is talk which is mundane and not...
06. January 2021
This is a discussion of the contents of a letter published by the leaders of the three principal Australian churches, which argues that the AstraZeneca vaccine for Covid-19 is morally compromised because the research that produced the vaccine used cloned stem cells from an aborted foetus. I refute the argument.
29. February 2020
This post was prompted by an attempt by Scott Morrison to justify the export of Australian coal, in the face of criticisms to the effect that it contributed to climate change.
26. January 2020
The first of the skeptical viewpoints mentioned in the Prelude denied that there was such a thing as climate change – I referred to this as NCS. I said that this was not on the face of it, a defensible position, which suggests that we should perhaps just dismiss it straight away and move on to address less implausible views. However, it is worth seeing what someone who adopts NCS is committed to and how her position could be defended. What she is committed to depends on precisely that she is...