Asteroids and comets: a common good

The planet needs to decide who asteroids and comets belong to, because I don’t think they belong to the first person to send a rocket up to collect them. And, if we try to have that discussion after the mining of space has made Earth’s first trillionaire, then it will be just too late. That…

The Lines between Rights, Law and Objective Morality

No moral philosophy that I have met has ever been sufficiently simple to be reduced to a list like the law and simultaneously satisfy our wants for justice. Emmanuel Kant’s morality would cut down to basic duties. Kant said that if an action is ever wrong it is always wrong and, although it is difficult…

Consent, Rape and Nick Ross

Consent and choice are really tricky concepts. In an earlier post I asked how free a Muslim woman really is to not wear a burqa if that means she may be ridiculed or even hit. If a Muslim woman goes to work and a colleague asks “did you choose to wear a burqa?”, how meaningful…